In worst idea ever, Zara sells shirt similar to that of Nazi camp inmates. On Israeli site too http://t.co/Kqs3PfXq31 pic.twitter.com/PRuEfn6Wsr
— Oren Kessler (@OrenKessler) August 27, 2014
2014 - The Year Hitler Broke the Internet and Nazi Aesthetics Popped Up Everywhere. (Forward). By Anna Goldenberg.
Remember the public outcry in June, when a teenager from Alabama took a selfie in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and posted it on Twitter?
Or the swastika ring for sale by a third-party vendor at Sears but that was removed after multiple complaints?
This year has seen its share of seemingly ridiculous headlines that might make some of us wonder whether Nazi symbols have entered mainstream culture.
While there is no question that some of these incidents are seriously worrisome (such as the poster depicting the “Arbeit macht frei” [“Work makes (you) free”] sign from the Dachau concentration camp, sold at Wal-Mart’s online store, again by an independent seller), there were plenty of others in cases where the right reaction is much more difficult to figure out.
Just think of the photo from a press conference in Israel last July that shows Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Netanyahu’s finger casts a shadow on Merkel’s upper lip, making it appear as if she had a toothbrush mustache just like, yes, you guessed it, another German leader: Adolf Hitler. Sort of funny, right? Or maybe a bit unfair to Merkel, the first German chancellor to visit Dachau? Are we allowed to laugh about Hitler memes?
There is a growing cultural desire to laugh at Nazis. According to Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, a history professor at Fairfield University and author of the forthcoming book “Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past Is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture,” this makes sense: On the one hand, laughing at Hitler, Nazis and perhaps even the Holocaust renders the perpetrators and the atrocities they committed more tangible and makes them appear less omnipotent; on the other hand, however, it trivializes the horrors the regime committed.
Here are some “Nazi moments” that made headlines in the past year — and some thoughts on how to treat them. Read and see the full story here.
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