So, in the midst of the heated MAGA-fascism Nazism debate, I had more of an FQ question although I’m sure the mods may move it to IMHO anyway:
Do neo-Nazis, Stormfront, KKK, far-right or other fascists in America particularly care about Germany and the Germany language - such as going so far as to learn German and make their kids learn German, etc. - or do they just think of “fascism” as being a mixture of racism and jingoism and they actually really just consider Germany to be a foreign culture and foreign nation, and couldn’t be bothered to learn German any more than they want to learn Spanish?
I’m sure there’s a few Germanophiles in the crowd. Just like folks love to read books in the original language or see the “director’s cut” of a movie.
But by and large they’re simply in favor of fascism as an ideology. And yes, it’s 1 part jingoism and 1 part racism, and 1 part a lot of other hatreds, anti-intellectualism, and little else. An ideology the Germans famously tried for a few years, and in especially colorful dramatic fashion.
They’re no more into German stuff than current hard lefties believe studying Russian and aping 1910s Russian culture is how to achieve communism (or Communism) in our time.
I’m pretty sure they’ve fallen in love with the symbolism, icons, and general racism in the ideology, but not with the ideology itself. To wit, that kid who was involved in Charlottesville with the clearly Slavic name but carrying a (tiki) torch and chanting with the other skinheads. I’m sure he would have been surprised that in 1939, he would have been in a forced labor camp.
Just to nitpick, but the Ku Klux Klan doesn’t really have anything to do with Germany and doesn’t identify as being ‘fascsist’ (even though it clearly has fascist-like characteristics); the name is a pseudo-Greek bastardization and the origin is from the Sons of Malta, a kind of Freemason-like fraternal society. Self-identified American fascist movements in the US actually started with Italian Fascism (the only national movement to actually describe itself explicitly as fascist) in the 1920s.
Following the rise of Nazi Germany groups such as the German American Bund (which was started by and had a significant number of first and second generation German immigrants who spoke German and were familiar with German cultures) promoted their version of fascism and political alliance with Nazism (at one point in 1939 even putting on a rally in Madison Square Garden, but neo-Nazi groups such as the National Alliance, the American Nazi Party, White Aryan Resistance, National Socialist Movement, Atomwaffen Division, Patriot Front which arose in the wake of the American-Vietnam War have primarily identified with German fascism, using German names, pseudo-Teutonic and Viking iconography associated with the Nazi Party including the swastika, various Norse runes, et cetera even though direct associations with anything German or National Socialism were tenuous at best. These movements attracted a lot of people without any prior association or connection with Germany, and I don’t think there is any particular interest in the German language or intellectual curiosity about German culture among them beyond a kind of caracturistioc depiction of Bavarian culture that was emphasized in German propaganda. In fact, despite all of their weird obsessions that many of them have with Nazi memorabilia and historical figures, most of them don’t seem to know much about the actual history of National Socialism and an almost totally fictitious hagiography of Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders, which is understandable because most of these men were complete fuckups, drug addicts, failed intellectuals, and imbeciles without the basic aptitude to run chicken farm.
To the extent that there is anything that can actually be identified as an ‘ideology’ within fascism, it is entirely fungible to serve the needs of the moment. The National Socialism movement famously rose from the labor oriented but social conservative (read: antisemitic) German Workers’ Party but shifted from the anti-corporate focus to very much a pro-corporate movement (while maintaining nationalist and nativist populism) even before it came to power in the early 1930s. I guess you can identify antisemitism (and extending to all forms of nativism and xenophobia against Slavs, Roma, et cetera) as a central organizing principle but fascist movements sustain themselves by essentially finding an already scapegoated class, blaming them for the various economic, social, and moral ills of society, and then persecuting them through pogroms, forced remove and emigration, or indefinite detention and in extremea execution in ‘camps’ removed from public view. There aren’t really any positive organizing principles or practical objectives like building a healthy economy; when such goals exist they are mostly plaintive appeals to a return to better times of the past, constructing an ethnic legacy based upon pseudohistory, or fraudulent plans to build a ‘Potemkin village’ of a futuristic society with advanced technology. So, the ironies of neo-Nazis doing things or being drawn from groups that the German National Socialists would have rejected is entirely unsurprising.
“The signature ‘Boss Look’ became known for sharp, tailored suits, clean lines, and a sense of confidence and authority. The brand positioned itself as the uniform for ambitious, powerful modern men.”
For those who may not know what Stranger was referring to:
Hugo Boss was an early Nazi supporter & contributor, becoming a party member 2 years before Hitler came to power. His company actually produced the black SS uniforms, using slave labor from the camps (but only POW French & Polish soldiers, not Jews – couldn’t have them touching the clothing the SS would wear). But the ‘Boss look’ in worldwide fashion became prominent only a third of century after Hugo’s death.
Yeah, they’re not Germanophile weebs. Those guys tend more toward other chapters in German history- the Holy Roman Empire, Imperial Germany, etc… and toward generic German cultural admiration.
When Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate, there were rumblings in the MAGAsphere that he was just an unassimilated descendant of German immigrants and would never be truly American.
Please don’t break a quote into sentence fragments just to make it seem that what I wrote was something different than the full context would demonstrate. The complete sentence (with the missing context highlighted) was:
There aint many real Nazi groups or members- but there are plenty of far right racist groups. Why would the KKK- founded long before there were any such thing as Nazis care about german stuff?
