By Martha Grevatt
February 19, 2026
At the opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics, the audience booed U.S. Vice President JD Vance as well as the Israeli delegation. Mass demonstrations outside the events in Milan, Italy, protested the participation by the Zionist apartheid state as well as the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Italian police estimated one march to have 10,000 people — so it may well have been even larger, as police estimates tend to be low.
March during Olympics, Milan, Italy, Feb. 7, 2026.
Many U.S. athletes have distanced themselves from policies associated with the country they “represent.” As the Los Angeles Times reported: “Champion skier Mikaela Shiffrin, snowboarder Chloe Kim and freestyle skiers Hunter Hess and Chris Lillas are among the top athletes who have been vocal about their uneasiness in representing their home country during a period of deep political crisis revolving several volatile issues, including the violent federal crackdown in Minnesota by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and the Trump administration’s attacks nationwide on immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community.” (Feb. 14)
For their opposition to the politics emanating from the White House, some of the Olympiads who took a position have received scores of hateful messages, even death threats. These include out gay athletes Amber Glenn and Gus Kenworthy; the latter is playing for Britain but grew up in the U.S. and has been particularly outspoken against ICE.
Rather than denounce the death threats, Vance chastised these talented athletes, saying, “The way to bring the country together is not to show up in a foreign country and attack the president of the United States, but it’s to play your sport and to represent the country well.” President Donald Trump called Hess “a real loser.” (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 14)
Long history of Olympics and politics
Trump, Vance and their ilk would have us believe the Games are typically apolitical, that any denunciation of U.S. politics is out of the norm.
Numerous examples demonstrate the opposite to be true, going back decades. When the Soviet Union first began competing in the Olympics in 1950 — during the Cold War and at the peak of the anti-communist witch hunt at home — the U.S. led the opposition to allowing Soviet athletes to participate. The USSR was attacked repeatedly in the bourgeois media for allegedly using the Olympics for propaganda purposes after their athletes began winning medals.
In perhaps the most famous incident of Olympic politics, after winning medals in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in the air in a Black Power salute. For this single act of rebellion, the two were banned from the Olympic games. They and their families were subjected to death threats.
Then U.S. President Jimmy Carter initiated a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics by 65 countries to protest the Soviet Union’s support for the then-revolutionary socialist government of Afghanistan. However, 80 countries did compete that year.
Now we are seeing perhaps the biggest Olympics protests ever targeting Washington’s foreign and domestic policies.
This is something The International Action Center wholeheartedly applauds!
