Apparently from a real protest against the Beijing olympics, someone holding up a sign that says "Would we have allowed Nazi Germany to host the olympics?" Well, yes, we did. Thank you for playing.
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Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)
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An Amusing Picture of Ignorance
Posted on: May 10, 2008 9:23 AM, by Ed Brayton
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Comments
Could this have been the same sign painter who insisted on making English the "offical" language?
Posted by: Zeno | May 10, 2008 9:54 AM
Who will be our Jesse Owens? Are there any Tibetan exiles or other victims of Chinese oppression who are likely to make Beijing sweat?
Posted by: freelunch | May 10, 2008 10:26 AM
Uh, kids, "we" didn't allow the Nazis to host the Olympics. But we apparently didn't learn from "their" mistake. Or given Jesse's result, the mistake will be not using this opportunity to the advantage of Tibet.
Posted by: TomDunlap | May 10, 2008 10:36 AM
Well, I guess now we know who slept through history class. Not only does that person not know that Nazi Germany did indeed host the Olympics, they are also under the mistaken impression that "we" (presumably meaning the US) gets to tell the rest of the world what to do.
Posted by: Elaine | May 10, 2008 10:51 AM
I think that qualifies as the most stupid thing that I have heard/seen/read this year.
Posted by: Thony C. | May 10, 2008 11:01 AM
I would like to think that this person is being facetious. I would like to think that...
Posted by: Aaron Golas | May 10, 2008 11:04 AM
What's all that stuff at the top of the sign? It kind of looks like money or playing cards. Have they added poker as an Olympic sport?
Posted by: Abby Normal | May 10, 2008 11:19 AM
That has to be some sort of joke.
Posted by: G. Shelley | May 10, 2008 11:24 AM
Jesse Owens didn't make them sweat. The Nazis cleaned up at that Olympics, getting more gold silver and bronze than any other nation.
In fact, the Owens myth is one of the most self-serving around. Owens went from a country in which he wasn't allowed to use the same bathrooms and hotel rooms as everyone else to one in which he could, and could also walk around freely, was regularly asked for autographs, and got what he described as some of the best cheers of his entire career. When he got back to the US, he was made to ride the freight elevator to get to his own reception because African Americans weren't allowed in the main one.
And while Hitler didn't shake his hand, Hitler didn't shake anyone's hand after the first day, when he congratulated only the German athletes and was told off by the Olympic committee (he may have snubbed another black athlete on that day though). Owens, however, recounts that Hitler at least waved at him on the field, and he waved back. It was our own President, Roosevelt, who didn't specifically shake his hand or, as Owens said, even send him a telegram to congratulate him.
None of this is to excuse the Nazis or Germans of racism, but the fact is, people tell the Owens story as if it was Americas shinning moment of moral victory against the racist Nazis, when in fact Americans proved far more racist in this case than even the Nazis did. The entire affair should be remembered as an moral embarrassment to the US, not a moral victory.
Posted by: Bad | May 10, 2008 11:54 AM
It's probably worth pointing out that the decision to have Berlin play host to the Olympic Games was made in April 1931, well over a year before Hitler and the Nazi Party gained power in the German government.
Posted by: Mike G | May 10, 2008 1:13 PM
Bad - And I'm sure if Jesse Owens had been a Jew the Nazis would have let him ride any old elevator he liked, right? -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 10, 2008 1:27 PM
Westboro Baptist Church to picket the Beijing Olympics against a "godless, filthy, sodomite China"
Posted by: Tegumai Bopsulai, FCD | May 10, 2008 1:34 PM
I'm loving this picture, but the difference in the depth of the black after "Would we have allowed" is raising a Photoshop red flag.
Posted by: FishyFred | May 10, 2008 1:40 PM
Is dirt in North America cleaner the dirt in China? How do imaginary geographic constructions have any kind of sex, let alone anal sex?
The mind boggles. -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 10, 2008 2:10 PM
Actually, yes. The Nazi persecution of Jews did not take the form of Jim Crow. Jews were harassed simply for being Jews, gradually excluded from the professions, government, and academia, and eventually rounded up, deported, and murdered, but there were never separate bathrooms, elevators, drinking fountains, schools or other facilities for Jews
and Gentiles.
