Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Speer Family

Of this story, Kevin writes:

I wonder if NBC will treat us to a nice retrospective on the Speer family?
And why did Obama go and give that speech in Berlin to a bunch of Germans, anyway?

I'm just joking at the Republicans' expense, of course.

Anyway, I hope NBC and sources like it can give us more frank coverage of fascist tendencies that are actually being acted out by our own government or governments that are close to us today, like those of the Bush administration, or of Republicans to repress African American voting districts. Instead of picking on the fact that this guy is the son of Albert Speer (a Nazi who expressed remorse for at least some of his crimes-- use of slave labor-- and who willingly helped the Allied occupation government, and then served a long a long sentence), NBC might have done better to report on Beijing's habitual control of the media-- but I guess that would have hit too close to home.

UPDATE: For all I know, Albert Speer may have imparted some fascist or racist lessons to his son that the son actually believes in or adheres to, but that hardly seems like the assumption we should make until we each individually have experienced some proof of it.

UPDATE II: Maybe Beijing actually chose Speer's son for propaganda purposes, as a reminder of the fact that-- even in terms of human rights abuses-- the past can be the past (although I doubt it of the communist Chinese).

If that's the case, though, I think the better way to turn the tables on Chinese propaganda is to retell Speer's story and to point out how little choice an artist/craftsman like Speer had in a totalitarian regime like China's, even if he had wanted to differ from Hitler / the regime.

But, that would also be a criticism of Republican fascist acts, which may explain why NBC didn't want to do it.