MOCK THE NAZIS

From Seattle area journalist Dave Neiwert, who specializes in writing about far right hate groups, and who lately has been dealing with neo-Nazi recruiting in his own neighborhood:

Springtime for Hitler

Rick at OlyBlog proposed this as a constructive way to deal with our recent local infestation of the National Socialist Movement's recruitment drive:

I've been considering the following diabolical plan, and I ran it by my class this morning and got a big thumbs up. Here's what we do:

-- Make lots of costumes of Nazis, only make them outrageous, cartoonish, and fantastic.

-- We wear these costumes to the next NSM rally that is scheduled in July at the State Capitol.

-- We prance around in our surreal nazi costumes, making statements about how persecuted and abused we are.

This strategy of mockery has several attractive features. Our presence will deter those who may be vulnerable to recruitment, but would change the dynamic of the demonstration from one of confrontation to one of humor and farce. The comical approach will make their claims about being an abused minority look hysterical. It will make it very hard for them to spin any photos taken from the event. Finally, it will be great fun for us to think of creative ways to dress like Nazis. (The more like Village People, the better!)

Click here for the rest.

I wholeheartedly agree. As my buddy Vince once observed to a mutual friend who just couldn't seem to get her hands around Nazis-as-comic-relief, "While the Nazis were probably the most horrible manifestation of human society in history, they were also the funniest group of humans in history." Or something to that effect. Indeed, most people from my generation grew up alternating between Nazis as villains and Nazis as buffoons for just about every other film or television show we watched. This isn't really a weird concept. On any given day when I was a kid, I might have watched an episode of Hogan's Heroes, with it's dual goobers Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz, or a Laugh In rerun featuring Arte Johnson's immortal cigarette smoking Nazi, always saying in an outrageous German accent, "Very interesting," and then turn right around and watch the Nazi episode of Star Trek or a cool WWII movie, where Nazis were portrayed as worse than Darth Vader.

Yeah, Nazis are very disturbing, but, c'mon, how can they not be really funny, too? For starters, those uniforms are just plain ridiculous. And all that bullshit about "the master race" and "the thousand year reich." And don't get me started on how funny goose stepping is. For my money, the best comic portrayal of Nazis is in The Blues Brothers. The single minded pursuit of Jake and Elwood by neo-Nazis who take themselves extraordinarily seriously is perhaps the best plotline in the film. Ultimately, that's why it's so fun to make fun of Nazis: they have absolutely no sense of irony; they take themselves waaaay too seriously. It doesn't at all hurt that they deserve to be ruthlessly mocked. There's nothing more satisfying than a crying Nazi.

So I'm all for this campaign of mockery. Next time I end up at a neo-Nazi counterdemonstration (okay, I've only been to a couple of these, but it's bound to happen again), I'll definitely be there as a Nazi buffoon, speaking with a bad German accent, goose stepping everywhere I go: "I know nothink!!!"


Hogaaaaaan!!!

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