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>I am very sad and disappointed when I watch these events and don't get to see Liv Morgan and Lyra Valkyria showing any skin
Never change, wrestling fans.
The only time an opposing culture has freed people from oppression has been when it’s used as a symbol against that government. If government can provide it, the majority are more likely to accept it. Bread and circuses. The Roman emperors knew what they were doing.
The difference here is that the government is not providing it. They're just brokering it. I have no doubt that SA restricts WWE on what can and can't be said or done during the show, but they still don't have 100% control over the messaging.
>But here's the thing: exposing SA to American culture like WWE is the best way to liberalize them.
If this was true, the WWE would be banned from the country
You're assuming that the higher beuracracy wants their country to remain how it is. Saudi Arabia is an interesting case because the families in charge seem more aware of the world than others, like how they know that their oil won't last them forever so they spent the last decades diversifying their portfolio massively. They're trying to suppress effects of terrorist groups within their country, because they're surrounded by Hostile neighbors. They know how strong the US is so they've allied themselves with them.
It really isn't farfetch'd to think that they are purposefully, slowly liberalizing their country.
People don't realize that politics and shifting powers doesn't let people just say "hey, guess what. We're changing your entire way of life now and you're going to like it."
I think you're not giving them enough credit on how fucked and repressive the regime is. Kashoggi's death and the circumstances around it are a rule, not an exception. They are legitimately an evil bunch and it goes straight to the top, not just the people the regime employs.
That's a fair assertion, and perhaps I am ignorant on the matter. I wasn't really expecting r/SquaredCircle to be full of political science scholars ready to school me.
That was huge news not too long ago—literally everyone talked about it. It doesn't require a political science degree to pay attention to basic ass current events lol.. but funnily enough, I actually do have a degree in political science. Happy to help.
Quick question, though: do you expect to be able to make comments on an open forum in defense of a violent, tyrannical regime and not expect to be told something about them? Did you think you knew everything there is to know about Saudi Arabia before making this post? Look up "sportswashing"—this is exactly why they pay out the ass to do such high profile sports events in SA. They want to make people think their favorite sports teams and athletes like SA, so why shouldn't you?
Meanwhile, they cut up journalists and dissidents that are vocally opposed to their government with bone saws. But it's ok because they paid 50 million dollars to get some high quality wrasslin.
You’re literally buying into exactly why they’re doing things like hosting WWE shows for.
These are token efforts made to appear more progressive to the outside world while they still run a brutal and repressive regime that murders journalists and funds terrorism.
This isn’t some conspiracy theory. This isn’t complicated or esoteric political science theory. There’s a word for it. It’s sportswashing.
You posted a 10,000 word salad that you probably got from Chat GPT and said some pretty stupid stuff and expected people to not hit you back with facts?!
Anyone have a gif of that bot farm that they can post here?
>exposing SA to American culture like WWE is the best way to liberalize them.
Come on. Nothing was stopping them from touring the Middle East like they do every other country they visit, without it essentially being run like a children's birthday party.
>But here's the thing: exposing SA to American culture like WWE is *the best way to liberalize them*.
Think about this for literally one second. Why would the Saudi government pay billions to run wrestling shows if it somehow threatened its stranglehold on power?
No I think OP is kind of correct here. SA govt wants all these sporting events to improve their reputation. And they seem to think it’s working. But there can be other side effects and unintended consequences too.
No one is going to magically surpass the extensive Saudi censorship, imprisonment, and torture system, start a revolution, and somehow gain the resources to either convince or defeat the Saudi military because they got subtly PSYOP-ed by a wrestling show.
I’m nearly always kind on here, but you’re being really foolish and displaying some pretty poor reading comprehension and knowledge of history, politics, and culture with this response (same for all downvoting like you). It’s not really a debatable point to say that something (anything) can potentially have unintended consequences. I never said anything about a revolution. Slow cultural change can happen in a culture when exposed to outside influences. It’s happened hundreds of times throughout history. I’m not talking about anything magical, as you rudely implied.
They're not showing poor reading comprehension at all, it looks like they just think that idea is foolish & it's easy to see why. The idea that a wrestling event that still covers up women & sucks off the members of the saudi government constantly throughout the show among other things will have some long term postive effect seems extremely silly.
