Word: swastikaed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What does a swastika mean? During World War II, it meant the mechanical annihilation of an entire race of human beings--an act motivated by the highest form of vanity. But on the t-shirt of Sid Vicious, who knows what it means? It is shocking, stomach-twisting, and if nothing else, it is some kind of self-glorification that Vicious and his followers need...the self-glorification he saw in old war documentaries when he was in grammar school, ripping out toilet seats during recess...
...woman who thinks that orgasm is the highest state of consciousness, who roots her angst in Burroughs, Rimbaud, Hendrix, Morrison, the Bible--symbolists all. Patti Smith has used the symbols of our time exceedingly well, just as Dylan and Springsteen did before her, towards somewhat different ends. Avoiding the swastika, she has flaunted her hair, her leather, her boots, her sickliness, her chains, her sex...powerful symbols which horrified Rotarians and changed rock'n'roll...
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...