Watch Your Mouth: Mbappé, Mao and Cancellation
It has become evident over the years that sports stars, and for that matter anyone in sports venturing an opinion perceived to be remotely controversial, is to be gagged and subject to execration, sustained derision and cyber immolation. They only exist with any legitimacy for the brands who sponsor them, the spectators who supposedly dote on them (till the inevitable accusations of treachery or poor form are made), and the administrators who play their own brand of politics with impunity as hefty salaries are drawn.
While footballers are living proof that regression of the human species, if not stasis, is a plausible fact, it is a bit rich to get riled up over throwaway remarks from such a figure as Kylian Mbappé, a man who is paid too much to kick a ball across grass. Sublime as he is when playing on a football pitch, he should be allowed to make those less than profound observations we come to expect from those who entertain spheres for a living. On the French online talk show The Bridge, the French forward made reference to a meme “that makes me laugh the most, it’s the one where there’s a video of a guy, I think it’s a Chinese dictator”. During the interview, he chuckles as the clip cuts to the said meme, involving his own face superimposed on an image of China’s own Red Emperor Mao Zedong. In Real Madrid, the Spanish club side he plays for, Mbappé is known as the “dictator”, a mirthless comment that barely warrants attention.
Warrant attention, it apparently did. It did not matter that the player never named Mao as a crazed, murderous ideologue who had singularly mangled and mauled a country, or that the superimposed image was one done by the program he was speaking to. Across the social media moronsphere, France’s football captain had apparently erred on cultural and political grounds. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun warned that words and actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people would be repudiated. The China Media Group, parent company of China’s CCTV channel, pulled broadcasts of Spain’s LaLiga matches, along with any fixtures featuring Mbappé. Chinese companies such as Dongpen Beverage (Eastroc), dairy producer Mengniu and cheesemaker Milkground briskly terminated their commercial arrangements with Mbappé, expressing “zero tolerance” for conduct that offended national sentiment.
Instead of offering a modest defence for one of their most notable players against this pettifogging, Spain’s football league body LaLiga offered a grovelling apology while throwing the player to the screeching mob. It “deeply” regretted the “offence” caused by the remarks to “Chinese fans.” Such “comments were made in a personal capacity and do not represent LALIGA. Within the scope of our institutional responsibility, we apologise on behalf of LALIGA and all its clubs.” The President, Javier Tebas, distinguished the affair with some generous crawling: “I wish to personally apologise to Chinese fans for the offence caused. I have deep respect for China, its institutions and its people, and I value the trust which, for so many years, they have supported football.”
The lucre speaks, and on these occasions, it does so in amplified volumes, especially when it comes to the Chinese market. Terrence Burns, CEO of T. Burns Sports Group, captures the amoral sentiment with cold precision: “Mbappé’s team knew, or should have known, what the true cost of Chinese brand endorsements was all about.”
Mbappé was forced, through his digital networks, to gushingly apologise and seize back terrain lost in the faecal miasma fed by social media grievance. His kowtowing took the following, unenviable form: “I apologise to everyone my words have upset.” He had “reacted to an image of himself” during an interview and had no intention causing insult. “I have deep respect for the Chinese people and their history, and I am sincerely sorry.”
Given the butcher’s bill Mao and his sanguinary fantasists left history, the apologies should be coming from elsewhere, not least those toadying courtiers who continue to minimise the significance of the death toll exacted in the name of revolution by terming them “abnormal”. Be it such sadistic experiments as the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, the mortality rates will never be entirely known. Works, however, have attempted that herculean task. Yang Jisheng, when a senior editor at Xinhua, conducted research in 12 different provincial archives that lead to Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao’s Great Famine. It charges that 36 million perished in the 1958-61 famine, which is still treated by a dismissive and paranoid establishment as a natural disaster. R. J. Rummel’s demographic and statistical forays into this field identified almost 7.5 million victims lost in the Great Leap Forward and 7.7 million from the murderous efforts of the Cultural Revolution – and these are but two stretches of lusty bloodletting.
The CCP grandees in Beijing guard against unflattering depictions of their holy leader with foamy dedication, evidenced by the recently imposed three-year prison sentence of the artist Gao Zhen, a US permanent resident who was detained in August 2024 on suspicion of “infringing upon the reputation and honour of heroes and martyrs”. The works in question, many of a satirical nature, date back a decade or more, including Mao’s Guilt.
That brands, fans and governments can come together to abominate and silence even a modest, casual expression that involves a veiled reference to one of history’s grand killers returns us back to the old premise that players must shut up and put up. They are the milch cows of an industrialised base of earnings hostile to the unapproved opinions of any sports figure who dares have them. Money in sports comes with a hefty price tag and seemingly endless lashings of hypocrisy.
