Cancelling Djokovic is easy, but how far do you take it from there?

The news that Novak Djokovic had been denied entry to Australia for not being vaccinated caused a bit of a stir in my psyche this week. His anti-vax stance is wrong, dangerous and potentially life-threatening for him and his fans, of which I was one until this week.

I immediately resolved to cancel him from my life. No longer will he occupy the exalted position of Hagen’s Favourite Tennis Player. Twenty-odd Grand Slams notwithstanding, someone must have impeccable politics to be a hero of mine!

I run a programme of ethical hero worship and brand adoration here in my life.

Of course, my dismissal of Novak Djokovic for anti-vaxxing opened up a can of worms. If I was going to demand the most stratospheric ethical standards from every one of my personal icons, I was going to have to do a serious audit of my brand affiliations.

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First to check would probably have to be my favourite soccer team, Chelsea Football Club, famously owned by Russian-Lithuanian-Israeli-Portuguese billionaire Roman Abramovich. A cursory enquiry into his activities showed that one of his companies is a funder of Israeli settlement activities in the occupied areas of Palestine.

As a supporter of the sovereign rights of the Palestinian state, this did not sit well with me at all.

I decided to look into F1, which I have rather more than a passing interest in.

Some basic googling revealed motorsport is riven with sportswashing by businesses, industries and countries guilty of massive human-rights abuses, not least Saudi Arabia, China, Russia and Turkey.

Once we started down that road, I had to admit that probably the greatest beneficiary of sportswashing in all history has been the United States, famous for imperialist meddling, and support for murderous dictators across the world. American sports such as the NBA, NFL, NHL, Nascar and X-Games have obviously helped to legitimise the regime across the planet.

Once you accept that, then we must also accept that music-washing is a thing, and that American music styles like rock ‘n roll, soul, R&B, blues and disco also serve to brainwash us into turning a blind eye to the excesses of America’s brutal military world domination.

And of course, American technology may have served a similar purpose. Is tech-washing a thing? Does being on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, using devices like iPhones, MacBooks, Beats By Dre and Zippo lighters encourage us to overlook the fact that the USA occupied Afghanistan and Iraq for around 20 years, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives?

If I psychically disinvested from all of these politically dubious affiliations, would there be anything left for me to support with a clear conscience, I wondered?

Perhaps not. Perhaps not.

It’s rather challenging to lead a life that is 100% politically correct, and it’s probably worth accepting at the outset that despite one’s declared political ideals, you’re still going to be a bit of a hypocrite about it, whether you know it or not.

Perhaps performing a political cleanse of one’s interests needs to be a gradual process. A cold-turkey approach would possibly mean withdrawing from much of modern life.

So we’ll start gradually. I will support Rafael Nadal in Melbourne, and instead of the music of American imperialism, I will investigate the funk and reggae music from the country of Belize.

It’s surprisingly good. You should check it out. Try the album Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil-up. Funky, guilt-free listening!