Posted by: Bill Poser | May 10, 2008 3:19 PM
Bill - Are you sure? I am pretty sure there was, but I could be wrong. -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 10, 2008 3:22 PM
If memory serves (I majored in Modern European History, though I practice modern American labour and industrial history), Jews were excluded from some public areas -- zoos, parks, etc. As far as creating separate ("but equal") accomodations for the German Jews, that was not done. Instead, Jews were systematically excluded from public positions -- teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers, midwives, pharmacists, and others lost, under law, the right to practice.
The comparison of the Nuremburg Laws and the Jim Crow laws of the American South is (and this is a personal opinion (though I did defend in an undergraduate paper)), if not an invalid comparrison, at least a very problematical one. The Jim Crow laws were designed to keep blacks in a subservient position through denial of educational and other public facilities. The Nuremburg Laws were an attempt to, effectively, outlaw Jews in Germany. As an example, while American Blacks were not denied the right to practice their religion, through the outlawing of 'religious animal sacrifices', Kosher food was made unlawful. Jim Crow created and maintained a servant class. The Nuremburg Laws did not even attempt that.
Both sets of laws were inhuman, immoral, and pretty damned disgusting. I don't seek to minimize the evil nature of either.
Sorry for the long post. It's an occupational hazard.
Posted by: (((Billy))) | May 10, 2008 3:41 PM
The IOC is just an old-boys network. It chooses its own members. It is a private organization that has no democratic control. National Olympic committees do not represent the people of their countries. There is no reason for regularly spending hundreds of millions of dollars for the benefit of this non-representative closed corporation.
The IOC has been run by such luminaries as far right asshole Avery Brundage and Franquist Saramanch, both for about 20 years. Why anyone pays any attention to these "games" is beyond me. The whole event is ridiculous.
Posted by: bernarda | May 10, 2008 4:30 PM
"Westboro Baptist Church to picket the Beijing Olympics against a "godless, filthy, sodomite China"
Man, that is priceless! They say they are going to pull this stunt in China, outside a sports stadium. (!)
I double dare them to do it.
Maybe they will get the chance to evangelize from the inside of a Chinese prison.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | May 10, 2008 5:02 PM
Oh my god. What kind of a sweet, sweet- I mean terrible infraction of justice if they were to be imprisoned in China.
(LOL. Ok. I'd laugh my ass off, I admit it.)
Posted by: Leni | May 10, 2008 5:31 PM
Well, if Fred did have the stones to go to China (not), it would give the Chinese government a new fondness for the Falun Gong cult.
Posted by: Graculus | May 10, 2008 6:38 PM
LOL, that picture would make a good addition to the FAIL meme.
Posted by: NP | May 10, 2008 6:49 PM
Where'd you find that priceless photo?
Posted by: Ed Darrell | May 10, 2008 10:50 PM
My point was not to praise the Nazis or pretend that they were accepting souls, or that they wouldn't go on to do far far worse than mere segregation. It's simply that when you look at the treatment of black athletes in Nazi Germany at the Olympics specifically, the heralded superiority of the U.S. in that case is wholly undeserved. The Nazis did better by those athletes than we did. And that's embarrassing.
Posted by: Bad | May 11, 2008 3:11 AM
"The Nazi persecution of Jews did not take the form of Jim Crow laws. Jews were harassed simply for being Jews, gradually excluded from the professions, government and academia, and eventually rounded up and murdered, but there were never separate bathrooms, elevators, drinking fountains, schools or other facilities for Jews and Gentiles".
That second sentence is very awkward, in my opinion. It makes it sound like Jews being "gradually excluded from the professions, government and academia, and eventually rounded up and murdered" is actually not as bad as Jews and Gentiles "having separate bathrooms, elevators, drinking fountains, schools or other facilities for Jews and Gentiles". I doubt that was your intention, Mr. Poser, but, again in my opinion, the sentence certainly comes across that way.
Posted by: daniel rotter | May 11, 2008 4:37 AM
Leni - So true. It's always funny when someone you don't like is thrown into prison for criticising an oppressive government...
Posted by: Jankles | May 11, 2008 5:06 AM
...but there were never separate bathrooms, elevators, drinking fountains, schools or other facilities for Jews and Gentiles.
Seem to recall they were forced into walled ghettos prior to being shipped off to the camps. How does that not qualify as separate facilities? Also, there were strict laws against intermarriage between Jews and "Aryans" in the Third Reich. Maybe the Nazis didn't have the same kinds of "Jim Crow" laws the US had, but it's naive to say that Jews weren't marginalized and separated from mainstream society in Nazi Germany. (In addition to being rounded up and murdered en masse, which I would also list as somewhat more extreme than segregated elevators and drinking fountains.)
