{"id":170,"date":"2026-06-15T20:07:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T20:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=170"},"modified":"2026-06-15T20:07:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T20:07:16","slug":"fifa-goes-looking-for-discrimination-in-the-wrong-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=170","title":{"rendered":"FIFA Goes Looking for Discrimination in the Wrong Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the controversy over a FIFA official\u2019s hand gesture at a World Cup game, and we cover more media misses.<\/p>\n

Read more Majority of Law Professors Self-Censor to Avoid Campus Backlash, Study Finds<\/a><\/p>\n

FIFA\u2019s \u2018Discrimination Monitor\u2019 Gets Creative<\/p>\n

This week, the world discovered FIFA partners with a discrimination monitor that does the crucial work of ensuring no one dares give an \u201cOK\u201d hand sign at soccer\u2019s biggest games.<\/p>\n

The little-known discrimination monitor for soccer\u2019s governing body \u2014 which has previously hosted its World Cup in countries with known human rights abuses including Russia and Qatar, with Saudi Arabia set to host in 2034 \u2014 is now calling for the removal of an Australian video assistant referee (VAR) who made an \u201cOK\u201d symbol in front of his leg while on camera during the official broadcast of the Germany vs. Cura\u00e7ao game on Sunday. The gesture, the monitor argues, is connected with white supremacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdvice from our experts is that the gesture used clearly resembles an upside down \u2018OK\u2019 hand symbol used as a \u2018white power\u2019 symbol in global far-right circles,\u201d said the Fare network in a statement. FIFA and the European football governing body UEFA rely on Fare as a partner to monitor racist and discriminatory chants, flags, and symbols at international games. The network describes itself as \u201can umbrella organisation that brings together individuals, informal groups, and organisations driven to combat inequality in football.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the ongoing controversy, Fare says, \u201cClearly this official should have no further role to play in this World Cup.\u201d The group decried the gesture as \u201cneo-Nazi.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hand signal was first designated as a hate symbol by the left-leaning anti-Defamation League\u2019s Center on Extremism in 2019. However, the group acknowledged at the time that context is important in determining whether an \u201cOK\u201d symbol is hateful or harmless. Several media outlets have noted that the symbol can also be used in the \u201ccircle game,\u201d where someone flashes an upside-down \u201cOK\u201d sign below their waist and punches in the shoulder anyone who looks at it.<\/p>\n

While FIFA has not yet made a public statement on the controversy, the governing agency also has its own office of Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination, which exists to ensure \u201cthat football upholds and respects the rights of every individual, while actively working to eliminate all forms of discrimination \u2014 on the pitch and in the stands.\u201d<\/p>\n

FIFA relies on the \u201cU.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights,\u201d which is a \u201cglobal standard for preventing, addressing, and remedying human rights abuses in business operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFIFA\u2019s work in this field is vast, and includes efforts to ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities, advance workers\u2019 rights, safeguard vulnerable individuals, promote equality, and address discrimination based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or any other characteristics protected by [article] 4 of the FIFA Statutes \u2013 at every level of the game,\u201d the governing body says on its website.<\/p>\n

The governing body lays out several ways it works to address racism and discrimination, including the use of anti-discrimination announcements in stadiums, a three-step match interruption procedure for discriminatory incidents, and fan content monitoring using a dedicated app and triage teams. Meanwhile, the \u201cNo Racism Gesture gives players, coaches and other team officials agency to signal that they are faced or witnessed racist abuse leading to the initiation of the three-step procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnti-discrimination observers will monitor matches, and tailored training will be provided to referees, security, teams, and staff,\u201d the site adds.<\/p>\n

The webpage goes on to offer links to teach fans how to \u201cchallenge your biases,\u201d how to \u201cbecome an ally,\u201d and \u201chow to speak to your children about discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fare network, for its part, warns in its Global Guide that in the U.S. in particular, \u201canti-migrant chants have been noted in stadiums by way of anti-Mexican\/anti-Latino sentiment at grassroots level in football and in other sports, but have not been recorded in professional football. Nevertheless, existing tensions have to be closely monitored as having potential to be manifested at football competitions.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet despite all of the apparent concern over discrimination and human rights, a World Cup journalist for beIN SPORTS<\/i> with a history of sharing pro-Hamas views on social media has nonetheless been permitted to cover the games.<\/p>\n

