Earth To Leftists, Political Own Goals Are As Bad As Real Ones During The World Cup!
National symbols must be championed.
With the recent exit of both Mexico and Colombia from the FIFA World Cup, it’s come to my attention that my UnHerd coverage of Colombia’s presidential run-off neglected the tournament’s importance to the contest. Policy, of course, matters as I argued at length. Petro, moreover, alienated and is still actively alienating the country’s middle class by refusing to recognize de la Espriella’s victory, citing unverified claims of fraud. More importantly, however, Cepeda’s loss largely boiled down to losses with the far more numerous Andean working class over mundane issues like security.
De la Espriella’s gains in Bogotá alone were enough to give him the win. Compared to Rodolfo Hernandez in 2022, de la Espriella won 300,000 more votes in the city, causing Cepeda’s margins relative to Petro to collapse from roughly 20 to 8 points. All told, the overall difference between both candidates was just 250,000 votes–49.66% to 48.7%. Petro and Cepeda made many mistakes: progressive excesses on gender issues, soft-on-crime policies, braindead climate fundamentalism and an extremely dumb will-they-won’t-they promise to rewrite Colombia’s constitution.
Yet, with results that close, the sad truth is that Cepeda genuinely could have defeated his opponent had he played his cards right. One of these squandered cards was his refusal to wear the football jersey of the country’s national team. This decision was so ludicrously stupid, it alone may have cost him the election.
Throughout the campaign, de la Espriella and his US-and-Israeli-flag-waving supporters savvily adopted the jersey as part of their efforts to patriotwash the Miami Neocon president-elect. The logical and actually patriotic response would have been for Cepeda to put on the damn jersey and attack his tri-citizen opponent for not having lived in Colombia since 2016. Instead, Cepeda evidently interpreted wearing the jersey–in the middle of the world cup–as a show of fascist jingoism (Colombia’s first game against Uzbekistan was three days before the run-off).
In effect, Cepeda ceded the country’s foremost national symbol to a foreign asset; a precise mirroring of the same dynamic between the PT and Bolsonarismo in Brazil. The dumbest part? Petro has and actively wears the damn jersey. Does this really matter that much? Yes, futbol is a religion in Colombia and normie voters–especially working class voters–regard wearing the jersey in and outside the World Cup as common sense.
A Better (Mexican) Way–Again
Go figure, President Girlboss Climate Scientist champions wearing Mexico’s awesome Aztec jersey, huh. Not only that, she exploited hosting the World Cup to brilliant domestic ends. Knowing full well the exorbitant ticket prices and consequent opposition attendance at matches, Sheinbaum opted to donate her inaugural ticket and watch the game in a working class neighborhood of Mexico City.
Now that’s some good politics!
Leftists and especially progressives need to become more comfortable with nationalism, particularly during moments of national pride such as the World Cup. As unfond as I am of libertarian Darwinist Daniel Di Martino, he makes a good point in ridiculing progressive NYC candidates’ Adriano Espaillat and Darializa Ávila Chevalier’s support for countries other than the USA at the World Cup. When libertarian globalists like Di Martino and de la Espriella are more patriotic than self-described democratic socialists, you know you have a problem.
Progressive oikophobia (self-hatred of one’s own culture and nation) is one of many Western cancers that continues to spread among the Latin American Left. Like so-called “criminal justice reform” and climate fundamentalism, it must be purged.
The 4T shows the way.