Don’t call them Anthem Protests. Nobody is protesting the national anthem of America, they’re protesting the racial injustice that pervades the country at almost every level. They’re not protesting the flag either, just because they unfold a big one out on the field while they sing a song about it. And they’re not protesting the military either despite the fact that, yes, soldiers have fought and died under those banners.

Donald Trump whipped up a storm this week by going on one of his typical scapegoating rants and this time he pointed his little orange fingers at the sporting world. Just another one of his targeted libellous assaults intended to bring echoes of consent from a large number of dumb people and Russian twitter bots. He rescinded his invitation for the Golden State Warriors to visit the White House – which they weren’t even gonna do (most of that team have been already anyway) – to which LeBron James responded with almost as much fire as he brought on that legendary game seven block in the finals that time.

Side note: we all know by now that LeBron James’ legacy as one of the… three?... greatest basketball players ever is in no doubt. But he needs to be getting an equal amount of credit for all he does off the court too. There isn’t a more professional player out there. No corners are cut in getting himself in the best physical shape – can you ever remember him being seriously injured? He’s coming into his fifteenth season in the NBA and he’s never been involved in a scandal. Never cheated on his wife, never gotten into a fight at a club, nothing. He does a remarkable amount of charity work, most of which you never hear about, and plenty of that is centred upon the inner-city where he grew up. The man has a genuine heart and a courageous social conscience plus he’s a wildly successful businessman. The Decision was a little callous but that’s about the worst thing you can throw at him (and that broadcast still made over $6m in revenue and it all went to charity).

Anyway, there’s an example of how professional athletes are out there doing good in the world. Colin Kaepernick’s anthem kneels were always supposed to be controversial, that was how he intended to get the conversation started. It ended up being so divisive that it cost him a job this season – and please don’t argue it hasn’t. Is he Tom Brady 2.0? Hell no. But if Scott Tolzien, Tom Savage, Mike Glennon and a retired Jay Cutler are all opening week starters then why not Kap? This dude’s been to a Super Bowl. To think that there isn’t a backup gig for him somewhere is ridiculous – owners just don’t wanna deal with the backlash. He didn’t even get an invite to trial for a team.

President* Trump also took aim at Kaepernick at a rally in Alabama… because, yes, the elected President of the USA still feels the need to rally his supporters (on this occasion it was to help a bloke called Luther Strange campaign for a vacant Republican Senator seat… Luther Strange sounds suspiciously like a comic book villain, btw).

*(Yuck)

Agent Orange: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’”

Can’t condemn Nazis on the streets of America (in 2017!) and yet you take a knee for a song and he wants your job, mate. Kaepernick may not be in the league any longer but there have been a few players kneeling during the anthem ever since. However, when Trump took shots at the NFL he ironically unified the whole NFL in protest against him. Players were furious at the accusation that a peaceful protest should cost them their livelihood and owners were none too happy at being undermined like that.

Keep in mind that NFL owners are hesitant to cut star players who beat up women so ‘firing’ those who drop a ceremonial knee were always gonna be safe (unless you get painted red like Kaepernick did). But, far worse than that, Trump also advocated a boycott of NFL games and broadcasts… which would eat into the significant business that is the National Football League and the pockets of those owners.

This all happened in the days before week three of the 2017 NFL season. So come kickoff for each and every one of the fourteen games to be played on that NFL Sunday there were shows of solidarity. Most teams at least linked arms, often with their owners joining in too. More than a hundred players knelt, as opposed to just a few radicals in the past. The Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t even come out of the locker room for the anthems… all except for Pittsburgh lineman Alejandro Villanueva. That bloke is a military veteran and he came out and stood alone with his hand on his heart for the singing. Except that before you put labels on him, know that he later apologised for going against his teammates (regardless of his patriotic intentions) and that Villanueva has openly spoken in support of Kaepernick’s cause.

That is the tricky part. When it was just Kap and a few others, the coverage was all about the act: who knelt this week? And it was all about the implications: why do they need to disrespect the flag for it? Sure there are other ways to protest but if people don’t care then people won’t get talking. We’re still a step away from turning this conversation towards America’s treatment of blacks and minorities but now that Trump has made these protests into a common place thing it’s a step closer than what it was a week ago. Colin Kaepernick isn’t a rebel any longer… he’s a pioneer.

Obviously that wasn’t Trump’s intention, although it does help cover up the fact that several of his staff, including Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon apparently, have been corresponding with White House business through personal email accounts despite that being a major stick that he once used to beat Hillary Clinton with. However the whole thing does fit in nicely with the tactics of blind nationalism that he employed along his election campaign, hence why this re-emerged as a rally topic.

Like, why play the national anthem at all before NFL games? It’s not an international event, the NFL has a global appeal but the teams are all based in America, the players are overwhelmingly American. Singing your own national anthem before hand is like patting yourself on the back. They don’t sing God Save The Queen before Premier League games, do they? They don’t fold out enormous Australian flags across the field before NRL games, do they? Not to mention the military connection that the NFL embraces which is enormously uncomfortable when you really think about the implications of that.

