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In 2016, National Football League (NFL) quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a high-profile protest of police brutality and mass incarceration that prompted outrage among far-right communities and media. Given the prominence and significance of Kaepernick’s protest, it is vital to study the far-right social media backlash that propelled boycotts of the NFL, drove news cycles, and positioned celebrity athletes as too privileged to protest oppression. My research is grounded in celebrity studies theory, sport media scholarship, and critical race theory. In this article, I establish the history of systemic racism in the United States that lingers in the microcosm of the NFL and sports media’s racist treatment of players; I then explore scholarship on celebrity, race, and power that provide a foundation for analyzing Kaepernick’s protest and the effort to desecrate his celebrity. Analysis of online far-right communities shows that Kaepernick functions as a target for collective far-right outrage, a focal point around which commenters could explore and define their common values, grievances, and identities.

The NIKE(RED) Lace Up, Save Lives campaign debuted during the 2010 FIFA World Cup and invoked multiple discourses of nationalism, global citizenship, and sport to promote conscious consumerism. By co‐opting symbolism of Africa's first World Cup, NIKE(RED) sold activist identities through myths of postracial harmony. The global appeal of NIKE(RED) relied upon support from soccer superstars who endorsed consumerism as cool. We argue that NIKE(RED) and the subsequent INSPI(RED) partnership exemplify commodity activism and reproduce colonial stereotypes of powerful Western consumers acting as saviors in the Third World. We critically examine news, Web sites, grassroots soccer organizations, and advertisements from the United States, UK, and Italy to address the multimedia global nature of NIKE(RED) and grassroots soccer activism.

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