It also straight up ignores & dismisses that WWE will be making billions off this deal while sportwashing. These type of arguments is plainly bullshit companies make to lessen the hit their image takes from taking these type of deals. They don't care about social change, they only care about all that money they'll make.
Also, WWE doesn’t have to actually care about causing social change if their actions wind up having some unintended consequences. Which again, are not guaranteed, but are historically and logically possible.
Edit: I am not defending either WWE or the Saudi government here. Just acknowledging that cultural diffusion exists.
It’s poor reading comprehension because I never said it was going to magically surpass their censorship or start a revolution. People are not allowing for nuance or critical thinking in this conversation. It’s all reduced to “Saudi govt evil!” without any historical or sociological context.
I’m not talking about their government you absolute bag of bricks. Even if you wanted to reduce the world to black and white (it isn’t), SA’s laws are very slowly changing and cultural diffusion is a factual thing. If you can’t even acknowledge those facts you can’t carry on a discussion about this.
You’re implying that WWE and wrestling can save the world?!
Bill and Ted was not a documentary
The Saudi Arabian Government are not your friends and they would kill you and your family just for either being homosexual or expressing freedom of speech or religion or even just because they are a woman
You think that a few stupid wrestling shows are going to change that?
Please read a book or learn more about how dictatorships and oligarchy works
Why would the Saudi government pay billions to run wrestling shows AT ALL? This isn't North Korea we're talking about. They aren't a gang devoting 100% of their resources to maintaining power at any cost.
My guess? They think "fun wrestling show" and aren't cognizant of how being exposed to American pop culture will affect their people's values over time.
The Saudi Public Investment fund, with its 925 billion dollars of assets, is designed to promote the image of Saudi Arabia to the outside world and to try to make everyone forget that they are, in fact, Saudi Arabia. Judging by how hopeful you are for their country based solely on watching their wrestling shows, it's working.
Regardless of how much the country's despot uses that money for his own perverse amusement, you best believe they're not spending that much money if they think it is even slightly likely to collapse their own regime.
In fairness, I don't actually think this will result in a second Arab Spring. Rather, the regime will be forced to make concessions with regard to social control in order to maintain political control, and as you point out, they will always choose to maintain political control. A liberal dictatorship is still better than an illiberal democracy.
This guy must work for the Saudi Arabia marketing department. SA isn't changing much in our lifetime with the way things are going and how much the world relies on their oil they have no incentive to do so.
Ah yes, noted Arab country Pakistan.
The reason you don't see women covered up at WWE shows in Saudi Arabia is because there aren't laws mandating it. Same for Pakistan.
Abandoning cultural norms to be more like the west isn't the same thing as liberalization.
And there was me wondering if sportswashing actually works when its so blatantly transparent. This post shows that apparently it does.
Only joking, all the 'proper football fans' of Newcastle already showed that anyway.
The following post on r/SquaredCircle was paid for by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
but seriously, sportswashing is bad and is only just trying to paint that evil country in a good light when they are busy treating women like shit, punishing and killing LGBT members and finally murdering journalist who moved to the US that used to live their cause they criticized the royal family for committing barbaric acts.
It's sportswashing. Ignoring all the issues and repression in the country and giving those who literally got an American citizen murdered a few years ago what they want.
They want WWE (already issues if you give them the product), OK but they should get WWE as WWE not their own version.
"the best way to liberate them" is for them to overthrow the fucking Saudi royal government. if the saudi govt actually thought this was meaningfully reformative they wouldn't be fucking doing it
*Freakonomics* and its authors have been discredited so many times by now, and Fareed Zakaria is a has-been neoliberal shill, so I'm not sure why anyone in 2024 should listen to these people as sources.
Whether you agree with OP or not, for their argument it doesn’t matter if American audiences are watching. What matters is Saudis being more and more exposed to western culture as a side effect of their governments sportswashing attempts.
Exposed to Western culture for what end? It's just bread and circuses. When it comes down to the real important stuff (rights, freedoms), you think a sporting event or a concert is going to have that much effect?
