Olympics Marred by Online Hate Speech Targeting LGBTQ+ People

In a Facebook post, Kosovo sports journalist Jon Ajeti called the unbalanced fight between Khelif and Italian boxer Angela Carini, who quit in tears after only 46 seconds after being punched by Khelif, one of the “most embarrassing moments in the history of the Olympics”. Ajeti also incorrectly labelled Khelif as trans. His post received significant support from commenters, however.

Adevarul, a popular online media outlet in Romania, also propagated misinformation about Khelif, incorrectly stating that she is biologically male. “The woman with the Y chromosome is unstoppable in Paris,” declared Adevarul’s headline.

The controversy extended beyond Khelif, touching on broader issues of gender, religion and LGBTQ+ representation in the Olympics. Zagreb Pride’s Facebook page came under fire from angry commenters after it posted about the International Olympic Committee’s warning of a “witch hunt” at the expense of intersex and gender-variant competitors.

The International Olympic Committee hit back at what it said was the “misleading information” about the two female boxers, stating that both “have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women’s category, including the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, International Boxing Association (IBA) World Championships and IBA-sanctioned tournaments”. It said they were then disqualified by the IBA “without any due process”.

“The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure – especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years,” the IOC added.

Some social media users also hit back against the critics of the two boxers by sharing a picture of Khelif as a little girl. Some online media, such as Zoomer in Serbia, went further by providing more level-headed analyses that included the opinions of professionals who argued that hormonal variations such as the ones affecting Khelif could be more widespread than people imagine.

Nemanja Marinovic, editor of Zoomer, pointed out that people posting on social media “are not bound by any ethics or journalistic standards and can literally write whatever they want”. This means that the spreading of misinformation about issues is inevitable, he argued.

“This will continue until a way is found to regulate and verify the truthfulness of the information disseminated on social media and to sanction those who use it to spread disinformation and hate speech,” he said. “However, the fact that one of the most problematic Twitter users is its owner [Elon Musk] does not fill me with much optimism.”

He also pointed out that although well-known boxers and other sports figures who posted their opinions about the Khelif controversy on social media may have many followers, they aren’t necessarily experts to be trusted.

“Just because someone is good at boxing doesn’t mean they understand gender issues or the history of medieval Serbia, nor does tennis talent automatically make someone a nutritionist or virologist,” Marinovic told BIRN.

“Just because someone is good at boxing doesn’t mean they understand gender issues or the history of medieval Serbia, nor does tennis talent automatically make someone a nutritionist or virologist,” Marinovic told BIRN.

A BIRN analysis has indicated that the campaign against Khelif was driven by pro-Russian accounts previously identified as sources of disinformation, which spread false narratives about Khelif’s gender following her initial victory over her Italian opponent.

These narratives, rooted in claims from the International Boxing Association and its leader, Umar Kremlev, an ally of Vladimir Putin, suggested Khelif had an unfair advantage due to what they falsely claimed was her transgender status.

Pro-Russian accounts on X increased the presence of the topic on the Elon Musk-owned social network, the Associated Press reported, so that, according to PeakMetrics’ analysis, the boxer’s name appeared tens of thousands of times within just 60 minutes.

In the end, Khelif won a gold medal at the Games. On Saturday, she also filed a formal legal complaint to the Paris prosecutor’s office for combating online hate speech, alleging “aggravated cyber-harassment”, according to her lawyer Nabil Boudi.

Khelif was not the only athlete at the centre of gender-related ‘culture wars’ controversies around the Games. Klix website in Bosnia published an article questioning the identity of American shot putter Raven Saunders, who uses the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’. Saunders competed at the Olympic Games in the women’s category, but according to Klix, she does not want to be referred to as a woman. The title of the article declared: “There is no end in sight to the oddities related to the Olympic Games in Paris.”

Meanwhile manipulated photographs of US swimmer Lia Thomas were widely shared by Turkish news outlets on X (formerly Twitter), falsely claiming that she was disqualified from the women’s swimming competition at the Paris Olympics for an unspecified reason. In reality, Thomas, a transsexual swimmer, did not compete at the 2024 Games.

Marinovic argued that these controversies highlight a lack of knowledge and expertise among journalists as well as social media users.

“With the example of the boxer from Algeria, both in our country [Serbia] and in the world, we see that the professional media also need training in fact-checking, because the lies they published could be checked with two clicks,” he said.

“The factual situation is that narrowly specialised newsrooms, such as sports ones, are not sensitised to many other social issues and do not often appear as a topic for them – but even then, the standards of the profession dictate that you invite experts to comment and get informed, and not write whatever comes to your mind first.”

Marinovic also argued that news website are financially capitalising on hate speech and ‘culture wars’ disputes by reporting controversial comments in order to boost their online readership numbers.

“The problem is that the media are also aware that political tensions, as well as minority issues, are hot topics that polarise the public and bring shares and clicks – so they use these incidents as a justification to transfer hate speech from the stands to the front pages, justifying it by ‘quoting’ what was chanted in the [stadium] stands, or by ‘transmitting the reactions’ of various experts and non-experts, full of hate speech, without any censorship,” he said.

“Fake news and hate speech are profitable because even when they lead to legal punishment, which is rare, it is so small compared to the profit that the economic calculation is very clear.”

