Below The Beltway

The Los Angeles Times points out that the Olympic Torch Relay didn’t exist before the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics:

The Olympic torch relay was invented by the Nazis. According to historians, Adolf Hitler wanted to promote his belief in an Aryan master race by symbolically linking the 1936 Berlin Games to the ancient Greek gods and rituals, hence the carrying of the flame from Olympia to Germany. The first relay was chronicled on film by Hitler’s propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl.

We bring you this brief history lesson because, as the Olympic torch makes its only North American appearance today in San Francisco, it will be met by thousands of protesters decrying China’s human rights record. In response to similar demonstrations Monday in Paris, the Chinese government complained that a “small group” of Tibetan activists was seeking to politicize an event that should have been a tribute to the love of sport.

Nonsense. From its very beginning, the torch relay has been deeply political, a promotional extravaganza for the Games’ host country. Chinese officials are well aware of this, having designed the longest relay in Olympic history — an 85,000-mile, six-continent tour, meant to highlight China’s vast economic and political might. The protests are a welcome reminder to Beijing that it can’t tailor public opinion in the rest of the world the way it can at home.

Given the overtly political origins of the torch relay, and the political machinations behind China’s use of it this year, it is entirely appropriate that dissident groups are using this opportunity, when the whole world is watching, to bring world attention to the true nature of the Chinese regime.

The most absurd thing about this whole situation has been the protests from those who say that we shouldn’t politicize the Olympics. The reality is, of course, that the Olympics have always been about politics as much as sport.

So, let a thousand protests bloom !