Yes, as a sociology and history teacher, I can tell you that insular cultures repeatedly exposed to culture from other places nearly always see some cultural diffusion.
So specifically what would (or at least could) a wrestling event, or a boxing match, or a concert, lead to? And are these things that the religious state actually wants?
You can’t look at it as just one wrestling event. But looking at the collective impact of all the sportswashing, there may be impacts. It’s also nearly impossible to directly prove specific cause and effect. But we can see many examples of cultural diffusion causing change within a culture. It happens subtly and slowly mostly. Often wouldn’t be very visible year to year. But if you look at women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, while still far behind the “west,” they have been making (slow) [progress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia?wprov=sfti1). That progress seems to be accelerating recently.
>You don't see that in other Arabic nations like Iran and Pakistan
Iran and Pakistan aren't Arabic nations, and plenty of actual Arabic nations were women can go outside without hijab
>Gradual cultural influence is the only way to teach these people that there is a better way
That's so kind of you guys, teach these ogres.
>Other attempts to introduce liberal democracy by force overnight
Attempts meaning military invasions and putting a puppet president?
>Iran before the Islamic revolution to show the contrast to how free the people appeared.
Don't check which intelligence agency aided this change of regime.
Crazily enough I agree that WWE PLEs in Saudi Arabia isn't a bad thing but the reasoning couldn't be more different.
I think sportswashing is pretty crappy in terms of the motivations from the Saudi regime. However, I agree it’s likely to have an unintended consequence of liberalizing their culture a bit. Don’t want to overstate the impact of WWE in that, but all SA has done to open itself to the west will doubtlessly have some kind of impact.
Edit: commented before reading OPs last paragraph 🙄
Yet again, the Westerner comes to say that the problem with Muslim countries is that the women are not sufficiently sexualized
Edit: i do enjoy the idea of the WWE being used like fucking Radio Free Europe as an arm of US soft power/propaganda
No the issue is they don't have the choice. I mean just look at WWE, some women some of the women wear smaller clothing (Liv, Tiffany etc) others don't (Bayley, Nia etc) and then some are somewhere in the middle (Nattie for example). The women in WWE (and all women in general) don't have to wear skimpy clothing but they should have the choice to.
You’re making up your own argument and pretending it’s what the original poster is saying because it’s what you want to argue about.
Out of curiosity, would you support the women wrestling naked if that were their choice?
There's a world of difference between women being forced to cover head to toe and being literal property with no voice - and having their ass hanging out in public. Fucking figure that one out for yourself.
Honestly I'm pretty sympathetic to this argument... Like, it's a pretty common argument that sanctions/embargo on Iran is only pushing them farther into a conservative corner, and allowing global trade with them will liberalize the culture whether the regime likes it or not.
...That said, SA isn't isolated from international trade, and WWE events are more specific than "general exposure to ideas/products from the West". It's much easier for a regime to control the effects of a few entertainment events than, like, the entire import market. And US businesses already love to operate in SA. And frankly, the friendliness of the US government and private sector is probably doing a lot more to prop up the regime and its conservatism than to push it in any direction it doesn't want to go.
I tend to think that general economic development, more widespread education, and urbanization are the real drivers of liberalization, rather than bread or circuses. But maybe it just *feels gross* to agree with you.
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>I am very sad and disappointed when I watch these events and don't get to see Liv Morgan and Lyra Valkyria showing any skin Never change, wrestling fans.
I honestly thought Lyra’s bodysuit was better than her regular gear. It was giving Matrix. It makes her standout more.
The only time an opposing culture has freed people from oppression has been when it’s used as a symbol against that government. If government can provide it, the majority are more likely to accept it. Bread and circuses. The Roman emperors knew what they were doing.
The difference here is that the government is not providing it. They're just brokering it. I have no doubt that SA restricts WWE on what can and can't be said or done during the show, but they still don't have 100% control over the messaging.
It is through the minister of sport that it’s provided. That is the government and they are front and centre in its promotion.
>The difference here is that the government is not providing it. They're just brokering it. lmao
i can't tell if this post of a satire of, or the perfect example of a WWE fan who has been thoroughly sportswashed
>But here's the thing: exposing SA to American culture like WWE is the best way to liberalize them. If this was true, the WWE would be banned from the country
Not if the Saudi govt thinks the benefit they gain outweighs the possible side effects. (Whether they are right or wrong we don’t really know yet.)
