Blasphemy: the latest olympic event as the games lose their way

The blasphemous parody of the Last Supper, deeply offensive to Christians, featured at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris, marked a new level of aggression in the cultural Marxist attack on Christianity. Even by the standards of recent demonstrations of hatred and vulgarity, this was an outrage.

In a carefully choreographed caricature of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting of one of the most sacred moments in the history of Christianity, Christ was represented by a “love activist” decked out in a halo and flanked by drag queens representing the apostles, with a young girl in their midst, further affronting public decency. This was followed by the appearance of a near-naked man representing the pagan god Dionysus.

No element of mockery and blasphemy that could possibly have been contrived was omitted. This was an obscene and malevolent denigration of Christianity. The organisers claimed the opening ceremony was intended to be inclusive; but it pointedly excluded Christians – after all, there are only 2.4 billion of them. When a leading telecommunications company reacted almost immediately by cancelling all its advertising at the Olympics, the organisers became alarmed.

Lawyers for the International Olympics Committee spent the weekend sending out “cease and desist” letters, allegedly on copyright grounds, to people posting videos of the offending features online. Unexpurgated videos of the opening ceremony have become an embarrassment; but trying to prevent dissemination of images of an event such as the Olympics ceremony is like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Anyone who thought the situation could not become worse was wrong: the non-apologies issued by those responsible aggravated the offence.

Thomas Jolly, the “artistic” director of this outrage, protested that it was not meant to “be subversive or shock people or mock people”, and that the Last Supper was “not my inspiration”. (Nowt to do with me, guv, I just trouser the cash.) That is typical of subversives in positions of authority today: after they have abused their power, they will never take responsibility for their actions. They imagine that shameless denial will somehow persuade their audience to disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes. “You will never find in me a desire to mock and denigrate anyone,” he bleated.

This is the kind of fatuous denial, routinely invoked by politicians and others in prominent positions, that infuriates the public and is alienating it from all established institutions. When, unsurprisingly, this blatant mendacity was met with universal scepticism, Anne Descamps, spokesman for Paris 2024, added her own non-apology: “And clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. On the contrary, I think that Thomas Jolly really tried to, really intend to celebrate community tolerance.”

That is how far the elites have lost touch with reality, in the blind belief that an idiot public will believe whatever they say. Of course there was every intention to show disrespect to a religious group – Christians – to demonstrate the complete reverse of “community tolerance”.

As one American commentator pointed out, this blasphemous tableau did not just happen: it was carefully planned and executed. People were hired to enact it; the setting was designed to mimic Da Vinci’s painting; costumes were obtained and approved; rehearsals took place. It was a carefully premeditated lampoon, prepared weeks, even months, in advance, to caricature and demean one of the holiest moments in the history of Christianity and, in particular, to depict Christ in the most debased way possible. To pretend otherwise is to add insult to the public’s intelligence to the affront already perpetrated against cherished beliefs.

In what way was this squalid charade designed to enhance the standing and reputation of the Olympics? In Washington, the Speaker of the House denounced it as “shocking and insulting”. Elon Musk also condemned it. “Christianity has become toothless,” he complained, adding: “Unless there is more bravery to stand up for what is fair and right, Christianity will perish.” The French Bishops’ Conference, normally as supine as Justin Welby in the face of secularist aggression, deplored the event as a “mockery and derision of Christianity”.

Marion Maréchal, an MEP and niece of Marine Le Pen, issued a statement on X: “To all the Christians of the world who are watching the #Paris2024 ceremony and felt insulted by this drag queen parody of the Last Supper, know that it is not France that is speaking but a left-wing minority ready for any provocation.”

More unexpectedly, France’s most left-wing political leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise, joined in the condemnation: “I didn’t appreciate the mockery of the Christian Last Supper, the final meal of Christ and his disciples, which is foundational to Sunday worship… But I ask: what’s the point of risking offending believers? Even when one is anticlerical! We were speaking to the world that evening. Among the billion (sic) Christians in the world, how many good and honest people are there for whom faith provides help in living and knowing how to participate in everyone’s life, without offending anyone?”.

