Ljubodrag Simonović

Ljubodrag "Duci" Simonović (Serbian Cyrillic: Љубодраг Симоновић; born 10 January 1949 in Kraljevo) is a Serbian retired basketball player. He played with Red Star Belgrade, with which he won two National Championships, three National Cups and one Saporta Cup. Simonović was considered the best player of the world in 1970. From 1976 to 1978, he played for 1. FC 01 Bamberg in the German Basketball Bundesliga.

Ljubodrag Simonović played on the Yugoslav national basketball team that won the 1970 FIBA World Championship, as well as the European "all-star" team.

1972 Summer Olympics

The Yugoslav national team arrived to Munich as official world champions from Ljubljana 1970 still hoping to win one of the medals though the team was quite changed. The victory over Italy 85-78 at the beginning of the tournament approved the expectations, but in the second round, the Yugoslav team was defeated by Puerto Rico.

Note on the author

Ljubodrag Duci Simonovic (62), from Belgrade (Serbia), is a former member of the Yugoslav national basketball team, which won the first place at the World Championship in 1970 (Ljubljana), and of the European "all-stars" team. He left the Munich Olympic Games (1972) in protest against the covering - by FIBA, IOC and Yugoslav Olympic leadership - of the proved doping of the Puerto Rican basketball team, and was consequently thrown out of the national team. Played two years in German Bundesliga and scored the record of the league (with 55 points in one game and 828 points in one season - 1976/1977).

The author has got a MA degree in law and a PhD in philosophy. He has published the following books: ”Rebellion of Robots”, “Professionalism or Socialism”, ”Olympic Deception of the ‘divine baron’ – Pierre de Coubertin”, ”Sport, Capitalism, Destruction”, “Olympism and the New World Order” (Russian), “Philosophy of Olympism” (English), “A New World is Possible” (English) and “Rise up, Worker!”. He is also the author of the movie "Olympic Flame" (translated in English, German, Russian, Spanish and French - DVD version).

The author’s principal position is: “The final stage of a mortal combat between mankind and capitalism is in progress. A specificity of capitalism is that, in contrast to "classical" barbarism (which is of destructive, murderous and plundering nature), it annihilates life by creating a "new world" – a "technical civilization" and an adequate, dehumanized and denaturalized man. (…) By destroying the natural environment capitalism creates increasingly extreme climatic conditions in which man is struggling harder and harder to survive – and creates artificial living conditions accessible solely to the richest layer of population, which cause definitive degeneration of man as a natural being. "Humanization of life" is being limited to the creation of micro-climatic conditions, of special capitalistic incubators – completely commercialized artificial living conditions to which degenerated people are appropriate. (…)

The most dramatic truth is: capitalism can survive the death of man as a human and biological being. For capitalism a “traditional man” is merely a temporary means of its own reproduction. "Consumer-man" represents a transitional phase in the capitalism-caused process of mutation of man towards the "highest" form of capitalistic man: a robot-man. "Terminators" and other robotized freaks which are products of the Hollywood entertainment industry which creates a "vision of the future" degenerated in a capitalist manner, incarnate creative powers, alienated from man, which become vehicles for destruction of man and life. A new "super race" of robotized humanoids is being created, which should clash with "traditional mankind", meaning with people capable of loving, thinking, daydreaming, fighting for freedom and survival – and impose their rule over the Earth. Instead of a new world, a “new man” is being created – who has been reduced to a level of humanity which cannot jeopardize the ruling order.”

For Simonovic, „Olympism is the first global positivistic religion, and the sportivization of society (world) is the most important form of integration of the working people into the spiritual orbit of capitalism and for their pacification (depolitization)“.

Simonovic’s work applies the same method used in Marx's criricism of religion; however, Marx’s criticism of religion is the „criticism of the valley of tears“, whose fantastic aureole is religion, while the criticism of modern Olympic paganism is the criticism of the capitalist valley of death, whose spectacular aureole is Olympism.

For author, „modern Olympic paganism is the form in which capitalism wiped out Christianity (as well as other religions) and became the chief ideological instrument for integrating people into the spiritual orbit of capitalism. The calendar of leading sports manifestations assumed the role of religious calendars and became a spiritual pivot, while the stadium became the most important cult venue of the modern world. Sport is not only an "ideological curtain concealing the real evil" (Adorno), it is the bourgeois means of erasing the cultural traces of mankind and destroying the emancipatory heritage of civil society. The basic aim of modern Olympism is not to transform the world into a cultural community of nations, but to turn it into a "civilized" menagerie. Stadiums have become modern concentration camps in which the hope of a better world is being destroyed and modern hordes of barbarians are being generated.“

At the end, Simonovic comes to the next conclusion: „Sport symbolizes the end of a civilization based on the Social Darwinist doctrine and the absolutized principle of performance: the principle of "competition" has become the principle of domination, while the principle of "progress" has become the principle of destruction. From the ideology of an emerging and developing capitalist society, Olympism has turned into the ideology of a disintegrating capitalist society, whose accumulated destructive power threatens mankind with destruction. Sports fields are dominated not by a visionary, but by an apocalyptic spirit. Sport is the most efficient way of drawing man into the horrible whirl of self-destructive madness, created by the capitalist "progress", similarly to the self-destructive mania of the ancient states (polis) that led to the decline of the Hellenic world. It destroys not only the conscious of the deadly consequences of further development of capitalism, but also the conscious of the objective possibilities of its overcoming and of realizing the guiding principle of the French Revolution. In view of the horrible scale of world destruction, it can be said that Olympism is the hood that the executioner has pulled over the head of mankind before applying his axe. The hour has struck: either mankind will destroy capitalism, or capitalism will destroy mankind.“

External links

• Olympic results at sports-reference.com
• [1]
• [2]

Ljubodrag Simonović

Medal record
FIBA World Championship
	1970 Yugoslavia	Yugoslavia
Eurobasket
	1969	Yugoslavia
	1971	Yugoslavia