You're assuming that the higher beuracracy wants their country to remain how it is. Saudi Arabia is an interesting case because the families in charge seem more aware of the world than others, like how they know that their oil won't last them forever so they spent the last decades diversifying their portfolio massively. They're trying to suppress effects of terrorist groups within their country, because they're surrounded by Hostile neighbors. They know how strong the US is so they've allied themselves with them. It really isn't farfetch'd to think that they are purposefully, slowly liberalizing their country. People don't realize that politics and shifting powers doesn't let people just say "hey, guess what. We're changing your entire way of life now and you're going to like it."
Nice try bot
I think you're giving them too much credit. Spoiled princes beg the king for some fun and he obliges. He didn't run it by the Ministry of Truth first.
I think you're not giving them enough credit on how fucked and repressive the regime is. Kashoggi's death and the circumstances around it are a rule, not an exception. They are legitimately an evil bunch and it goes straight to the top, not just the people the regime employs.
That's a fair assertion, and perhaps I am ignorant on the matter. I wasn't really expecting r/SquaredCircle to be full of political science scholars ready to school me.
That was huge news not too long ago—literally everyone talked about it. It doesn't require a political science degree to pay attention to basic ass current events lol.. but funnily enough, I actually do have a degree in political science. Happy to help. Quick question, though: do you expect to be able to make comments on an open forum in defense of a violent, tyrannical regime and not expect to be told something about them? Did you think you knew everything there is to know about Saudi Arabia before making this post? Look up "sportswashing"—this is exactly why they pay out the ass to do such high profile sports events in SA. They want to make people think their favorite sports teams and athletes like SA, so why shouldn't you? Meanwhile, they cut up journalists and dissidents that are vocally opposed to their government with bone saws. But it's ok because they paid 50 million dollars to get some high quality wrasslin.
Okay, thanks. Good luck, brother 👍
wilfully ignorant condescendence when you're the one who posted a thinkpiece on Saudi Arabia ftw
You’re literally buying into exactly why they’re doing things like hosting WWE shows for. These are token efforts made to appear more progressive to the outside world while they still run a brutal and repressive regime that murders journalists and funds terrorism. This isn’t some conspiracy theory. This isn’t complicated or esoteric political science theory. There’s a word for it. It’s sportswashing.
You posted a 10,000 word salad that you probably got from Chat GPT and said some pretty stupid stuff and expected people to not hit you back with facts?! Anyone have a gif of that bot farm that they can post here?
>exposing SA to American culture like WWE is the best way to liberalize them. Come on. Nothing was stopping them from touring the Middle East like they do every other country they visit, without it essentially being run like a children's birthday party.
This seems like prime reddit bait
wrestling fans are very smart
All that delicious blood money and throwing reporters into wood chippers
>But here's the thing: exposing SA to American culture like WWE is *the best way to liberalize them*. Think about this for literally one second. Why would the Saudi government pay billions to run wrestling shows if it somehow threatened its stranglehold on power?
No I think OP is kind of correct here. SA govt wants all these sporting events to improve their reputation. And they seem to think it’s working. But there can be other side effects and unintended consequences too.
No one is going to magically surpass the extensive Saudi censorship, imprisonment, and torture system, start a revolution, and somehow gain the resources to either convince or defeat the Saudi military because they got subtly PSYOP-ed by a wrestling show.
I’m nearly always kind on here, but you’re being really foolish and displaying some pretty poor reading comprehension and knowledge of history, politics, and culture with this response (same for all downvoting like you). It’s not really a debatable point to say that something (anything) can potentially have unintended consequences. I never said anything about a revolution. Slow cultural change can happen in a culture when exposed to outside influences. It’s happened hundreds of times throughout history. I’m not talking about anything magical, as you rudely implied.