Kristina Ljevak Bajramovic, a journalist writing for non-profit Bosnian media with a focus on women and LGBTQ+ rights, pointed out that major events also provide a bigger platform for people with negative agendas.

“When something attracts additional attention, such as the Olympics, then those who want to spread harmful narratives know that they will have a larger audience and that their ‘effort’ will be more visible,” Ljevak Bajramovic told BIRN.

Opening ceremony – art or blasphemy?

The Olympics opening ceremony, masterminded by artistic director Thomas Jolly as a colourful tableau of performances along the River Seine, provided the first major online controversy at the Paris Games. The ceremony praised by some social media users as a daring and colourful spectacle, but criticised by others as a blasphemous insult to Christians.

The moment that attracted the most negative reactions was a scene that seemed to evoke Leonardo da Vinci’s painting ‘The Last Supper’, including a transgender model and drag queens. Jolly explained that the scene was actually intended to represent the mythical Greek ‘Feast of Dionysus’, but this did not quell devout Christians’ anger. The row sparked a major outburst of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric online.

An article by Serbian Orthodox Church representative Darko Ristov Djogo, published by online media outlet IN4S, called the opening ceremony “satanic” and “scandalous”. Djogo accused the event of mocking Christian symbols and argued that it could actually harm the LGBTQ+ population by playing with religion. 

In another article on the IN4S site, the author labelled the ceremony  as a “gay pride” event, describing it as “boring” and “banal”, and also saying it could contribute to the stigmatisation of LGBTQ+ people. The article provoked a series of comments from readers using offensive language about gay people while also criticising events like the Eurovision Song Contest for supposedly promoting “satanism”.

The website of Serbian tabloid Kurir also raised the question of whether French singer Philippe Katerine, who played the Greek god Dionysus in the feast scene, was mocking and belittling religion, citing similar “satanism” allegations that were posted on social media.

Another Serbian tabloid, Informer, echoed this rhetoric in an online article. “Satanism is no longer hidden; under the guise of democracy, even children are being exploited. Eurovision has shown a disastrous face, and the Olympic Games have taken it three steps further. Da Vinci’s painting, ‘The Last Supper’, has been mocked in the most brutal way,” Informer raged.

Raven Saunders of the US competes in the Women’s Shot Put final at the Stade de France stadium on August 9. Photo: EPA-EFE/CHRISTIAN BRUNA

Meanwhile on Facebook, the Croatian Catholic media outlet God is Here published incorrect information that Christians had staged a gathering in the centre of Paris to respond to the organisers of the Olympic Games by “praising God”.

The article published by God is Here, entitled “VIDEO: Thousands of Christians in the centre of Paris praise Jesus with a song at the top of their voices”, included a video that was widely shared on social networks. 

However, the photo from the article was taken in January 2024, when thousands of French citizens were protesting against a rigorous immigration law, while the video was made on May 25, more than two months before the start of the Olympics, during a gathering of Christians at an event called the ‘March for Jesus’.

Albanian online media outlet JOQ posted photos from the opening event of the Games with a title stating: “The French apologise for the controversial opening ceremony.” The story was based on the Paris authorities’ apology for any offence caused to Christians by the unintentional ‘Last Supper’ parody. But the JOQ article in turn sparked dozens of hate speech comments and insults directed at French people.

Controversial influencer Andrew Tate, who has been charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania, also waded into the ceremony row. On July 27, Tate announced on X that he would protest in front of Bucharest’s French Embassy against what he said was the mocking of Jesus during the opening ceremony. 

The following day, he posted a video on X, shot at the protest, in which he was seen speaking to passers-by. “Guys, you are Christians. You can’t allow them to desecrate something as important as ‘The Last Supper’ with transsexuals and little children. Paedophilia,” Tate told protesters outside the French embassy. Tate was accompanied by his brother Tristan and their protest attracted widespread coverage from online media.

The Romanian Orthodox Church’s spokesperson Adrian Agachi meanwhile called the Olympics opening ceremony “demonic”, writing on Facebook that the so-called ‘Last Supper’ moment was an advertisement for “woke ideology”. 

In an indication of how aggressive online rhetoric can have potentially violent consequences, opening ceremony director Thomas Jolly filed complaints to the French police after the event, saying he had received death threats as well as insults.

French President Emmanual Macron expressed anger about the online persecution of Jolly and attacks on artistic freedom. “I am outraged and sad,” Macron said. “Nothing justifies threats against an artist.”

Bosnian journalist Ljevak Bajramovic noted however that the online aggression around the Olympic Games has simply reflected what is happening in everyday life.

“Not a single social event, not even the Olympic Games themselves, despite the noble mission of their initiation, can be isolated from social reality,” she said.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was covered by Elma Selimovic, Aida Trepanic and Sara Velaga Drek, North Macedonia by Bojan Stojkovski and Goce Trpkovski, Croatia by Katarina Gulan, Kosovo by Flaka Fazlija, Turkey by Hamdi Firat Buyuk, Serbia by Tijana Uzelac and Kalina Simic, Montenegro by Djurdja Radulovic, Romania by Adina Florea, Albania by Nensi Bogdani, Hungary by Akos Keller-Alant.