Category: Politics

Wikipedia has a good article on the probable source of what is now known as the Duck Test

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

In recent weeks, in light of what is happening in the US, and the direction various European states are moving, I was going to write a rant about using “Nazi” as a short hand descriptor. But I won’t.

Until recently, I was never particularly comfortable with any modern reactionary being labelled as a “Nazi”. Even “neo-Nazi” is something I was not keen on. My reasoning behind this is a little circuitous, and I know that some folk won’t agree with me, so bear with me a little. Over my lifetime I have seen a change in the way that “Nazis” were presented in popular western culture, and how they are present in the zeitgeist. Going back to the 70’s, I recall that we started to see movies (other than movies about WW2) where villains were identified as Nazis – I am thinking of things like Marathon Man and The Boys From Brazil, where the villain was a remnant representive of an ancient and terrible evil. Fast forward to the 80’s, and we see a more light-hearted and comic-book evil in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, or the 90’s with Doom and other video games where Nazis have transformed into “abstract Bad Guys”. Most presentations of Nazis in popular culture now are as arbitrary mooks that nobody can object to seeing punched, shot, or bombed.

This is not a new idea of mine, if you dig around you will find far better analyses of this process of abstraction, and indeed trivialisation. I encourage you to do so. So until recently, I would rather that real-world current evil bastards not be labelled with something that has become a trivial insult. I would until recently have said “look, they are not actual Nazis, and you are using that label as a lazy short hand for evil bell ends who should be locked away on an island for our own safety”

Except I can’t. Not any more. If it looks like a Nazi, salutes like a Nazi, marches like a Nazi, talks like a Nazi, I think we should treat it like a Nazi. Particularly since it is evident that in the US there are significant numbers of people who are literally draping themselves with the symbology and styling of the historical Nazis.

So my plea to you now is: If you want to label someone as Nazi, please double check your reasons for doing so. We owe it to the people who fought the Nazis last time around to take the label seriously. Mostly for myself I will be trying to use “racist arsehole”, “nationalistic bell-end” and “evil twat”, because I do not want to award these pricks with any of the weight that the very specific historical name carries.

I went to the Imperial War Museum a few days ago – sadly it’s largely under construction at the moment, but should re-open in Summer 2014, so I can go back. Outside the front entrance is a section of the Berlin Wall.

The side that faced the west:

The side that faced the east:

And the narrow divide between the east and the west:

Perhaps 6 inches of poorly made concrete and rebar, forcing a psychological chasm that seemed for such a very long time to be completely unbridgeable. It’s worth thinking about.