Posted by: Martin | May 11, 2008 2:59 PM
Jankles:
It's one thing to be critical in WBC's way of doing things -- it's repulsive and flat-out false, but in our culture it's protected speech. It's another thing to stride directly into the mouth of the beast to make your point in a way that you know very well might get you arrested or killed. Consider the fate of Ramon Llull -- after a checkered career as a philosopher and born-again Catholic fanatic, Llull decided to go to Muslim North Africa and proselytize. One might call that martyrdom. Someone with a bit more sense would call it suicide.
If Phelps wants to pull a Llull in China, I think we've every right to laugh at him -- he isn't half the man (or woman) of any given one of the Tiananmen protesters, and doesn't have any standing at all given the irrelevance of his crusade.
He won't get his fun, I'm sure, though -- China will keep him out the way Australia did.
Posted by: Brian X | May 11, 2008 11:28 PM
Very true. As I tried arguing a while back, the people who passed Jim Crow laws didn't object to the presence of blacks, but rather from any implication of black equality. There's a difference between trying to keep them subordinate and trying to drive them out.
Not to say that one is any better than the other, of course.
Posted by: Skemono | May 12, 2008 12:18 AM
I think Bad's point (although clumisly worded) was that the Germans did not show as much racism towards Black athletes when compared to the treatment they recieved at home.
The explaination of why a deeply racist country like Nazi Germany showed less racism toward blacks is, I think, a lack of familarity or perhaps an absence of a tradition of anti-black racism.
A similar thing happened here. In 1941 the American Navy was forced (due to a Japanses advance) to use Australia as a forward base. Despite the PM John Curtin's refusal to overturn the "White Australia" Policy, MacArthur insisted his black troops must be landed. They were to be confined to the south side of Brisbane. The black sailors, marines and soldiers found the Australians to be friendly and not racist toward them (in spite of oppressive Aboriginal Contral Acts, and the, well frankly obscene, "White Australia" Policy) the biggest danger came from the Shore Patrols, mostly made up of Southern whites. There were rumours at the time that several blacks were murdered by the Shore Patrols and buried secretly in Australia. Also it is notable that several (white) Australian women married black men and continued to live here (as they couldn't go back to the US).
So you see, every counrty has thier own racism to overcome. No matter who is opressed or what form it comes in, it is vile, stupid and counter productive and must be overturned.
Sorry about the rave but this is a corner of history I was not aware of until recently -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 12, 2008 1:34 AM
BTW Germany won 33 gold, 26 silver, 20 bronze as compared to USA's 24 gold, 20 silver, 12 bronze, in 1936 Olympics
In althletics Germany won 5 gold; USA 14.
Jesse Owens got gold in 100m, 200m, as part of the 4x100m team and the long jump. Probably the most gold awrded to an indivual athlete at 1936 Games.
Just thought some triva nut might be interested. -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 12, 2008 1:51 AM
Jews were progressively excluded from public life in Nazi Germany - Jewish children were banned from all schools public and private; Jews were not only forbidden to practice medicine but non-Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat Jews; Jews were banned from public transport and public toilets.
I don't know if they were banned from using lifts but it wouldn't surprise me.
All this is somewhat off the point in any case since most of these laws were introduced after the 1936 Olympics.
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 12, 2008 3:20 AM
I was late on reading this one! Boy do we have to do some teaching in our history classes. Although we have to remember that many in the world were unaware of the atrocities going on in Germany at the time the games were hosted.
We also didn't "let" the games be held in Moscow; although the US did protest that one.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | May 10, 2008 5:02 PMSomething we both agree on! Fred Phelps doesn't know how good he has it in Freedom of Speech America!
Posted by: Rev. AJB | May 12, 2008 4:29 PM
Somehow the quote from Gingerbaker didn't make it into my post.
Posted by: Rev. AJB | May 12, 2008 4:32 PM
"Somehow the quote from Gingerbaker didn't make it into my post."
Not to worry, Rev - it's the thought that counts. :D
Posted by: Gingerbaker | May 13, 2008 10:45 AM
I forgot to say that, as the AntiChrist, my quotes never come through - much like a vampire's reflection in a mirror. ;D
Posted by: Gingerbaker | May 13, 2008 10:49 AM
As Ginger ("the Antichrist") Baker said earlier:
So there! :D DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | May 13, 2008 10:56 AM