The New York Times, through its Berlin-based reporter, Christopher Schuetze, has once again shown its tendency to be lenient on the oppressive reigns of Communism that ravaged Russia and Eastern Europe. This came to light in a recently published Sunday report glorifying aspects of life in the Communist era.
Schuetze’s feature was centered around an event in former East Germany that celebrated vintage automobiles from the Communist era. The reporter connected with a participant, Uwe Rockler, who was decked out as an East German traffic cop—an ongoing trend of making light of oppressors, it seems.
In his report, Schuetze somehow manages to turn the grim realities of the Communist rule that his parents survived into a point of fascination for Rockler. He had Rockler coming out with harmless sounding claims about those times, like how “not all was bad”. Rockler even equated the East German police—who did their fair share of repressing the populace—to their West German counterparts.
There was a lot of glossing over oppressive realities in Schuetze’s story. He introduced one Thomas Herzog, who clearly found the past a cause for humor. Herzog reportedly joked about how he voluntarily attended the event, unconstrained by the dictatorial forces of yesteryears.
Despite confessing that the period was marked by widespread challenges, including clampdowns on free speech and travel, Schuetze hinted at many attendees claiming that memories of the Communist era were becoming increasingly attractive due to dissatisfaction with the present system.
One such interviewee was Conny Kaden, founder of the G.D.R. Museum. According to Schuetze’s paraphrasing, Kaden stated that despite the positive changes from reunification, certain values were lost—like a sense of community fostered by the mandatory meetings conducted in the socialist state.
The New York Times has built a reputation for such stories that fuel nostalgia for oppressive political regimes. Past pieces have sugarcoated the cruel realities of countries such as Soviet Russia, East Germany, China, and Cuba. For instance, in 2017, the paper marked the Russian Revolution’s 100-year anniversary with a series downplaying the sufferings under Communist rule.
What’s astonishing is that while Schuetze and his likes are quick to raise alarms about the rise of populism and the far right, they turn a blind eye to the damages caused by extreme left philosophies embodied in Communist dictatorships. They forget that any form of extremism—be it right or left—harms society and hampers its progress. The job of the press is to highlight such issues, not to paint a rosy picture of a destructive past that left millions in despair.
