The hype is that the Olympic Games are supposed to unite people all over the world. The reality is the opposite. Now more than ever, they are being used to build patriotism as the rivalry between the imperialists—which will inevitably lead to World War III—is sharpening.
Part of the long term preparations for this inevitable clash is demonizing their enemies, while building patriotism. The US media has led a drumbeat of attacks on Russia. The day before the Olympics started, the NY Times editorialized against Putin and Russia for being "undemocratic." They hypocritically attacked the "repression, the cruel new anti-gay and blasphemy laws and the corrupt legal system…in which political dissidents are sentenced to lengthy terms on false charges."
US imperialists, however, carry out similar and more vicious attacks against the world's workers, including workers in the US! What about the millions they slaughtered and maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the drone attacks that murder civilians from Yemen to Somalia to Pakistan, the jailing of over 2.5 million men and women, 70% of whom are black and latino, and Obama's recordbreaking mass deportations?

The fight over the Ukraine
Behind the US bosses' use of the Olympics to demonize Russia are the efforts of US bosses and their European allies to wrest the Ukraine from the Russian imperialists. This is a decades-long ongoing struggle with its ups and down for both the US and Russia.
After the Orange Revolution, 2004-2005, the US bosses and allies thought the Ukraine was in their pockets. The Russians, however, gained the upper hand again when their man Yanukovych was elected in 2010.
The US has invested over $5 billion to "democratize" the Ukraine. They hope the current unrest will usher in another Orange Revolution. It is part of their continuing attempt to encircle Russia, and reduce it to a second rate regional power. In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski, then a major architect of US foreign policy, wrote, "Without the Ukraine, Russia ceases to be empire. Ukraine is the Western outpost to prevent the recreation of the Soviet Union (read: the Russian empire)."
Talking about the Ukraine crisis, US Assistant Secretary of State Nuland was taped in a phone conversation saying "F**k the EU." This tape exposed the US bosses' dirty tricks. "The essential revelation was that high-slevel US officials were plotting to 'midwife' a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—a coup," said Prof. Stephen F. Cohen in The Nation.
It also revealed the US bosses' frustration with the German bosses who, while apparently supporting one of the leaders of the Ukrainian protests against Yanukovych, are actually only half-heartedly supporting the protests. The German bosses resent the US bosses' "heavy pressure to engage in actions the Germans want to be left out of, while the Russians see the Americans as a threat to their interests, and there are politicomilitary interests that Germany and Russia have in common." (Stratfor, 3/12/12)
Russia for its part is also using the Olympics to build patriotism to further its imperialist goals. The opening ceremony was a tribute to imperial Russia of the past and to the grand aspirations of Russian imperialists of today to become a dominant, if not the dominant, imperialist power.
Putin and the Russian bosses squandered over $50 billion to showcase Russia's imperial resurrection, while Russian workers face a life of hardship. Their exploitation and impoverishment can only intensify as Putin has pledged to modernize 70% of Russia's armed forces by 2020. War can't be too far beyond the horizon.
The ideology of the Olympics, like that of capitalism itself, is based on competition and nationalism to win youth and workers to fight for one imperialist or another. This is the deadly trap that ensnared some of the Ukraine protesters who are fighting and dying for "democracy." Instead they need to join the fight for communism.
Workers worldwide, however, have the same interests: to get rid of capitalism and build a world which meets our needs. Worldwide, we need to mobilize to get rid of capitalism-imperialism with communist revolution.
We need a society based on cooperation and collectivity. In communism we won't have imperialism, nations or the Olympics. We won't encourage competition, but instead collectivity in sports and everything else in a world without borders. Sports will be encouraged for everyone— for health, fun, and camaraderie, not for money, nationalism or world domination.