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# The cunning of the Olympic flame
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/the-cunning-of-the-flame/
- Published: 2008-04-07T21:04:16.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:40:03.000Z
- Author: openDemocracy Supporters
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:41

The sight of symbolic attacks on a symbol (the flame) of a symbolic representation of war (the games) may seem too layered even for our mediatised sensitivities. And yet .... the protest works for me. I asked Grace and Kanishk in the office today, and neither could muster much enthusiasm for the games. I asked David (our Front Page editor) later on, and he remarked: "... it all seems overdetermined, don't you think? the games, Tibet ... it's a big year".

Overdetermined? Just simple causality to me ... until I saw the possible denouement in all its symbolic glory. The flame crosses the world leaving a smokey trail of imperial abuse; the games and the consumer brands behind the olympics are irrecoverably tarnished as they should have been in 1936; the Chinese, facing a boycott of the opening ceremony, save face by offering good faith talks to the Dalai Lama ...

The flame is a trial by fire for the Chinese state, and in this fantasy, it passes.