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.

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.

The German mail-order giant Quelle has threatened to ban the British sports-wear label Lonsdale from its collection because of the brand's widespread popularity among racist and neo-Nazi groups.

The move would represent a major blow for the British boxing sportswear company, as its clothing collection would be withdrawn from the 40 million mail- order catalogues Quelle distributes to customers across Europe.

Michel Badke, Quelle's managing director, said yesterday that the measure was being considered because of growing concerns in Germany and across Europe that Lonsdale had become a favourite label among members of known neo-Nazi and racist organisations. "Quelle wants to distance itself clearly from all tendencies associated with extremism," Mr Badke said in a statement. "We want to counter any suggestion that we are supporting right-wing extremists through the sale of these goods."

Lawyers representing Lonsdale declined to comment yesterday.

Lonsdale is famous in Britain because of its boxing links. But in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, the label is associated with the extreme right. Skinhead thugs are frequently photographed in the press wearing Lonsdale bomber jackets and hooded sweatshirts.

The letters NSDA - contained in the brand's name - are taken by far-right supporters to be one letter short of the initials of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party - the National Socialist Worker's Party - or, the National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP).

Members of Germany's extreme-right party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), sport Lonsdale clothing and party officials wore the label during election campaigning in Saxony in 2004, when it gained seats in the state parliament for the first time in 20 years.

A spokesman for Quelle said yesterday that the company would decide whether to implement a ban on Lonsdale clothing within days. "We are still considering the issue because, despite its image, Lonsdale is known for actively campaigning against the far right," he said.

He added that any ban would not affect customers who had already ordered Lonsdale clothing. If imposed, the label would be withdrawn from the company's next print run of mail- order catalogues: "Lonsdale products are known for their quality and removing them from our collection would result in considerable losses," he said.

It is the first time that a German company has considered action to prohibit the distribution of Lonsdale products. But in Holland, nightclubs, bars, schools and a town have launched a campaign to ban wearing the label because of its right-wing associations.

Lonsdale has in the past refused to supply German retail outlets known to be popular with far-right groups and has tried to improve its image by sponsoring immigrant and gay rights campaigns. In Holland, Lonsdale responded to the campaign by launching a publicity campaign with the slogan: "Lonsdale loves all colours."

Quelle's decision to consider exempting Lonsdale from its collection appeared to be one of the most far-reaching bans the company has ever been threatened with. In Germany alone, Quelle distributes an annual 27 million mail-order catalogues to customers.

Quelle's announcement was prompted by a youth group from Germany's Social Democratic Party, which wrote to the company's management complaining that the Lonsdale brand and its widespread use by neo-Nazis was encouraging an acceptance of views that were prohibited in Germany - where the Nazi party is banned.

"We were completely surprised by Quelle's reaction to our letter, " said Jane Kuewen, a spokesman for the Social Democrat youth group. "Quelle is showing courage. Its actions are exemplary," she added.

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm not seeing the relation of the bottom to the top myself. It just looks like a really gothic style TS to me. Actually it looks a lot like tatoos I saw in LA on the vatoes. Now that would be ironic.

But again, I'm not down with the iconography. You could be right.

 Albatross wrote:
So hot right now.

 Ratbarf wrote:


Aside from that though, Germany sounds really restrictive. You can't wear clothes from a certain clothing company? Even though the clothes in question may not have any of the questionable symbols that caused the ban in the first place?

Yikes,

 Manchu wrote:

 Albatross wrote:
So hot right now.

In the UK?

 Avatar 720 wrote:
I can see how this would appeal to all those Neo-Nazis out there.

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm so not seeing it from their site. Granted:
2. I have zero knoweldege of Neo Nazi symbols, icons etc. etc.

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm so not seeing it from their site. Granted:
1. I only opened the front page
2. I have zero knoweldege of Neo Nazi symbols, icons etc. etc.
3. I may have been distracted by the sudden appearance of bikinis.