November 2, 2026
Photograph Source: AustinNeil – CC BY 0
Should criminals be allowed the softening joys of favourite foods and longed for staples? The overcooked roast, the undercooked dumpling? And, for Australians, a foodstuff (hardly a food) so reprehensible it would draw disapproval from any respectable panel from UNESCO? Last month, Andre McKenchnie, a convicted murderer detained at Victoria’s Barwon Prison, attempted to test the judicial waters that not being allowed to consume the famous yeast spread of Vegemite was a denial of human rights under the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act, specifically the right to “enjoy his culture” as an Australian. The state of Victoria banned Vegemite in 2006 citing concerns that it impaired the effectiveness of narcotic detection dogs. Another concern was that its yeast properties gave the potential to be used in making alcohol.
For those unfamiliar or uninitiated, Vegemite, an Australian spread developed in the 1920s as a Vitamin B rich product and alternative to Britain’s marmite, is a frequent breakfast addition, spread on bread or crackers. Its salt-savoury taste does not recommend itself to many palates. Its unappetising nature is evidenced by its composition, which hails from being a byproduct of beer: 40% water, 13% carbohydrate, 31% protein, 5 to 6% yeast and minerals, and 8% salt. In March 2011, during a visit to Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia with US President Barack Obama, the then Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard provided guidance on how best to consume the product: “The beginner’s error with Vegemite is to put too much on a piece of bread or piece of toast. You don’t put it on like jam or anything like that. You’ve got to do it very lightly, spread it very thinly. And it’s good.” Obama thought it “horrible”.
Vegemite’s dubious gastronomic qualities have failed to impress certain food authorities outside Australia. In April last year, Leighton Walters, an Australian café owner in Toronto, Canada, was told by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to remove the Vegemite jars from his shelves. The food inspector’s reason for issuing the direction was because of the added vitamin B. “But most of it,” countered Walters, “is naturally formed through the fermentation process.” The product, much like an admired if problematic lover, had been “misunderstood”. The inspector also expressed little interest in the cultural freight Vegemite had for Australians. This even prompted a grumbling intervention from the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who could not understand why Canada was allowing the “rubbish” rival product Marmite to take precedence. A review of the decision by Health Canada subsequently “determined that the level of risk to human health from the added vitamins present in the product is low when consumed in suggested serving sizes”.
In his submission to the Victorian Supreme Court (he was representing himself), McKechnie argued that, “Without being able to consume Vegemite, I feel deprived of being able to practice by Australian culture, sad and disconnected from my family and community.” The food was associated with family and the family home. “I consider Vegemite and my consumption of Vegemite to be an integral part of the practice of my Australian culture.” Published literature on the importance of the food was also suggested to guide the court, with McKechnie having come across an article in the food studies journal Gastronomica, claiming that Vegemite “may be the best predictor of national identity of any food in the world. That is, if you eat Vegemite, you are almost certainly Australian.”
Health reasons were also marshalled for the cause, though these were eventually abandoned: McKechnie had argued that his deficiency in vitamin B1 was partially caused by his inability to access the spread. It would be an important daily source of thiamine.
McKechnie further pointed out that New South Wales permitted the consumption of Vegemite within its prison system, revealing that “less restrictive means” were “reasonably available” to satisfy the security objectives of the prison authorities. As for whether smell could be used to mask illegal drugs, a 2017 article published in a Melbourne newspaper disproved that very point, as the man referred to in the piece had failed to smuggle the masked drugs into a music festival using Vegemite. On this point, the Victorian prison authorities remained unmoved. “Any odour, such as Vegemite, which is pungent, would distract a canine from detecting the illicit drugs they are trained to detect,” testified the manager of Corrections Victoria, Kevin White. The claim that the spread could also be used as a way of accelerating the process of making “home-brew” alcohol was also reiterated.
Some criminologists failed to find much merit to the department’s reasons for the ban. Nathan Ryan of the Australian Catholic University was of the view that sniffer dogs were a well-trained, canny bunch, able to “detect traces of things in the parts per trillion. It would be very unlikely Vegemite would be able to mask contraband.”
In her judgment, Supreme Court judge Claire Harris rejected the claim by the prisoner while accepting that restrictions had been imposed. While acknowledging that the food in question “may be regarded as part of an Australian culture in that it is a food strongly and traditionally associated with people of Australian background,” the judge observed that the convict’s “cultural rights are limited primarily by the fact that he has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment.” With a disciplinarian’s stiffness in logic, the judge also expressed her difficulty accepting that feelings of sadness and isolation had been occasioned by a lack of Vegemite. These had arisen, rather, by the very fact of being in prison.
McKechnie had also failed to demonstrate that the Vegemite ban breached the state’s Corrections Act, which mandates the need to supply prisoners with food to maintain their health and wellbeing. The laws in question “did not extend to an obligation to provide to prisoners foods of cultural significance to enhance their wellbeing.” That said, his Jewish background was accounted for by virtue of a daily hot Kosher dinner, and a weekly box of Kosher foodstuffs, including bread, cheese, smallgoods and breakfast items. Prison authorities, however, can be a silly, paranoid lot.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
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