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In June of 1967, at the same time as Israel was starting to enact its military dictatorship over the West Bank and Gaza, the biggest athlete of his time and one of the most famous and recognizable icons of his era, Muhammad Ali, was sentenced to five years in prison for his refusal to join the US military and serve in the Vietnam war.
Two months earlier, on April 28th, his boxing license was suspended, and he was stripped of his heavyweight world champion title and arrested: 3 times his name was called at a Military Entrance Processing Station in Houston, and 3 times he would not step forward.
Before and after that day, he was active and speaking against the war to American students in universities, in rallies throughout the country, in press conferences, and interviews.
He never once buckled under pressure, and crafted some of the most memorable and popular quotes of the Vietnam era like "I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong", or
"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years."
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Choosing wisely, the American state did not destroy Ali. Ali came back to the ring after 3 years of forced absence, reclaimed his title, and, beating all the best heavyweights of the time, created an unmatched legacy in all of sports history.
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Almost 60 years after that, it is impossible to even imagine, say, Lebron James or Stephen Curry talking with anything similar to that clarity and conviction about, say, a certain genocide and their country's support for it. It's inconceivable. They see themselves as nothing but earners and entertainers.
I often think about the timeless greatness of Ali, being not only the greatest boxing champion of all time but a great formidable political spirit as well. Ali who did not succumb to fear and pressure and risked his career, freedom, many millions of dollars, and even his life (in a country notorious for lone assassins) by consistently refusing to join a war the American public was still overwhelmingly for at the time.
And what do we have today? Complete craven silence. All the great athletes, rock stars, actors - deafening silence.
Not one of them has as much to lose as Ali did, at the height of a singular career in global sports. Not one of them risks jail time, fierce public hate, or financial ruin. Still, they find no courage to speak up.
They all count their dollars and likes in the dark, psychologically broken, and morbidly anxious stars of nothingness.
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Nearly 6 decades after he willingly put everything on the line for his principles in a spectacular act of real-time political nonconformity, The Great One still shines as a huge beacon of light in a sea of rancid complicity. An inspiration and a role model like no other.
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The absence of an Ali-like figure of our times tells a sad and uniquely poignant story about the triumph of capitalism and conformity over the human spirit in America in the post-Vietnam era; it also tells us how much of a giant Ali really was.
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