The evil of the Olympics
Apr 10 '08
The Bottom Line Where's Leni Riefenstahl when you need her?
The Beijing Olympics have gotten off to a rocky start as a result of the numerous protests, in city after city, from people determined to disrupt the Olympic torch relay and to bring the subject of Chinese oppression in general and Chinese oppression of Tibet in particular.
Naturally, along with the protests are the criticisms of the protest. I’ve heard a number of commentators on CBC Radio express their disapproval of the protesters’ actions toward the unifying spirit of the Olympics. Former Canadian Olympic Committee president Dick Pound is quoted on the CBC.ca website as saying “trying to snuff out the symbol of international peace ... is counterproductive and off message.” (Emphasis mine)
International peace? Adolf Hitler was many things, but the creator of a symbol of international peace he was not.
Read that last sentence again. The Olympic torch relay wasn’t created in the spirit of international cooperation. It was created by the Nazi Party as part of its big propaganda machine.
Leni Riefenstahl, the famous filmmaker who had already filmed a major Nazi rally which became Triumph of the Will, was also on board to film the 1936 Berlin Olympics (Olympia). As part of the filming, a number of things were cooked up in the hopes of stoking national pride and of tying Olympic ideals with Nazi ideals. While the concept of the Olympic flame had existed prior to Hitler, the torch relay was a grandiose touch contrived solely for the Riefenstahl production. What better propaganda tool than to have members of Hitler’s “Aryan race” (the only Germans allowed to compete in the games) make the trek from ancient Greece, across Europe (which Hitler would attempt to conquer) and back to the motherland?
Now, I’ve known for years about Riefenstahl’s works. I’ve wanted to see the movies, but always harboured some weird resistance to watching movies which were created to push Nazism. Don’t ask me why, since I’ve watched all sorts of Communist-era Soviet films that were often made for equally propagandistic purposes and yet I’ve never felt like scum afterwards.
Oddly, it was only relatively recently when I hit on the knowledge that the torch relay itself was an invention specifically for the film. In any case, knowing this only makes the whole Beijing experience a well of sick comedy. An oppressive nation responsible for the deaths of many people for the crime of not being utter slaves to its ideology, and yet a nation with the privilege of hosting an event hyped as apolitical, but which in reality is the opposite. And once the Olympics is over, the nation will go back to its oppression and killing. Where have we heard this one before?
We already know all the past Olympic scandals, with athletes cheating by using performance-enhancing drugs. This Chinese debacle just clinches it. Why should we support an event that takes place in a world where cheating is rampant, where appeasement to corrupt and evil nations is encouraged, where those same corrupt and evil nations are somehow able to create “ancient traditions” out of whole cloth, where those fraudulent inventions are cooked up to distract people while the creators cook up a plan to throw the Jews into the ovens?
What goes around comes around.
As far as I’m concerned, the protests look good on these guys. They deserve everything they get, which isn’t enough.
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Member: David Macdonald
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Alice, a story in nine parts, posted on Sept 24, 2008 - http://www.epinions.com/content_5241348228
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