The 3D Spies of WW2

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Yes, context seems to be decisive. The law is not clear, and when the 
concrete legal situation is doubtful a trial will take place. I remember 
one where an anti-fascist entrepeneur was put in front of court, though 
eventually not punished, because he had sold T-shirts with the slogan 
'Don't give Nazis a chance!' ("Gib Nazis keine Chance!") which were 
illustrated with a a figure putting a crossed out swastika into a waste 
bin. By the way, this is all about public appearance: It's not illegal 
to own Nazi paraphernalia, - just to show them in public. The swastika 
can also be completely unproblematic in a legal sense when the context 
has definitely nothing to do with Nazi ideology: The museum shop of 
Hamburg's ethnological museum (Völkerkundemuseum), for instance, sells 
an original Indian bag devoted to a Hindu deity which shows on both 
sides swastikas in all four corners of the picture. As far as I know, no 
one ever protested against this. But of course people here are very 
touchy about it. While the anglophone S&M scene, at least a not too 
small part of it, enjoys parties where people do wear SS uniforms, this 
practice is hardly common in Germany. Too traumatic to be a turn-on.

Since the debate here is about National Socialism and pop culture, let 
me name three groups and decades that were into the process of 
redefining the (post Nazi) swastika into a pop cultural symbol of not 
specified rebellion:

- Hells Angels (1950s)

- Californian Surfers (1960s)

- Glam Rock and Punk people (1970s)


On 23.07.2013 16:25, Monte Davis wrote:
> I'm guessing that Wolfenstein and 'Indiana Jones' get different treatment
> because video games are more tightly linked than movies to Those Scary Kidz
> Today: at some inarticulate level of German consciousness, the swastika a
> teenager sees on the computer or Xbox screen playing late at night alone in
> his bedroom is somehow more insidious, more dangerous, than in the
> (presumably) more public, more shared-with-adults experience of a movie.
>
> Symbols -- especially symbols with history (or histories) attached --  are
> multivalent, even less constrained by expectations of consistency and
> coherence than words are. Think about the Confederate flag here: it means
> something different, and provokes different responses, when flown over the
> South Carolina capitol than it does on the denim jacket of a North Dakota
> teenager (or on Prince Harry's outfit at that embarrassing costume party in
> 2005). For the latter it's almost totally free of either historical or
> racial context, and signifies only "I'm a small-r rebel, and this shows I
> don't care what the Establishment thinks."
>
> Ditto (here) for bikers' Wehrmacht helmets and other Third Reich trappings.
> Ditto for Mao's Little Red Book on US campuses circa 1970: it was a way of
> saying to LBJ and Nixon that "the enemy of my enemy (namely you) is my
> friend." Never mind that this particular friend had recently finished
> starving 20-40 million of The People, and was busily using *his* crowds of
> angry young people much the way Hitler had used the SA before purging it.
>
> Then of course there's Hitler in Thailand...
> http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-07-16/national/40606745_1_chiang-mai
> -ayutthaya-thailand-s
>
>
> demands foir cionsiust5enty
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bekah [mailto:bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 8:49 AM
> To: Monte Davis
> Cc: 'David Morris'; 'P-list'
> Subject: Re: The 3D Spies of WW2
>
> In Germany, many things related to Nazism are illegal, for obvious reasons.
> It's illegal to belong to a neo-Nazi organization, and it's illegal to own
> Nazi paraphernalia except for purposes of historical interest (such as for a
> museum.) But here's where things get a bit less clear. There seems to be
> some kind of law against displaying a swastika, but under what
> circumstances? The game Wolfenstein 3D was banned in Germany because it
> depicted swastikas, and the new Return to Castle Wolfenstein will be sold in
> Germany with all swastikas removed. However, when I lived in Germany, I
> could go to the local video store and rent "Indiana Jones and the Last
> Crusade," which features a giant Nazi parade in Berlin with swastikas
> everywhere. Why is that legal and Wolfenstein 3D is not?
> __________________
> http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=134617
>
>
>