Beijing Goes for the Gold, Mike Murphy, Weekly Standard
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's infamous minister of propaganda, deftly used the Olympic Games to project an image of Nazi Germany as a gracious and patriotic country. Beijing is now vying to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, and Chinese leaders are licking their chops at the potential PR boost it would give them, reports Mike Murphy in the Weekly Standard. According to a recent Amnesty International report, there has been no progress on human rights in China since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. 'Perversely, this is being used as a selling point by backers of Beijing's bid for the 2008 games,' Murphy writes. 'They frequently cite the 1988 games in Seoul as an example of how the Olympics can provide an impetus for democratic reforms. This analogy is flawed. Democratic forces were already at play in South Korea prior to 1988. China's record on human rights offers little such hope.' A far more appropriate analogy than Seoul in 1988, Murphy argues, is Berlin in 1936. As one New York Times reporter gushed in August 1936: 'Foreigners who know Germany only from what they have seen during this pleasant fortnight can carry home only one impression. It is that this is a nation happy and prosperous almost beyond belief; that Hitler is one of the greatest, if not the greatest political leaders in the world today.'
--Leif Utne
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