The New Look of Neo-Nazism

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**Manchu**

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323764804578312572095103786.html

The eastern German clothing brand Thor Steinar has quietly become a favorite fashion statement among right-wing extremists in the country over the past decade.

Far from a mainstream label, it made news in Germany last week, when a TV documentary alleged that guards hired to oversee temporary immigrant workers had neo-Nazi sympathies. Its proof? Footage showing a couple of them in clothes allegedly from Thor Steinar.

Founded by the closely held Mediatex GmbH in 2002 in the eastern German town of Königs Wusterhausen, the brand was an instant hit in the right-wing movement because of its deliberate allusions to Nordic mythology and its original logo's similarity to symbols worn by Nazi SS officers. As a result, the logo was banned in Germany in 2004, and the company rebranded itself with a more stylish, less overtly extremist look.

The company has always denied targeting right wingers, but because of the brand's popularity with right-wing extremists, it is banned from being worn in the German Parliament building, several soccer stadiums and at least one university campus.

One wouldn't know that from its website, which describes the brand as a "unique athletic maritime lifestyle label" and shows images of rugged, Nordic-looking men in outdoor gear braving the icy tundra. The company couldn't be reached for comment.

Thor Steinar hasn't always had loyal neo-Nazi support. In 2009, its founders sold the label to a Dubai-based firm. Some right-wing extremist groups called for a boycott of the suddenly "foreign" label. A couple of years later the brand was sold to a Swiss private investor.

Though the company doesn't report sales, its is thought to generate about two and a-half million dollars in annual revenue.

Last year, it made waves again by naming a store in the eastern German town Chemnitz "Brevik," a name many saw as too familiar to the name of Norwegian right-wing extremist and mass killer Anders Behring Breivik. The firm denied a connection, but changed the name.

Here's the Thor Steiner website: http://www.thorsteinar.de/

Compare with: http://www.hollisterco.com

A 2008 article from der Spiegel makes the point more clearly:

Still, the far right isn't as recognizable as it used to be. Only old-school neo-Nazis shave their heads and tie up their black boots with white laces. Among the younger crowd, a new look is in. Even Engelmann describes Thor Steinar designs as "stylish and fitted," and sometimes its logos are all that set it apart from other casual sportswear.

**Manchu**

The logo:

The clothes:

**Manchu**

Albatross wrote:
So hot right now.

In the UK?

**Manchu**

The issue here is normalization. Since WWII, Nazi-style nationalist-racist aesthetics and values have been firmly non-normative in the Western countries at least. There has been, to coin a phrase, a fairly strict swastika taboo. Thor Steiner shows that mainstream cultural artifacts can be "laced" with supposedly non-normative content. If Nazism can blend in so easily with mainstream culture, perhaps there is something wrong with mainstream culture. In Germany, I think this ties into the worries about inadequate de-Nazification.

**Manchu**

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Thor Steiner seems pretty clearly involved in cultivating extremists as its primary demographic, however, though their ability to sew iconography onto modern clothing doesn't really reflect on a failing of modern clothing...

They're not just slapping something clearly contradictory onto modern fashion. Modern fashion seemingly has room, as it were, for this iconography.

**Manchu**

First, the ability to conflate brand and values, rendering complicated sensibilities as superficial and tangible as the ink on a silkscreen t-shirt, is not happenstance -- it's by design. This element of intentionality is what we mean by fashion. Second, the politicization of raiment is a trend in the fashion of totalitization. In the mode (pun on the German intended) of National Socialism, this is why swastikas were emblazoned on everything the movement considered legitimate. Fashion in the Third Reich was an agency of legitimization and de-legitimization. Some wore swastika armbands, others wore yellow Stars of David. The same logic persists in contemporary mainstream culture. This is why Thor Steiner is possible.

**Manchu**

I think you are really underestimating the role of aesthetics in the rise of fascism. And the toxic nature of fascist aesthetics. And the degree to which they polluted Western culture during and after WWII.

**Manchu**

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
You're making an assumption that the relevant aesthetics contain some intrinsic power to taint and poison

No, I am not.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
You're also not explaining how generic stylized imagery and iconography being a common clothing feature constitutes a moral issue with society.

As KK pointed out to you above, the issue is not generic stylized imagery.

**Manchu**

@Sir Pseudonymous: Aesthetics, fashion, sensibilities, and values are not the same thing as symbols.

what are we disagreeing about?

Honestly, I don't really care. My point is that the fascist sensibility is totalitizing where even what one wears is overtly politicized specifically via branding. This exists in contemporary fashion since the mid twentieth century. It is therefore not difficult for fascist symbols to slip back into the picture; this is their "natural habitat," after all.