It’s an unnecessary extravagance, a particularly American kind of ceremony. And being American you can guarantee there’s something more behind it. The way they treat their patriotic symbols cultivates a quasi-religious preciousness about them. It’s been widely pointed out that the partisan political system in the USA ran into a blockade last year as two very distinct sides emerged which had no intention of compromising whatsoever (a pleasant side of New Zealand’s MMP is that the minor parties get to hold the majors to account).

No bending of opinion at all. The anthem, flag and military are the same: untouchable.

Except that did you know that NFL players never used to come out of the locker room for the anthem until 2009? The NFL doesn’t do this crap outta a desire to honour their country… they do it because they’ve received millions of dollars from the Department of Defence and National Guard to encourage it, just as millions of taxpayer dollars are spent on military propaganda for these events/broadcasts. It makes sense – sports and grid iron in particular exhibit the same virtues that the military is built upon: pride, toughness, fitness, teamwork, courage, etc. Also, you know, subservience to authority. That’s probably why having players acting against the grain for their personal beliefs is a bigger deal in the NFL than it is in, say, the NBA – where individual creativity and personality is more integral to the sport.

Anyone who complains about the method of protest here is probably falling back upon those rock-solid ideals that America is Sacred somehow, despite the fact that arguing for equality is way more in line with the US constitution than otherwise empty symbolism. Demanding that they protest in a less abrasive way is just telling them not to protest – protesting is abrasive by nature. Telling them not to protest is telling them to accept the way things are.

Usually those demands come peppered with a few handfuls of ‘stick to sports!’ and ‘typically ungrateful celebrities!’ too. As if there aren’t millions of dollars being pumped into militarising the sport at the same time. As if the singing the anthem doesn’t already make it political.

Plus of course let’s not pretend that there aren’t very powerful people out there for whom it’s in their best interest, for whatever reason, to ensure that certain peoples continue to be marginalised in society… but let’s not get into deep conspiracy here.

And then why is kneeling so disrespectful anyway? People bloody loved it when Tim Tebow knelt. It’s a funny story at this stage but Colin Kaepernick began by sitting on the benches for the anthem and for the first two games of preseason nobody even noticed. By the way, yes they play the anthem during preseason games. Of course they do. It was only the third time when somebody noticed and asked him about it and then now here we are about 14 months later. The first time he knelt was alongside 49rs teammate Eric Reid for the opening game of the 2016 regular season.

Eric Reid in the NY Times: “After hours of careful consideration, and even a visit from Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and former N.F.L. player, we came to the conclusion that we should kneel, rather than sit, the next day during the anthem as a peaceful protest. We chose to kneel because it’s a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.

It baffles me that our protest is still being misconstrued as disrespectful to the country, flag and military personnel. We chose it because it’s exactly the opposite. It has always been my understanding that the brave men and women who fought and died for our country did so to ensure that we could live in a fair and free society, which includes the right to speak out in protest.”

Hilariously, the first game to feature mass kneelings this past week was a game held in London between the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars. Players knelt for the American anthem and then stood for the Great British anthem.

A day later the Arizona Cardinals hosted the Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football. These two teams had an extra day to see what everyone else did and despite Cowboys owner Jerry Jones having said earlier that no player would be protesting the anthem on his team, Jones was down on the field with all his players as they took a united knee before it. The Cowboys stood as normal for the anthem but they found a compromise that still allowed them to make a point. That shouldn’t be criticised as a cop-out - that should be praised for the power of the protest. Maybe not as praise much as for what the Seahawks did but Texas is a heavily Republican state and even still they felt the need to participate… in their own way. Jerry sure loved it.

Jones was one of a number of owners who donated significant amounts of money to Donald Trump’s campaign. There’s no doubt that his players will have forced the issue but Jones still smilingly took part – making sure the camera found him as he did.

This is all obscuring the original purpose of what Colin Kaepernick was doing and we need to keep that in mind. We need to acknowledge that players aren’t only kneeling for their right to kneel – they’re kneeling because the system in America is rigged against coloured people. Washington R*dskins owner Dan Snyder also joined in demonstrations with his team, looking less chuffed than Jerry to be fair, yet Snyder has repeatedly refused to acknowledge that his team’s name is a racial slur towards Native Americans.

But Kaepernick said from the start that he was out to start a conversation, to begin a dialogue. There’s a very real opportunity here to throw down at the hypocrisy of these owners, the same ones who are probably keeping Kap out of the league, but what does that achieve? They’re already who they are. Instead this is a chance to look at the power of what people can achieve together. The power of peaceful protest.

There may have been some rather hefty commercial interests at stake for him but any movement that can force Dan Snyder to take a step towards racial equality is one to be admired. In fact, not only admired but advocated and propagated and expanded.

Why the hell not? It’s only a song and they ain’t hurting anybody.

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