Use of the digraphs “SS”, “SA”, “NS”, and sometimes “HH” are taboo, or even outright prohibited, due to their association with Nazi terminology (Schutzstaffel, Sturmabteilung, Nationalsozialismus, and Heil Hitler, respectively). For example, in most German jurisdictions it’s illegal for some or all of these letter combinations to be used in vehicle registration plates. (Some will allow them for registrants if those are their actual initials, though even then it would be prohibited to transfer the plates to someone else.)
Even in everyday life the combinations are avoided—for example, in business meeting minutes, it’s common to refer to people by their initials, but if your name happens to be Silvana Schmidt the secretary might record you as SiS instead of SS.)
The new lyrics are still not entirely wide spread though (while no one uses the old ones). I happened to be in Germany yesterday as Germany played France in the World Cup and when the national anthems were played, there was an instruction on screen about where to find the lyrics for the National Anthem. I can’t imagine that happening on Dutch, French or English TV.
Pencil moustache? I assume you’re referring to moustaches like Hitler’s, but a pencil moustache is quite different. Think Vincent Price, John Waters, etc.
Hell, I’m not even German and I’m the same on that one. Guys with 88, 18 or 14 (not directly Nazi related) in their usernames always make me very suspicious. There are plenty of ways it could be innocent of course, but… yeah.
This brings to mind a conversation I had with a Vrystaat farmer in South Africa, about Aparteid and the other problematic issues involving South African settlers and native Africans. “You Americans were smart”, he told me. “You killed them all”. Unrelated to the topic, but I couldn’t help noticing exactly the same explanatory words.
It’s funny, as sensitive as I am about this stuff (child of survivors), American neo-Nazi stuff like that doesn’t really ping my radar. I learned about the 88 code here, and yet it doesn’t faze me when I see it. Weird?
I consider myself fairly well read, and this is the first time I’ve noticed that any pair of numbers had a negative association in this regard, and I had to read the link to figure out what the association even was.???
Even in Canada, the NDP, the socialist party of our nation, gets really upset if you call them the national socialist party. I’ve never heard anyone get upset being called the provincial socialist party. Of course, today, they are no more socialist than the German party.
As for the “SS” - everyone knows that stands for Secret Service, the police that investigate serious crimes like children drawing pictures of George Bush with a sniper crosshairs on him, or arresting people for trying to protest within 2 blocks of the president or outside the designated and fenced “protest zone” area. (since the president is not an abortion clinic)
Perhaps the one positive legacy of the whole holocaust is that it is forever associated now with prejudice - at least against Jews. It’s that much harder for bigots to justify a point of view now associated with the ultimate evil acts of the 20th century. (Though that apparently doesn’t stop some.)
It has also put extreme nationalism and territorial expansion or land grabs in the same bad light - notice the numerous comparisons to Hitler when Russia took Crimea from the Ukraine.
Oh come on. It still is. Right ? :o
Joke aside, while the end of the Nazis didn’t correlate with an end to racism or anti-Semitism it did pound quite a few nails into the coffin of all eugenics, for good or ill. Though not just in Germany specifically (which was the OP’s concern)
Not sure why you yelled GERMAN at me, but it’s a fairly common American neo-Nazi code for Heil Hitler (H=8th letter of the alphabet).
This thread isn’t just about small things ruined for Germans, but also in the wider world.
On a personal note, for me it’s being able to wear the Star of David. My parents had them pinned to their clothes in Poland, so I find it very hard to wear a traditional Star necklace. I know that’s not widespread, but it’s spoiled for me.
88 is numerical “code” - in scare quotes because this is becoming less and less obfuscated as time goes by - for Heil Hitler. 18 stands for Adolf Hitler. 1919 (forgot about that one) stands for SS. 14 is shorthand for “Fourteen Words”, which is itself shorthand for a semi-famous American neo-nazi motto.
[QUOTE=IvoryTowerDenizen]
On a personal note, for me it’s being able to wear the Star of David. My parents had them pinned to their clothes in Poland, so I find it very hard to wear a traditional Star necklace. I know that’s not widespread, but it’s spoiled for me.
[/QUOTE]
A gay guy I once knew wore a vintage yellow star AND a vintage SS Totenkopf on his knapsack (the star was his granduncle’s IIRC). He used them as a starting point for long, fairly intelligent lectures on the nature of discrimination and how antisemitism was not so far removed from homophobia in both roots and practice (very not far removed when it comes to the nazis, really - pink triangles and that).
Despite his eloquence I never could shake the notion that, to the people who crossed his path but didn’t engage him about those symbols, they must have been confusing as fuck.
In Japan’s case, it’s not a huge leap of logic when the country’s leaders engage in revisionist history to downplay Japan’s aggression in WWII, honor war criminals by visiting a shrine in which they are interred, or go back on apologies to women abused by Japanese troops in WWII.
Any version with English, French or Spanish subtitles ? I *used *to know how to ein bißchen Deutsch sprechen, hab es in der Schule gelernt, aber… die Zeit alles zerstören wird, ja ?
(I have no idea how horribly wrong that was. Please don’t plow through the Ardennes to educate me :o :))