Even the head of the House of Bourbon, the claimant to the French throne, Louis XX, duc d’Anjou, was moved to issue a rare statement on a matter of controversy: “France is not the spectacle you witnessed. This was only the emanation of ideologues who trampled on a thousand-year-old heritage to which they are nevertheless indebted. A ceremony of such magnitude can only be thought out and considered in advance. Nothing is due to chance or clumsiness. Our country is suffering the ever more violent assaults of this deeply unnatural and destructive ideology.”

Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said that Western nations deny that there is a common culture and a public morality based on it. “There is no morality,” he said, “if you watched the Olympics opening yesterday, you saw this.”

Afterwards, angry Christians denounced the perpetrators, saying they would have been too cowardly to pillory Islam in the same way. So far as the cowardice was concerned, that was undoubtedly true; but they spoke too soon. It subsequently transpired that the perpetrators had offended Islam too – a realisation that may cause them a measure of apprehension.

President Erdogan of Turkey announced he was arranging to telephone the Pope, to discuss “immorality committed against the Christian world” at the Olympic ceremony. He said: “An international sporting event that is supposed to unite people unfortunately opened with hostility to humanity and the values that make human beings human.”

More portentously, the Egypt-based institution Al-Azhar, described as the highest seat of Sunni Muslim learning, condemned the blasphemy in strong terms, stating that the scenes “depict Jesus Christ in an offensive manner, disrespecting his honourable person and the high status of prophecy in a reckless barbaric way that does not respect the feelings of believers in religions and high human morals and values.” That condemnation is more likely to disturb the perpetrators than any denunciation from Christian sources. Time, perhaps, to don the pantalon marron et pinces à vélo in the XVIII arrondissement? (Fatwah’s in the post, Monsieur Jolly.)

So, a ceremony that claimed to be about uniting people around the world, completely gratuitously alienated both the French Right and Left, the world’s 2.4 billion Christians, its 1.5 billion Sunni Muslims, the US Congress, the Hungarian and Turkish governments and everyone with a smidgin of good taste. Why? What was gained? The applause of the supporters of the vanishingly small “trans” community, to which every other consideration is subordinate, is the only logical answer.

Why were three of the relay carriers of the Olympic torch drag queens? When were such people regarded as central to world sports? It is notorious that two boxers with XY chromosomes, who have been banned from women’s boxing by the World Boxing Council, are being allowed to compete against women in the Olympics, despite the danger to their opponents, since a male punch is 2.6 times as strong as a female’s effort. The trans obsession is life-threatening to women boxers.

As for the “high human morals and values” invoked by the Sunni Muslim authority, they were not to be found in an Olympic opening ceremony that celebrated “polyamory”, with another tableau of three characters about to indulge in group sex. The grisly crimson tableau of headless Queen Marie Antoinette, a wife and mother murdered by revolutionary fanatics, in a sanguinary fantasy, highlighted the deep misogyny underlying this ideology.

Vladimir Putin’s propagandists have not been slow to exploit this event’s evidence of Western degeneracy, reproducing the squalid scenes, with the message: if you want these Games to be run properly, give them to us. Such is the alienation of many people in the West from their perverse elites, that message may not fall entirely on stony ground.

The question provoked by this seedy charade is obvious: is this truly the message of the Olympics? What is wrong with the organisers that they could approve an opening ceremony that, beyond the blatant anti-Christian elements, was marinated in self-indulgent weirdness and allusions to the occultism in which Parisian “artistic” circles are steeped? The organisers lack even basic competence. The Olympics are being held in an open sewer called the Seine, so insanitary that events regularly have to be cancelled on health grounds, so it is perhaps not surprising that things one would expect to find in a sewer featured so prominently at the opening ceremony.

Why is it beyond their capability – or, rather, their will – to present a healthy, normal, family-friendly celebration of sport that honours the competitors and celebrates the harmony forged by straining every sinew to win, but congratulating any contender who prevails against those efforts? Have they forgotten the basic concept of sportsmanship?

If the IOC is content to see the Olympic opening ceremony hijacked by woke extremists, their vicious, entitled propaganda insulting to audiences, it would be preferable to abandon this expensive nonsense and start the games simply with a traditional athletes’ parade. If, on the other hand, this insulting behaviour continues, the demand may arise for the abandonment not only of the opening ceremony, but of the Games themselves, tainted with political extremism, anti-Christian bigotry and cultural nihilism.

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