This is something those of us who are waiguoren living in Asia, particularly those of us from the West, just don’t get . . . the fantasy and attraction of Nazi paraphrenalia for the young here . . . yet another bout . . . Naked Nazi provokes Hong Kong fury . . . this article does get some of it, but even with the commercialism connection, these folks who wear the gear don’t really get the message . . . to most Nazis, Asians were part of the inferior race mixes, the mongrels and the like . . . even after the association with Japan created an axis, the position was that the Japanese were superior to their Asian brothers and even then they were still not up to Aryan standards.

Sheesh.

The use of execution photographs to decorate a KTV is just offensive no matter how you slice it . . . particularly when those photos are not to condemn but to glorify the extermination of a race . . . genocide is not sexy.

Of course, the kids who get into the fashion here and the folks using the images for marketing don’t realize this is the message they are making, they just think it’s kool with no context or content. They are disconnected from history and from society at large, the society of the world and their own. They are creating pop from murder without really understanding what evil they do indeed do by decontextualizing the images. If they understood the message and if they had an informed context for the use of the Nazi images, then fine, they have the right to agreeing with that position . . . albeit, that would be a different kettle of monkeys . . . but to espouse the ideas with no context makes them in a number of ways worse than the idjits who do indeed follow and believe in the racist and genocidal agenda. At least real Nazis and the like know what their ideals are and what their icons mean . . . they may be misguided or fucked up but at least they have a moral position from which to speak . . . these kids with the Nazi emblems on their bikes or t-shirts or handbags are just fashion monkeys. They are taking icons and images out of context with no idea as to what they mean. In addition to Nazi images, there are more and more fashion pieces out now with images of Che and Fidel and Bob Marley (have even seen a couple I Love Charlie Manson and a Mark David Chapman t-shirt where the wearers had no clue who the hell was on their shirts (I just liked the color) but the kids who wear these folks on their shirts have no clue as to who these people were. None. Since Bicycle Diaries came out, you would think they would at least have some passing idea of who Che was but actually they don’t even realize that’s who they’re wearing. At least the Naziphiles have a vague idea of what the images are about, albeit completely uncontextualized and unguided by any sort of moral center. They don’t make the connections.

Now, what I really want to see are some Wilhelm Reich t-shirts as those would be a LOT better than Third Reich . . . especially if they pushed the whole orgasm therapy angle which is actually a very good thing in and of itself.

Note: I have changed the outlink for this piece to the original article at NETnews Asia as that’s where it was originally published. I had originally linked to another page for this as I found it elsewhere but the author of the original piece contacted me and let me know those folks were just cut and copying his text without permission and he’d appreciate a link to the original article. So, here it is.