March 01, 2004
Reality upside down
The despotic mind controllers of North Korea are using, of all things, The Diary of Anne Frank to indoctrinate the minds of young students, report Dutch television and 60 Minutes.
Western television reporters rarely get into North Korea, but remarkably they let a Dutch television crew in to see how they're using Holland's most famous book, “The Diary of Anne Frank.”That diary, of her life in hiding during World War II, is now being studied in North Korea's schools. But Anne Frank's plea for peace and freedom got lost in translation.
North Korea is using her diary, not to teach how Anne suffered at the hands of the German Nazis, but to warn the students how they could suffer at the hands of those they call "American Nazis."
Anne's plea for peace is a curious message for these students, because North Korea is constantly preparing for war. Dictator Kim Jong Il spends the country's meager resources maintaining a powerful military. And it turns out that North Korea is using Anne's diary to tell students they must sacrifice for the military -- because war with America is inevitable.
“The Americans enjoy war. It excites them. It's part of their nature,” says one student.
Here, they teach that today's Nazis are the Americans – and that today's Hitler is George W. Bush. And, to hammer that home, whenever North Korean students refer to President Bush, or to other Americans, they're taught to call them “Nazis,” or “warmongers."
“As long as the warmonger Bush and the Nazi Americans live, who are worse than Hitler's fascists, world peace will be impossible to achieve,” says another student.
But of course, that bellicose message runs counter to what Anne wrote in her diary: “You will understand that here in the attic, the desperate question is often asked: Why, oh why, go to war? Why can't people live in peace and why must we destroy everything?”
Why do the North Korean student think there are still wars in the world? “Because the cruel Americans want war,” replies one student.
Entirely perverse. Dear Anne Frank deserves much better. But ponder this: is there any noticeable difference between the twisted rhetoric of the North Koreans and the everyday speech of MoveOn, Counterpunch, and other American leftists? There is none.
Posted by Alan at March 1, 2004 09:59 PM