EQUALITY, EQUALITY EVERYWHERE, BUT NOT A DROP TO DRINK

Orwellian corporate slogan, Odaiba, Tokyo.

by Colin Liddell

Recently I ventured on foot across the ominously named "Rainbow Bridge," which spans Tokyo Bay, to visit the artificially created land of Odaiba.

When Tokyo holds the Olympics in 2020, this is the area that will host the athletes' village as well as many of the other facilities and venues. (The main stadium will be in a more centrally located area.)

I say ominously-named, because "rainbow," rather than pleasant associations of sunshine after rain or pots of gold left by leprechauns, now has more disturbing ideological connotations; whether it is the "Rainbow Nation" of South Africa, with its genocidal tendencies, or the rainbow flag used to promote the deconstruction of gender roles in the West and the promotion of mass, multi-partner ass-fuckery.

But while Japan keeps a tight watch on its borders – at least for now – the nation and its culture occasionally pay lip service to the globalized Western (ab)norms now symbolized by the borderless gradations of the chromatic spectrum.

One example is the building of the new Olympic stadium. Unlike the last Olympics held here in 1964, when the architect Kenzo Tange gave the Olympic architecture a distinctly Japanese flavour with his stunning Yoyogi Olympic Gymnasium, this time the main project, the new Olympic stadium, was meekly handed over to the "architectress" Zaha Hadid. This was mainly due to the fact that, as a Muslim and a woman, her appointment was an easy way for Japan to signal its "inclusiveness," both along gender and racio-religious lines.

Zaha Hadid's Olympic stadium design.

The decision, however, has not been without controversy. Local architects have been up in arms, criticizing the poor quality of Hadid's design, writing articles, organizing petitions, and demanding changes. One eminent architect, Arata Isozaki, the author of the highly recommended Japan-ness in Architecture, even compared Hadid's design to:

"a dull, slow form, like a turtle waiting for Japan to sink so that it can swim away."

As the future site of much of the Olympics, the Odaiba area is strongly infused with this cosmopolitan spirit, although, in the case of Japan, such supra-nationalist elements often take on a peculiarly American form: Odaiba is thus also home to a scaled-down version of the Statue of Liberty and several large shopping malls.

It was no surprise, then, that it was here that I encountered the poster shown at the top, from sportswear company Adidas, with its image of "undiscriminating," interracial love – although interestingly not featuring a Japanese person – and its quaintly Orwellian slogan of "Equality is Love."

Apparently, this is the result of Adidas handing over their advertising budget to the Brown hip-hop musician Pharrel Williams, whose modest talents, just like those of Zaha Hadid, are no doubt supplemented by a large backroom of subservient Whites who do all the donkey work to realize the "divine vision" of the "magical non-White." 

So what has Williams and his team come up with? A quote from the blithely race-blind Fashionista:

"As we'd expect from the man who brought us the multi-ethnic, multi-everyone and totally, well, happy Happy video, Williams's ad campaign for Adidas is full of hope and elation. With the tag-lines 'Equality is Acceptance,' 'Equality is Love' and 'Equality is Strength,' the campaign features colorfully bold and striking photos shot by young photographer Ryan McGinley. There are close-ups of gleeful millennials of all backgrounds, plus aerial shots of a diverse group of exuberant and pretty young people, arms around each other and standing in an equal sign formation. It's refreshing to see Williams and Adidas work together to promote social awareness — as the singer told GQ in March, 'I'm the most indiscriminate person that there is! I believe in equality."

Of course, by equality you can be sure that he does not mean sharing his massive fortune – and the same can be said for his employers. Equality, as the readers of Alternative Right already know, is code for the atomization of human societies for the short-term economic convenience of giant parasitical corporations. It may even be part of a grander plan of mass miscegenation aimed at creating the future "mono-human" or mono-sapien, an interchangeable, cross-bred creature with no roots, identity, or culture, and so susceptible to easy control by elites.

Whether this is the case or not, the campaign clearly aims to capitalize on the brainwashing that has already been conducted on millennials, who are the target audience. Its slogans lazily rehash the PC garbage that has been pumped into millennial brains via education and mass entertainment since birth.

But where is the equality in such implicit subservience?

Also, what has all this wonderful equality got to do with sport itself? Adidas is, after all, a sportswear company. The essence of sport, even in these culturally egalitarian times, is the exact antithesis of equality.

Races are not held so that all the runners can break the tape simultaneously, hand-in-hand. Nor are the Olympic Games held so that gold medals for equality can be handed out equally to everyone. Quite obviously inequality is the essence of sport, and the very thing that makes it interesting. Without it, sport would be boring, spectatorless, and non-existant. And without sport a company like Adidas would never have existed.

Logic exposes some interesting absurdities in Adidas's dippy slogans: if love really is equality, inequality must be hate; and, if the essence of sport is inequality, then sport too must be hate, meaning that sportswear companies are implicated. It follows quite logically, therefore, that Adidas must also be hate.

Of course, the premise of this syllogism is just a moronic advertising slogan designed to exploit the feeble-mindedness and brainwashing of millennials. Pushed too far, it would turn Adidas from a company specializing in "nasty, competitive" sportswear into just another casual clothes company, promoting its inclusivist vision of "equality" on the backs of a semi-slave labour force in Third World sweatshops – yet another form of inequality!

Adidas is really serious about its commitment to diversity and equality, obviously.

Without the cost advantage created by global inequality and low wages overseas, such fashion labels would have to give up their First World, mass market, "egalitarian" approach, and develop a more hierarchical model, prioritizing richer consumers. The apparent egalitarianism of mass brands in the First World stands squarely on the shoulders of global in-egalitarianism.

Manipulating the masses with myths of equality that global corporations themselves ignore is not equality; reducing humanity to a post-racial soup for the convenience of global elites is not equality; relying on sweat shop labour in the Third World to maintain First World market share is not equality; and sport is not equality. How strange, then, this affectation for equality! To paraphrase “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” it's very much a case of "equality, equality everywhere, but not a drop to drink."

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Affirmative Right and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here. He is also featured in Arktos's collection A Fair Hearing: The Alt-Right in the Words of Its Members and Leaders.