Killing Anne Frank all over again

Tonight's 60 Minutes features a report on how The Diary of Anne Frank is being taught in North Korean schools - as a hateful propaganda tool for the world's most murderous regime:

”After reading this book, I had a hatred for the American imperialists,” says one student.

“That warmonger Bush is just as bad as Hitler. Because of him we will always live in fear of war,” says another student. [I'm not sure if this is a North Korean student, or the "Teen" columnist who compared Bush to Hitler in yesterday's Western Star - ed.]

But Anne Frank did not preach hate. Her diary is an enchanting, if horrific, day-by-day account of the time this Dutch teenager and her Jewish family spent hiding from the Germans who had invaded and occupied Holland.
[...]
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.

Why is the IndyMedia crowd so silent about what's happening in North Korea? Probably because the North Koreans think exactly the same way they do.

Update: Japan's Fuji TV has broadcast a smuggled videotape showing scenes from the Yodok 15 labour camp in North Korea. (You have to sit through a McDonald's commercial to watch the video on MSNBC's website - which I actually find quite amusing, considering that a disturbing number of people really believe McDonald's is much more evil than North Korea.)

Update II: perhaps another reason people turn a blind eye to North Korea's sheer depravity is the fact that Kim Jong-Il's public persona, and his government's official pronouncements, are so ridiculous. Case in point: the North Korean news agency says Kim scored 11 holes-in-one the very first time he played golf.

People laughed at the plump, jolly and flamboyant Idi Amin for a years, before the full extent of his savagery came out. History is repeating itself.

Posted by damian at February 29, 2004 10:38 PM