 Frazzled wrote:
Interesting. I don't get the Norse stuff though. Isn't Norse Scandinavian? I know the German Opera had similar stuff but I don't know if thats more made up or what. I know some Goth dudes had similar gods (Donner for Thor being one). But that seems to hijack more of the Swedish meatball type stuff.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm so not seeing it from their site. Granted:
1. I only opened the front page
2. I have zero knoweldege of Neo Nazi symbols, icons etc. etc.
3. I may have been distracted by the sudden appearance of bikinis.

I was the same at first. It looked pretty much like the generic modern American beach/casual sportswear that a lot of labels produce these days for the youth market.

But if you keep looking you find things like these slogans:

Nordics Never Will Be Slaves.
Nordic Company Division (with skull motif) -- just looks a bit bikery without the mention of Nordics but once you plaster Nordic over everything it gets a bit strange, especially considering that Germany is not a Nordic nation, and it isn't an English speaking nation.

Dr Martens boots were tarnished by their popularity with racist skinheads in the UK, and didn't have any racist imagery in any of their products, so to include that sort of slogan and logo is rather suspicious.

But I don't know.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Interesting. I don't get the Norse stuff though. Isn't Norse Scandinavian? I know the German Opera had similar stuff but I don't know if thats more made up or what. I know some Goth dudes had similar gods (Donner for Thor being one). But that seems to hijack more of the Swedish meatball type stuff.

Norse is Scandanavian, but for some groups it has a certain appeal because they see it as connected to the Aryian race and their notions of racial purity.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm so not seeing it from their site. Granted:
1. I only opened the front page
2. I have zero knoweldege of Neo Nazi symbols, icons etc. etc.
3. I may have been distracted by the sudden appearance of bikinis.

I was the same at first. It looked pretty much like the generic modern American beach/casual sportswear that a lot of labels produce these days for the youth market.

But if you keep looking you find things like these slogans:

Nordics Never Will Be Slaves.
Nordic Company Division (with skull motif) -- just looks a bit bikery without the mention of Nordics but once you plaster Nordic over everything it gets a bit strange, especially considering that Germany is not a Nordic nation, and it isn't an English speaking nation.

Dr Martens boots were tarnished by their popularity with racist skinheads in the UK, and didn't have any racist imagery in any of their products, so to include that sort of slogan and logo is rather suspicious.

But I don't know.

 Frazzled wrote:


Interesting that it started in East Germany. Weren't the real deal 'aryans" actually Indian? I never looked into this stuff as the Texan in me rather just run a horse through with six guns blazing, and of course the salv in me wants to shoot at the Reichstag with an SU 152. hey its what we do...

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The historical career of fascism in the 20th century may go some way to explaining that.

 Frazzled wrote:
Interesting that it started in East Germany. Weren't the real deal 'aryans" actually Indian? I never looked into this stuff as the Texan in me rather just run a horse through with six guns blazing, and of course the slav in me wants to shoot at the Reichstag with an SU 152. hey its what we do...

