Totalitarian regimes — the Nazis, the Soviets in 1980 and now the Chinese — desire to host the Olympics as a way to signal to the world their superiority. China believes that it has found its own model to develop and modernize, and its rulers regard the Games in the same way as the Nazis and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev did, as a means of “selling” their model to a global audience.
Obviously, the Chinese were politically tone-deaf in choosing an architect whose name carried such dark historical connotations. The name of Speer itself probably did not matter to the officials who chose him. They sought to stage an Olympics that made manifest their image of themselves, and Speer, looking back to his father’s mastery of the architecture of power, delivered the goods.
The realization of Speer’s Olympic vision, and that of his patrons, marks the end of a welcome interlude. For years following the end of the Cold War, politics had been removed from the Games. A gold medal signified the sporting abilities and dedication of individual athletes, not the supposed merits of the political system that produced them.
But now we have returned to an aesthetic of political mesmerization, reflected in the host government’s declared aim that China should win more gold medals than any country before.
As the Olympic torch relay — itself a creation of the Nazis, first employed in the Berlin Games — makes its way down Speer’s avenue of power, the world will once again be made to witness a triumph of the totalitarian will.
Nina Khrushcheva teaches international affairs at The New School University in New York.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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