Word: swastika
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Facile condemnations of this sort of thing clearly won't do. It's hard to get a handle on the punk fascination with Nazism: Elvis Costello talks about emotional fascism, Johnny Rotten sings about Belsen, and the swastika is the dominant icon in punk life, but what does it all add up to? With Rotten, it may just be the shock value, as when he used to tell people he cut out his hemmorhoids with a razor. And just how is one supposed to react to something like Belsen, anyway...
...Oriente to pay tribute to the late dictator Franco on the third anniversary of his death. Blue-shirted members of the Fuerza Nueva (New Force), an extreme right-wing group, marched to the site in military formation and mingled with grizzled Civil War veterans and youths with Nazi swastika armbands. Others who crowded into the square were simply ordinary conservatives, nostalgic for days long gone when life seemed more disciplined and predictable...
Beer mugs in hand, a dozen men relaxed together in an isolated forest clearing. The uniforms they wore were disturbingly familiar: brown shirts, black breeches, high black boots; the swastika motif on their red, black and white armbands was repeated on flags massed behind them. Then, standing at attention, the men thrust their arms upward in a Heil, Hitler salute. Armed with rifles, they goose-stepped through a military drill...
...London, and The Rat in Boston. There, shock is chic. Musicians and listeners strut around in deliberately torn T shirts and jeans; ideally, the rips should be joined with safety pins. Another fad is baggy pants with a direct connection between fly and pocket. These are called dumpies. Swastika emblems go well with such outfits. In London, the hair is often heavily greased and swept up into a coxcomb of blue, orange or green, or a comely two-tone. Pierced ears may sport safety pins, some made of gold or silver. Of late, punk chic has even been taken...
...when the Living Newspaper put out the sign for the skit "Sexism in the Schools," in which the "x" in "sexism" was represented by a swastika, it was an insult to thoughtful social analysis. The left makes far too much use of such facile, irrelevant references to fascism. Turning x's into swastikas may make good graffiti, but it's lousy politics...