Torch relay sparks controversy due to creation as Nazi propaganda
The Vectorial Elevation lights up Vancouver’s night sky. The art installation is part of the Cultural Olympiad for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. You can program your own pattern by visiting http://www.vectorialvancouver.net
Photo by LAUREN BENN
by MAXWELL M. ADDINGTON
The Olympic torch will pass by Langara this afternoon and the college has requested that students dress in patriotic colours, cheer and celebrate to show support for our Olympic athletes.
But how many people actually know what the torch represents?
For many, the Olympic torch is a source of inspiration: a force that unites people and evokes a feeling of nationalism. This was the original intention of the torch relay, but it had a much more sinister spin to it.
In the “History of the Torch Relay” section of www.vancouver2010.com, the invention of the relay is credited to Carl Diem, “an Olympic historian and philosopher.” However, the website omits mention of the relay’s lamentable origin as a Nazi propaganda tool.
Diem, the organizer of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, expected Adolph Hitler to cancel the Games because Nazi philosophy discouraged international sport.
Diem then developed the idea of Aryan-looking runners – who would embody Hitler’s supremacist ideal of youth, strength and purity – carrying a torch, lit in the Temple of Hera on Mount Olympus in Greece, 3,187 kilometres to the Olympic stadium in Berlin.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of “public enlightenment and propaganda,” saw the relay as a way of extolling Nazi ideals of Aryan superiority and convinced Hitler to let the Games go on.
On its 13-day journey, the Olympic flame travelled through Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
During the Second World War, each of those countries were under Nazi control and Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen practised the calculated slaughter of Jews, communists, intellectuals, gays and any other threats to the “Aryan race.”
The torch was greeted at the Berlin stadium by thousands of spectators, Nazis in full military attire and massive swastika-emblazoned banners.
“I look at my fellow Canadians and other people out there cheering for [the torch], and I think, ‘These people simply have no idea what they’re doing,’” said Dr. Chris Shaw, a vocal critic of the Olympics and author of Five Ring Circus.
“I hope someone disrupts it,” he said. “I hope someone takes it away from one of the runners. I would love to see it thrown in the gutter where it belongs.”
Trucks proudly flaunt Coca-Cola and Royal Bank logos as they follow the torch through Canadian streets.
“It’s the privatization of public space,” Shaw said.
Even relay coverage on CTV – the official Olympic broadcaster – is prefaced by a quick flash of the official Olympic sponsors’ logos.
“[The media’s coverage] is embarrassing. And when there are protests, they are cast in the most negative light,” Shaw said.
The email Langara sent out recently encouraging students to dress in red and white is similar, if not identical, to the city’s Paint Vancouver Red campaign, designed to show support for the Canadian Olympic team.
“In Deep Cove, people are going to dress in green to show the opposite,” Shaw said.
Depending on your perspective, the Olympic torch is either an old Nazi propaganda tool or a symbol of national pride . Today, you can choose to silently mock eager bystanders, or put on a pair of red mittens and support our athletes.