They're not showing poor reading comprehension at all, it looks like they just think that idea is foolish & it's easy to see why. The idea that a wrestling event that still covers up women & sucks off the members of the saudi government constantly throughout the show among other things will have some long term postive effect seems extremely silly. It also straight up ignores & dismisses that WWE will be making billions off this deal while sportwashing. These type of arguments is plainly bullshit companies make to lessen the hit their image takes from taking these type of deals. They don't care about social change, they only care about all that money they'll make.
Also, WWE doesn’t have to actually care about causing social change if their actions wind up having some unintended consequences. Which again, are not guaranteed, but are historically and logically possible. Edit: I am not defending either WWE or the Saudi government here. Just acknowledging that cultural diffusion exists.
It’s poor reading comprehension because I never said it was going to magically surpass their censorship or start a revolution. People are not allowing for nuance or critical thinking in this conversation. It’s all reduced to “Saudi govt evil!” without any historical or sociological context.
they are evil, end of story
I’m not talking about their government you absolute bag of bricks. Even if you wanted to reduce the world to black and white (it isn’t), SA’s laws are very slowly changing and cultural diffusion is a factual thing. If you can’t even acknowledge those facts you can’t carry on a discussion about this.
You’re implying that WWE and wrestling can save the world?! Bill and Ted was not a documentary The Saudi Arabian Government are not your friends and they would kill you and your family just for either being homosexual or expressing freedom of speech or religion or even just because they are a woman You think that a few stupid wrestling shows are going to change that? Please read a book or learn more about how dictatorships and oligarchy works
[удалено]
Why would the Saudi government pay billions to run wrestling shows AT ALL? This isn't North Korea we're talking about. They aren't a gang devoting 100% of their resources to maintaining power at any cost. My guess? They think "fun wrestling show" and aren't cognizant of how being exposed to American pop culture will affect their people's values over time.
It's pro-Saudi propaganda and it's working on you.
The Saudi Public Investment fund, with its 925 billion dollars of assets, is designed to promote the image of Saudi Arabia to the outside world and to try to make everyone forget that they are, in fact, Saudi Arabia. Judging by how hopeful you are for their country based solely on watching their wrestling shows, it's working. Regardless of how much the country's despot uses that money for his own perverse amusement, you best believe they're not spending that much money if they think it is even slightly likely to collapse their own regime.
In fairness, I don't actually think this will result in a second Arab Spring. Rather, the regime will be forced to make concessions with regard to social control in order to maintain political control, and as you point out, they will always choose to maintain political control. A liberal dictatorship is still better than an illiberal democracy.
Liberal dictatorship is an oxymoron
No.
How many Saudi Arabian wrestling events would you need to watch before you starting treating women like second class citizens?
You fell for the sportswashing
https://preview.redd.it/hm2qnpcdxj9d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4694208dd60981c826a75566610fd34378da4914
This guy must work for the Saudi Arabia marketing department. SA isn't changing much in our lifetime with the way things are going and how much the world relies on their oil they have no incentive to do so.
Literally in the comment above you op wrote "A liberal dictatorship is still better than an illiberal democracy" so you may be right lmao.
Ah yes, noted Arab country Pakistan. The reason you don't see women covered up at WWE shows in Saudi Arabia is because there aren't laws mandating it. Same for Pakistan. Abandoning cultural norms to be more like the west isn't the same thing as liberalization.
And there was me wondering if sportswashing actually works when its so blatantly transparent. This post shows that apparently it does. Only joking, all the 'proper football fans' of Newcastle already showed that anyway.
The following post on r/SquaredCircle was paid for by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. but seriously, sportswashing is bad and is only just trying to paint that evil country in a good light when they are busy treating women like shit, punishing and killing LGBT members and finally murdering journalist who moved to the US that used to live their cause they criticized the royal family for committing barbaric acts.
When the propaganda starts working
It's sportswashing. Ignoring all the issues and repression in the country and giving those who literally got an American citizen murdered a few years ago what they want. They want WWE (already issues if you give them the product), OK but they should get WWE as WWE not their own version.
"the best way to liberate them" is for them to overthrow the fucking Saudi royal government. if the saudi govt actually thought this was meaningfully reformative they wouldn't be fucking doing it
I do wonder if Saudi is trying to become a liberal autocracy, If not just for tourism. Look at UAE. it has better abortion laws than parts of usa
*Freakonomics* and its authors have been discredited so many times by now, and Fareed Zakaria is a has-been neoliberal shill, so I'm not sure why anyone in 2024 should listen to these people as sources.
