Nazi uniforms/ neo Naziism

EMTSATX

Banned
This may seem like a silly question, but I have seen it cause some serious problems.

I have known people who have thought Nazi uniforms are "cool". From the steel "fritz" helmet to SS uniforms, the jack boots etc all of it. That is why they start with the uniforms and sadly (and almost unbelievably to me.) Start looking more into the politics of the thing. The "they have a cool flag and uniforms". To them becoming full fledged neo-nazis. This is utterly abhorrent to me that something so trivial could lead to something so horrible.

I know uniforms and flags are meant to inspire certain feelings. I was proud to wear my uniform. I loved seeing the flag. German uniforms don't do it for me, but whatever. How can thinking "cool uniforms" lead to such horrible thoughts? Should we be like Germany and ban Nazi symbols and uniforms? Or do we just end up with people carrying the imperial flag etc.

Are these just people who are socially awkward and looking for something and would have found this anyway? Is it also true that Hugo Boss did the SS uniforms? If so why were they not shut down? I really think this is a horrible thing.
 
It's true that Hugo Boss designed the uniforms. It's also true that they are quite stylish. But the ever growing minority slipping into far-rightism weren't some tabula rasa cleverly seduced by the power of the fashionable side. They were probably at least angry and disenchanted to begin with, if not outright racists and would have found some hateful way to express it if the Nazis dressed in burlap sacks.

Everyone likes to think that racism is the province of half-human troglodytes and is as far away from respectable people as the Sun is from Pluto. But it's a lot deeper, more widespread and more insidious than that.

Also, this might be a chat thing.
 

Wendigo

Banned
Everyone likes to think that racism is the province of half-human troglodytes and is as far away from respectable people as the Sun is from Pluto. But it's a lot deeper, more widespread and more insidious than that.

Speaking of which, most of the men who led the Einsatzgruppen which shot over 1 million Jews in the USSR from 1941-1943 were college educated professionals. Many of whom even had PhDs.

The kind of men who perpetrated, planned or allowed horrors like the Holocaust and other genocides were hardly psychotic lunatics frothing at the mouth like many would like to think of them as.
 
The strange thing is "Nazi" uniforms have a tradition from Imperial Germany but it even lasted into East Germany ironically enough of all places. I have an East German greatcoat that's basically hardly to ones worn by the Nazi's the only way you can tell is the faded NVA on the inside.

It might be a sense of evil is cool and the fact the Nazi's and their style have basically been the thing to emulate or allude to in many works of Western popular culture.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
Ever heard or read about the "Milgram experiment" ?

IMO it quite drastically showed, that almost everybody can become member/part of a "holocaustal" or "genocidal" process, if there is only someone with an if only assumed authority, telling you to kill or torture someone else.

To "produce" this authority it only needs a ... proper uniform - even a simple white coat can be this. ... uniforms are something that gives "power" over others - at least the feeling of.
And - obviously - the Nazi-uniforms gave a damn awfull (in every sense of the word) power.
 
EMTSATX:

If you haven't read it already, you might this an interesting essay.

Uniforms suggest fantasies of community, order, identity (through ranks, badges, medals which “say” who the wearer is and what he has done: his worth is recognized), competence, legitimate authority, the legitimate exercise of violence. But uniforms are not the same thing as photographs of uniforms. Photographs of uniforms are erotic material, and particularly photographs of SS uniforms. Why the SS? Because the SS seems to be the most perfect incarnation of fascism in its overt assertion of the righteousness of violence, the right to have total power over others and to treat them as absolutely inferior. It was in the SS that this assertion seemed most complete, because they acted it out in a singularly brutal and efficient manner; and because they dramatized it by linking themselves to certain aesthetic standards. The SS was designed as an elite military community that would be not only supremely violent but also supremely beautiful. (One is not likely to come across a book of this sort called “Brownshirt Regalia.” The SA, whom the SS replaced, were not known for being any less brutal than their successors, but they have gone down in history as beefy, squat, beerhall types.)

SS uniforms are stylish, well-cut, with a touch (but not too much) of eccentricity. Compare the rather boring and not very well cut American army uniform: jacket, shirt, tie, pants, socks, and lace-up shoes, essentially civilian clothes. SS uniforms were tight, heavy, stiff. The boots made legs and feet feel heavy, encased, obliging then wearer to stand up straight. As the jacket of SS Regalia explains: “The uniform was black, a color which had important overtones in Germany. On that, the SS wore a vast variety of decorations, symbols, badges to distinguish rank, from the collar runes to the death’s head. The appearance was both dramatic and menacing.”
 
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