NOVAK Djokovic has cut ties with the Professional Tennis Players Association, a group he co-founded. Writing on social media on January 5, the 24-time Grand Slam champion said:
‘After careful consideration, I have decided to step away completely from the Professional Tennis Players Association. This decision comes after ongoing concerns regarding transparency, governance, and the way my voice and image have been represented.’
Djokovic announced at the 2020 US Open that he and now-retired Canadian player Vasek Pospisil were launching the PTPA. They said they were aiming to offer representation for players who are independent contractors in a largely individual sport.
The recent move came as no surprise. Djokovic is a man who does not get along with herd mentality. The seeds of this spectacular outcome might be found in what happened at the Australian Open four years ago, when he was ejected from the former penal colony as if he were some sort of toxic detritus just because he exercised his right not to be vaccinated – a mysterious continuity of authoritarian impulses, one might say.
The then Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison praised the deportation: ‘I welcome the decision to keep our borders strong and keep Australians safe.’ How many criminals roamed the world during the global lockdowns, unchecked by the authorities and carrying a vaccine certificate? Who would dare to dispute, from inside the insane pandemic vortex, that without Novak Djokovic Australia was a safer place to live and to visit?
The episode showcased how Western democracieshave taken a strong totalitarian turn, with bureaucracies using the pandemic to tighten their grip on society. Individuals such as Djokovic are dangerous to tyrannical minds as they exercise their freedom of choice – a menace that cannot be eradicated with a shot. They are a threat to state elites, but not to public health systems as entrenched paper-pushers claim. For a collectivist mindset individuality is a flagrant anathema.
Since the tinpot pandemic wreaked havoc, the planned overreaction of state bureaucracies accelerated the process remarkably. Governments, via mammoth state engines, used to own just the minds of their vassals. Now, they exert control over their bodies – the last bastion of individuality – through vaccine mandates and movement restrictions.
The scale of the affront Djokovic endured in 2022 has no precedent. Not even the great Jesse Owens was ill-treated at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
On August 3, 1936 Owens won his first gold medal in the 100-metre dash. From Berlin, American sports reporter and author Paul Gallico wrote for the New York Daily News: ‘There was considerable excitement in the press box when it looked as though local Jim Crow rules might be off to honor Owens’ victory, and in charge of an officer he was steered toward the box of Der Führer, in which was also seated Herr Streicher, Germany’s No 1 hater. Everybody climbed up on benches to look over the balcony. However, Owens was merely led below the honor box, where he smiled and bowed, and Herr Hitler gave him a friendly little Nazi salute, the sitting-down one with the arm bent.
‘Then, so as not to give international offence and start another naval building race, Hitler received the victorious German hammer throwers in private. It seemed like a great deal of fuss about nothing. Owens didn’t seem to care. He had that gold medal, the olive wreath on his brow and the little flower pot with the young oak tree that all the winners get.’
However, the corollary to this story is not well known. After the Olympic Games, Owens addressed a crowd of about 1,000 African Americans, wryly noting that it was President Franklin D Roosevelt who had actually snubbed him. FDR neither publicly acknowledged Owens’s achievements nor sent him a congratulatory telegram.
According to Britannica contributor Haley Bracken, at the heart of Roosevelt’s performance was an electoral interest. ‘Roosevelt never publicly acknowledged Owens’s triumphs – or the triumphs of any of the eighteen African Americans who competed at the Berlin Olympics. Only white Olympians were invited to the White House in 1936. A number of explanations have been offered for the president’s actions. Most likely, Roosevelt did not want to risk losing the support of Southern Democrats by appearing overly soft on the race issue.’
So, better muffle the drums, furl the party flags and unhang the photo of the national hero. Leaders are there just for themselves. They do not care about Che Guevara T-shirts or about the candid souls who wear them. Power and money are the alpha and omega of their lives.
While the stakes and contexts differ – Owens faced systemic racial discrimination, Djokovic faced state-imposed rules – the common thread is the humiliation and control imposed by clipboard oligarchs who hold the public sector hostage and hammer individuals into submission. After all, every regime is a silencer, as Owens and Djokovic can attest – and so can anyone who values independence.