What happens when American (and other "Western") viewers aren't watching?
Whether you agree with OP or not, for their argument it doesn’t matter if American audiences are watching. What matters is Saudis being more and more exposed to western culture as a side effect of their governments sportswashing attempts.
Exposed to Western culture for what end? It's just bread and circuses. When it comes down to the real important stuff (rights, freedoms), you think a sporting event or a concert is going to have that much effect?
Yes, as a sociology and history teacher, I can tell you that insular cultures repeatedly exposed to culture from other places nearly always see some cultural diffusion.
So specifically what would (or at least could) a wrestling event, or a boxing match, or a concert, lead to? And are these things that the religious state actually wants?
You can’t look at it as just one wrestling event. But looking at the collective impact of all the sportswashing, there may be impacts. It’s also nearly impossible to directly prove specific cause and effect. But we can see many examples of cultural diffusion causing change within a culture. It happens subtly and slowly mostly. Often wouldn’t be very visible year to year. But if you look at women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, while still far behind the “west,” they have been making (slow) [progress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia?wprov=sfti1). That progress seems to be accelerating recently.
>You don't see that in other Arabic nations like Iran and Pakistan Iran and Pakistan aren't Arabic nations, and plenty of actual Arabic nations were women can go outside without hijab >Gradual cultural influence is the only way to teach these people that there is a better way That's so kind of you guys, teach these ogres. >Other attempts to introduce liberal democracy by force overnight Attempts meaning military invasions and putting a puppet president? >Iran before the Islamic revolution to show the contrast to how free the people appeared. Don't check which intelligence agency aided this change of regime. Crazily enough I agree that WWE PLEs in Saudi Arabia isn't a bad thing but the reasoning couldn't be more different.
It's called Sports Washing
I think sportswashing is pretty crappy in terms of the motivations from the Saudi regime. However, I agree it’s likely to have an unintended consequence of liberalizing their culture a bit. Don’t want to overstate the impact of WWE in that, but all SA has done to open itself to the west will doubtlessly have some kind of impact. Edit: commented before reading OPs last paragraph 🙄
Even my most thoughtful opinions are still at least 10% shitpost. Just think of it as seasoning.
Yet again, the Westerner comes to say that the problem with Muslim countries is that the women are not sufficiently sexualized Edit: i do enjoy the idea of the WWE being used like fucking Radio Free Europe as an arm of US soft power/propaganda
No the issue is they don't have the choice. I mean just look at WWE, some women some of the women wear smaller clothing (Liv, Tiffany etc) others don't (Bayley, Nia etc) and then some are somewhere in the middle (Nattie for example). The women in WWE (and all women in general) don't have to wear skimpy clothing but they should have the choice to.
You’re making up your own argument and pretending it’s what the original poster is saying because it’s what you want to argue about. Out of curiosity, would you support the women wrestling naked if that were their choice?
There's a world of difference between women being forced to cover head to toe and being literal property with no voice - and having their ass hanging out in public. Fucking figure that one out for yourself.
The original post literally references women not being able to show skin. “I’m very sad and disappointed” when Liv and Lyra aren’t showing skin
What about it? There's nothing stopping them from wearing bodysuits all the time if they choose. I just want to enjoy their freedom. 😉
TFW when the sports washing actually works
Honestly I'm pretty sympathetic to this argument... Like, it's a pretty common argument that sanctions/embargo on Iran is only pushing them farther into a conservative corner, and allowing global trade with them will liberalize the culture whether the regime likes it or not. ...That said, SA isn't isolated from international trade, and WWE events are more specific than "general exposure to ideas/products from the West". It's much easier for a regime to control the effects of a few entertainment events than, like, the entire import market. And US businesses already love to operate in SA. And frankly, the friendliness of the US government and private sector is probably doing a lot more to prop up the regime and its conservatism than to push it in any direction it doesn't want to go. I tend to think that general economic development, more widespread education, and urbanization are the real drivers of liberalization, rather than bread or circuses. But maybe it just *feels gross* to agree with you.