Aryanism developed as a racial ideology that claimed that the Aryan race was a master race. While originally meant simply as a neutral ethno-linguistic classification; by the late 19th century onwards the concept of the Aryan race was used by proponents of ideologically-motivated racism and white supremacism such as in doctrines of Nazism and neo-Nazism. . .
The ideology of Nazism was based upon the conception of the Aryan race being a master race. The Nazi conception of the Aryan race arose from earlier proponents of a supremacist conception of the race as described by racial theorist figures such as Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. The Nazis were divided on some parts of the constitution of the Aryan race.
Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther identified the Aryan race in Europe as having five subtype races: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, and East Baltic.[40] Günther applied a Nordicist conception that Nordics were the highest in the racial hierarchy amongst these five Aryan subtype races.[41] In his book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1922) ("Racial Science of the German People"), Günther recognized Germans as being composed of all five Aryan subtypes, but emphasized the strong Nordic heritage amongst Germans.[42] He defined each racial subtype according to general physical appearance and their psychological qualities including their "racial soul" - referring to their emotional traits and religious beliefs, and provided detailed information on their hair, eye, and skin colours, facial structure.[42] He provided photographs of Germans identified as Nordic in places like Bedan, Stuttgart, Salzburg, and Schwaben; and provided photographs of Germans he identified as Alpine and Mediterranean types, especially in Vorarlberg, Bavaria, and the Black Forest region of Baden.[42] Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler read Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes that influenced his racial policy, and with Nazi backing, Günther attained a position in the anthropology department at the University of Jena in 1932 where Hitler attended Günther's inaugural lecture at Jena.[43]
Günther distinguished Aryans from Jews, and identified Jews as descending from non-European races, and particularly what he classified as the Near Asian race (Vorderasiatische) more commonly known as the Armenoid race, and said that such origins rendered Jews as fundamentally different and incompatible with Germans and most Europeans.[44] This association of Jews with the Armenoid type had been utilized by Zionist Jews who claimed that Jews were a group within that type.[45] He claimed that the Near Eastern race descended from the Caucasus in the fifth and fourth millennia BC, and that it had expanded into Asia Minor and Mesopotamia and eventually to the west coat of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.[46] Aside from ascribing Armenians and Jews as having Near Eastern characteristics, he ascribed them to several other contemporary peoples, including: Greeks, Turks, Syrians, and Iranians.[47] In his work Racial Characteristics of the Jewish People, he defined the racial soul of the Near Eastern race as emphasizing a "commercial spirit" (Handelgeist), and describing them as "artful traders" - a term that Gunther ascribed as being used by Jewish racial theorist Samuel Weissenberg to describe contemporary Armenians, Greeks, and Jews.[48] Günther added to that description of the Near Eastern type being commercially spirited and artful traders, that the type held strong psychological manipulation skills that aided them in trade.[49] He claimed that the Near Eastern race had been "bred not so much for the conquest and exploitation of nature as it was for the conquest and exploitation of people".[50]
Hitler's conception of the Aryan race explicitly excluded the vast majority of Slavs from being part of the master race, regarding Slavs as having dangerous Jewish and Asiatic influences, which made them belong to Jewish Bolshevism.[51] The Nazis because of this declared Slavs to be untermenschen (subhumans).[52] Exceptions were made for certain Slavs who were deemed to have sufficient Aryan characteristics.[53] Hitler described Slavs as "a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master".[54] Hitler declared that because Slavs were subhumans that the Geneva Conventions were not applicable to them, and German soldiers in World War II were thus permitted to ignore the Geneva Conventions in regards to Slavs. [55] Hitler called Slavs "a rabbit family" meaning they were intrinsically idle and disorganized.[56] Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had media speak of Slavs as primitive animals whom were from the Siberian tundra who were like a "dark wave of filth".[57][58] The Nazi notion of Slavs being inferior was part of the agenda for creating Lebensraum ("living space") for Germans and other Germanic people in eastern Europe that was initiated during World War II under Generalplan Ost, millions of Germans and other Germanic settlers would be moved into conquered territories of Eastern Europe, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be annihilated, removed, or enslaved.[59] Nazi Germany's ally the Independent State of Croatia rejected the common conception that Croats were primarily a Slavic people and claimed that Croats were primarily the descendents of the Germanic Goths.[60] However the Nazi regime continued to classify Croats as "subhuman" in spite of the alliance.[61] Nazi Germany's policy changed towards Slavs in response to military manpower shortages, in which it accepted Slavs to serve in its armed forces within occupied territories, in spite of them being considered subhuman, as a pragmatic means to resolve such manpower shortages.[62]
The Ahnenpass which was said to be "documented proof of one's Aryan lineage" stated that "wherever they might live in the world" Aryans were "e.g. an Englishman or a Swede, a Frenchman or a Czech, a Pole or an Italian".[63] Hitler often doubted whether Czechs were Aryan or not, he said in his table talk "It is enough for a Czech to grow a moustache for anyone to see, from the way the thing droops, that his origin is Mongoloian.[64] After the occupation of Poland, most Poles were regarded as untermenschen to be used by Germany as manual labourers.[65] The question of whether Italians were Aryan enough was questioned by the Nazi racial theorists, Hitler viewed northern Italians as strongly Aryan but not southern Italians. The Nazis viewed the downfall of the Roman Empire as being the result of the pollution of blood from racial intermixing, claiming that Italians were a hybrid of races, including black African races. Hitler even mentioned his view of the presence of Negroid blood in the Mediterranean peoples during his first meeting with Mussolini in 1934.[66]
German Interior Ministry official Albert Gorter drafted an official definition of the Aryan Race for the new Civil Service Law that included European Aryans and Asian Aryans of the subtype race known as Irano-Afghan.[67] However Achim Gerke revised Gorter's draft of the Civil Service Law by removing such contemporary Asian people from the definition of the Aryan race, as they were considered too foreign to be connected with the Aryan Race as in Europe.[68]
The idea of the Northern origins of the Aryans was particularly influential in Germany. It was widely believed that the "Vedic Aryans" were ethnically identical to the Goths, Vandals and other ancient Germanic peoples of the Völkerwanderung. This idea was often intertwined with antisemitic ideas. The distinctions between the "Aryan" and "Semitic" peoples were based on the aforementioned linguistic and ethnic history. A complete, highly speculative theory of Aryan and anti-Semitic history can be found in Alfred Rosenberg's major work, The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Rosenberg's account of ancient history, melded with his racial speculations, proved to be very effective in spreading racialism among German intellectuals in the early twentieth century, especially after the First World War.
Semitic peoples came to be seen as a foreign presence within Aryan societies, and the Semitic peoples were often pointed to as the cause of conversion and destruction of social order and values leading to culture and civilization's downfall by proto-Nazi theorists such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
These and other ideas evolved into the Nazi use of the term "Aryan race" to refer to what they saw as being a master race, which was narrowly defined by the Nazis as being identical with the Nordic race, followed by other sub-races of the Aryan race. They worked to maintain the purity of this race through eugenics programs (including anti-miscegenation legislation, compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and the mentally deficient, the execution of the institutionalized mentally ill as part of a euthanasia program).
Heinrich Himmler (the Reichsführer of the SS), the person ordered by Adolf Hitler to implement the Final Solution, or The Holocaust,[69] told his personal masseur Felix Kersten that he always carried with him a copy of the ancient Aryan scripture, the Bhagavad Gita because it relieved him of guilt about what he was doing – he felt that like the warrior Arjuna, he was simply doing his duty without attachment to his actions.[70]

