A Thousand-Year Idea?: The Long Shadow of the Nazis

Julian Kwong
Aug 25, 2017 · 5 min read

You would be hard pressed to find a more recognized sign of evil than the Nazis. Much like the orcs or goblins in fantasy fiction, Nazis are evil by the very virtue of them being Nazis. One doesn’t need to explain what a Nazi is, as their very presence is more or less self-explanatory. As such, they occupy a very specific spot in the minds of the public consciousness, a place reserved for the very worst parts of humanity, a place beyond mass murderers, greedy tycoons and barbarian warlords.

The Nazis help make WWII a common setting for stories, both fictional and otherwise. Being the ultimate symbol of evil, the Nazis make WWII the last unambiguously good war that the West has fought in. Whilst the party and the state that spawned such a evil is long gone, the Nazis continue to cast a shadow over history and culture.

Perhaps ironically, the existence of the Nazis has been a boon to creators ever since the end of WWII. The Nazis have a very distinct aesthetic style, with immediately recognizable iconography, uniforms, general ideology and even colour scheme. Any creator wishing to create an ‘evil’ antagonistic force, organization or empire will often co-opt elements of the Nazis within said antagonistic force, to easily signpost to the audience that said antagonistic force’s inherent evilness should not be questioned. The most well known example of this is the Galactic Empire from the Star Wars series, which takes inspiration from Nazi Germany most evidently in officer uniforms. Expanded Universe materials have furthered this connection, with the Empire fleshed out as a human-supremacist totalitarian society with a structure of government that directly parallels that of Nazi Germany. To list everything with even a smidgen of Nazi influence would take a book of it’s own. While a useful shorthand for writers, it has the additional effect of perpetuating the concept of the Nazis as the‘ultimate evil’, keeping them in the public consciousness. The Nazis have become a meme in Richard Dawkins’ original formulation, an idea shaped into a cultural tool by humanity.

Exhibit One: The Galactic Empire.

Inevitably, the Nazis have crept into our daily discourse as well. The internet even has a name for it, Godwin’s Law, which stipulates that any online discussion will eventually include comparisons to Hitler or the Nazis. With the increasingly lowest-common-denominator nature of modern politics, the search for analogies and comparisons that will gain immediate traction among a broad audience inevitably turns leads many politicians to invoke the Nazis.

I’ll be the first to say that I have a major aversion to casually evoking the Nazis. Not due to any underlying sympathies towards the Nazis,, but because in most circumstances, the comparison falls hollow, never matching the magnitude of what the group actually did. It serves as a gross misuse of history, reducing the Nazis from a genocidal totalitarian group into a stock insult. George Orwell said it best in Politics and the English Language when he described the political use of fascism as representing ‘something not desirable.’ I was worried that this continued trivialization of the Nazis would eventually dull the impact of what they really stood for, so when something came around that really warranted the comparison, the analogy would be dismissed as standard political repertoire.

The weekend of August 11–12 suddenly made the comparison frightening again.

The unsettling reality.

Even after the election of Donald Trump, the continued rise in profile of the ‘alt-right’ in public discourse never really felt real to me. To me, it was something that had always been part of the underbelly of internet culture. The Presidency had degenerated into such a ludicrous farce it was easy to dismiss the “alt-right” as similarly inept and comical, even in the face of increased instances of racial violence.

In shocking scenes broadcast around the world, the people saw symbols of hatred long thought to be consigned to the dustbin of history waved around proudly in a country once thought to be the great bastion of liberal democracy. Blood was shed as a white supremacist drove into a crowd of counter-protestors. The optimism that characterized the early days of the Obama administration seemed like a distant memory.

To be clear, not all the initial protestors at Charlottesville were Nazis. Neither were they decent people. It was a loosely defined coalition of white supremacists, nostalgic neo-Confederates and Klansmen. To call them all Nazis would be to obscure the very American nature of this movement, a potent manifestation of the rejection of progress and a hankering for an idealized image of the past. Given its potency, Nazi imagery and chants were just one of the many symbols appropriated by modern white supremacists.

All this is part of our complex relationship with the Nazis. We abhor them, yet remain fascinated by them at the same time. The cultural footprint they left behind, and the pedestal of evil that we place them on, has made them the subject of admiration by those who reject everything the modern world stands for. A Vox article describes how the taboo nature of the Nazis has given the concept an erotic energy, combining the lure of forbidden power and our pre-existing cultural worship of power. There’s also an inherent “coolness” about evil, which is apparent by the huge fanbases that villains in stories often cultivate, no matter how heinous their fictional crimes may be.

And so we continue to live in the shadow of the Nazis. Luckily, the number of truly active members of the “alt-right” remain confined to the fringes of the public. Both major “alt-right” affiliated protests in Charslottesville and Boston were outnumbered heavily by counter-protesters, and mainstream politicians have largely denounced the violence at Charlottesville, in an all too rare instance of bipartisan convergence. If one looks back at the year so far, political movements and parties affiliated with the far-right have largely under-performed in elections. Yet the very fact that they have become a political force again is a major cause of concern. Equally troubling is the continued flip-flopping of the issue by President Trump himself, a move which has undoubtedly emboldened the white supremacist movement.

This renewed burst of life may be temporary. Strong counter-action and lack of success may force the “alt-right” and its associated movements underground. But one thing is for sure. As long as we continue to incorporate the Nazis in our political discourse, elevate them to the highest pantheon of evil, or mine them for ideas in fiction, we should not be surprised to see their banner being worshiped by some.

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