The Swastika and Symbols of Hate by Steven Heller

Author:Steven Heller
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621537205
Publisher: Allworth
Published: 2019-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

Active from 1957–1960, the White Defence League (WDL) demonstrated in London. WDL was open in its admiration for Hitler and Nazis. The logo is a white sun wheel within a red circle on a dark blue background.

Logo of Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), 1993.

Russia is not alone in the disturbing ultra-nationalist resurgence. Since reunification, Germany has had significant neo-Nazi violence against foreigners (mostly Turkish immigrants, others from Eastern Bloc countries who fled before the fall of the Soviet Union, and the waves of Syrian asylum seekers). During the mid-1990s an infestation of skinheads, typically disaffected working class men and boys primarily from the former East Germany, terrorized the populace in daily skirmishes and assaults on civilians and police. These acts are not unlike those of their brown-shirted SA forebears in the early days of the Nazi party. Though the German government has successfully controlled the rate of incidents in recent years, they have not rid the country of its fascist thugs supported by cadres of organized neo-Nazi elders. Before reunification, armed right-wing paramilitary groups fronted as sports and hunting clubs existed in Germany in defiance of federal law, and the leaders of the new generation of storm troopers come from these older, organized, outlawed political groups. During the mid-1990s, the American Ku Klux Klan publicly offered to German fascists “advisors” in the “art” of street brawling. Although German stability has been strong, it is tottering now; and like their Russian counterparts the German fascists have been preparing themselves for the cataclysm that will destabilize the government.

Most Germans are quick to disavow any return to fascism, and the constitutional law outlawing the swastika is but one instrument in the relentless vigil. Nonetheless, organized fascist groups persevered by adopting new symbols and regalia. Black shirts were replaced by light blue or gray ones, worn over black pants. The Nationalist Front, a leader among the right-wing paramilitary associations, continues to march under the Kaiser’s imperial flag; they also wear a shoulder patch with a runic symbol that resembles an angular AIDS ribbon. The symbol, a diamond shape with feet, called an Odal rune, was used by a Nazi-era SS battalion and was readopted as the mark of the right-wing Bundes Nationale Studenten (BNS), a neo-fascist organization based on the model of the Hitler Youth. Other outlawed groups that invoke symbolic echoes of Nazi Germany are Volkssozialistischen Bewegung Deutschlands/Partei der Arbeit, whose symbol resembles a printer’s register mark or gun sight; and the Aktionsfront Nationaler Sozialsten/Nationaler Aktivisten, and the Jungen Front, both of which have symbols that mimic the lightning bolt or “S” rune used by the SS.

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