The Lawfare Project, a nonprofit that calls itself the \u201clegal arm of the Jewish community,\u201d has asked the U.S. State Department to revoke the visa of London-based sports journalist Ibrahim Khadra, who said Hamas\u2019s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel was \u201cfar more exciting than football.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Radical Leftists Organize Stanford Commencement Walk-out Against Google CEO Using Google Form<\/a><\/p>\n

While it was not immediately clear whether Khadra had received a media credential through FIFA to cover any World Cup games, photos posted to Instagram show he had traveled from London to Kansas City, where he was credentialed to cover FIFA\u2019s Fan Festival event ahead of KC\u2019s first game on Tuesday. FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NR.<\/p>\n

\u201cApologies to the Premier League matches \u2014 regardless of the excitement or results \u2014 but today\u2019s \u2018Super Saturday\u2019 is brought to you by #Gaza,\u201d Khadra wrote in post to his 230k followers that he later deleted. \u201cIt scored goals that pierced the enemy\u2019s nets, breached their borders and lines of soldiers, and caught them off guard from where they least expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMay God protect our people in proud Gaza and across all of #Palestine . . . God is Great, and praise be to God #Flood_of_Jerusalem #AlAqsa_Flood,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

He went on to laud former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a \u201crighteous martyr\u201d in 2024, and celebrated Iran\u2019s missile strikes on Israel in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an individual who would not have qualified to be given a visa based on his activities including his espousal of support for foreign terrorist organizations, and even though the visa appears to have been granted, and he appears to be in the U.S., that is something that he can absolutely have his visa revoked for, and he can be removed from the country,\u201d Lawfare Project attorney Gerard Filitti told the California Post.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear if the State Department planned to take action against Khadra. The State Department and the Lawfare Project did not respond to requests for comment from National Review<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Headline Fail of the Week<\/p>\n

The Conversation <\/em>is looking to answer the question on exactly no one\u2019s mind: \u201cShould you feel guilty about rooting against the U.S. in the World Cup?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you do when you don\u2019t see your country as the \u2018good guys\u2019?\u201d the article from the nonprofit news outlet adds.<\/p>\n

Adam Kadlac, a professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University, writes that \u201cpolitical tensions are high in the U.S.\u201d and that the Trump administration is \u201chistorically unpopular.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics of the administration, he adds \u201care already concerned about sportswashing: when governments use the spectacle of athletic competition to burnish their image and distract the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author eventually comes around to stating the obvious: \u201cRooting for your country\u2019s national soccer team doesn\u2019t mean that you endorse everything your country does, any more than wanting a friend to get a promotion at work requires you to support all of their behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Media Misses<\/span>
\n\u2022 When Nicholas Kristof returned to the New York Times <\/em>as a columnist in 2021 after mounting a failed gubernatorial bid in Oregon, the paper said he would disclose financial ties when writing about his former campaign donors. However, Semafor<\/em> recently discovered Kristof failed to do so on at least a dozen occasions, leading the Times <\/em>to open a review of his columns in search of additional violations.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Athletic<\/em> is offended that several San Francisco Giants players wrote Bible verses on their ball caps for the team\u2019s LGBT Pride Night. Grant Brisbee, a senior writer who covers the team for the site, writes that the Bible verses show the players \u201cmissed the point\u201d of the pride event, adding it was a \u201ctone-deaf response to what should have been a moment for community unity.\u201d \u201cThey made the night about \u2018us versus them.\u2019 That\u2019s the only thing they could see,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Read more Coming Soon: Humanity\u2019s First Outpost in Deep Space<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FIFA\u2019s anti-discrimination partner wants a World Cup referee removed over an \u201cOK\u201d hand gesture while the governing body faces questions about other controversies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-forgotten-fact-checks"],"yoast_head":"\nFIFA Goes Looking for Discrimination in the Wrong Place - American Housing Transition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=170\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"FIFA Goes Looking for Discrimination in the Wrong Place - 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