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The historical career of fascism in the 20th century may go some way to explaining that.

If there's a war in Europe in my lifetime (the next 50+ years) I'll change my name to Franz Ferdinand

 Mr. Burning wrote:

Indian Sanskrit word in origin and also used in Iran.

Iran = land/place of the Aryans.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Interesting. I don't get the Norse stuff though. Isn't Norse Scandinavian? I know the German Opera had similar stuff but I don't know if thats more made up or what. I know some Goth dudes had similar gods (Donner for Thor being one). But that seems to hijack more of the Swedish meatball type stuff.

Norse is Scandanavian, but for some groups it has a certain appeal because they see it as connected to the Aryian race and their notions of racial purity.

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Interesting. I don't get the Norse stuff though. Isn't Norse Scandinavian? I know the German Opera had similar stuff but I don't know if thats more made up or what. I know some Goth dudes had similar gods (Donner for Thor being one). But that seems to hijack more of the Swedish meatball type stuff.

Norse is Scandanavian, but for some groups it has a certain appeal because they see it as connected to the Aryian race and their notions of racial purity.

There's a few funny things about it though.

If they accept the Asatru, then they accept Odin as the All-Father.

The All-Father created each race and is the father of all man- (and woman-) kind.

This therefore means that under Odinism and other neo-Pagan Norse religions racism is prohibited.

Suck it, Neo-Nazis.