The Opening Ceremonies of the Paris 2024 Olympics were certainly impressive and have attracted sustained interest from cultural historians, political historians, sports historians, and literary scholars in French and Francophone studies.

Trisha Urmi Banerjee and Nathaniel Zetter (University of Cambridge) published an op-ed in the Washington Post, analyzing the ways in which the Opening Ceremonies at the Paris 2024 Olympics disrupted Olympic rituals that stem from Nazi propaganda during the Berlin 1936 Olympics.

Banerjee and Zetter argue: “Few recall that many of the Olympic traditions we consider timeless — including the torch relay — are Nazi inventions. Adolf Hitler hadn’t wanted to host the Games; why dent his country’s economy to risk German athletes being outperformed by “non-Aryan” competitors? But Joseph Goebbels convinced him of the Games’ propaganda potential. Hosting and broadcasting a spectacular Olympics would prove the new regime’s stability and showcase German supremacy on a world stage.”

The op-ed emphasizes that “many of the rituals the Nazi propagandists developed with these objectives in mind were used again and again in Olympic ceremonies after World War II. Paris 2024’s Opening and Closing Ceremonies challenged this legacy with new styles of anti-fascist performance. Whether the organizers were conscious of it or not, the resulting spectacle disrupted the enduring legacy of fascist propaganda.”

The full op-ed is available at the Washington Post website.