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Jewish advocate wants Perth trader in 'Nazi' memorabilia closed down

smartcooky said:
Horse, water and drink.

We should strive to educate people about the horrors of what the Nazis did any way we can, and if that means authenticity as regards imagery... so . be . it!
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Do you think the laws about display of Nazi symbols in Australia, Germany and other places are wrong? If you don’t, we are just arguing about what “display” means. If you do, well I couldn’t disagree more.
 
A problem is, armies throughout history, including naval forces, have aimed to have as part of their aggression to have terrifying symbology - note the figurehead of the C17 Wasa ship (now a museum in Stockholm) - these were designed to invoke fear and trepidation in the enemy. So fast forward to recent childhood int he 60;s and 70's: comics and films used to great effect the hated 'jerries' and their evil dark insignia as the 'Baddies'. Not dissimilar to the old Westerns, with the goodies in white hats and the baddies in black and - heaven forefend! - even in black leather and fringes. So, on the one hand we have the iron cross and swastika as a symbol of 'the baddies' and on the other, millions of people in living memory who actually suffered from the actions of the bearers of this symbolism (which was deliberately chosen by Hitler and Himmler for its association with the Occult and powerful effect on the psyche, invoking patriotism, folk worship, blood and soil loyalty, a mythical folk history of battle and conquest, etc.)

Somehow, there has to be an acknowledgement that (a) the suffering is real and (b) that banning a thing because of it associations is not as straightforward as one might think.

For example, there was a marshmallow company in Finland who got a graphics designer to design the packaging, which depicted an old-style 'hottentot' with bone in hair, grass skirt, naked from waist up, pitch black and dancing around a pot (- presumably cannibals). The figures are laughing and smiling with goggle eyes. Whilst this was a typical image in the previous generations, this generation complained and the packaging scrapped.
 
lionking said:
Sorry, I don’t agree. History is source documents, photographs, books and documentaries. Not models or flags with swastikas on them.

Look I’m not saying what you are doing illegal or evil stuff. Just distasteful in my opinion. I might do things distasteful to you. That’s the way the world works.
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Books and documentaries are derivative. They're things historians produce from study of source documents and artifacts from the period in question. A totenkopf medallion is just as much history as a canopic jar or stone-chipped arrowhead.
 
lionking said:
Do you think the laws about public display of Nazi symbols in Australia, Germany and other places are wrong?
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Sheesh, you don't even properly understand your own laws (so I have fixed your post for you. The NSW Government’s criminalizes knowingly displaying a Nazi*symbol in public without a reasonable excuse

If you think that educating people is not a reasonable excuse, then I feel really sorry for you and those who think like you. If you think sweeping these things under the carpet and pretending fascists will all magically go away because no-one will see hate symbols, then I fear for the future of your country. It won't be long before something like a history text book about WWII will have to have all its historically contemporaneous illustrations censored with blanks and redactions covering swastikas and other Nazi hate symbols, and author will have to describe what these symbols look like.

Oh, and to answer your question (after I have corrected it to reflect what your laws actually say), I believe that whatever Australia and Germany want to do in that regard is their business, and yes, I do support banning the display of hate symbols in public unless there is some bona-fide value to doing so. In fact, I would go further. I would not leave "reasonable" undefined as your law does, as it is too subjective and open to individual interpretation. I would nail down what it means in the Law itself, e.g.

Education about the history of Nazi Germany.
Display on the above themes in museums and galleries.
 
Skeptical Greg said:
Surely that would be illegal also..
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Ultimately, using the "thin end of the wedge" principle... probably

I can just see it, in a historical textbook about the rise of the Third Reich...

"The Nazis marched through Europe under the banner of the swastika. Now I'd like to show what the swastika actually looks like, but we are legally prohibited from using illustrations that depict this symbol. In fact, we are not even allowed to describe it to you, except to say that was a form of cross"

There is an old saying that applies here... "Evil thrives in darkness"
 
smartcooky said:
Ultimately, using the "thin end of the wedge" principle... probably

I can just see it, in a historical textbook about the rise of the Third Reich...

"The Nazis marched through Europe under the banner of the swastika. Now I'd like to show what the swastika actually looks like, but we are legally prohibited from using illustrations that depict this symbol. In fact, we are not even allowed to describe it to you, except to say that was a form of cross"

There is an old saying that applies here... "Evil thrives in darkness"
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And why you can't make assumptions about someone with nazi tattoos. They could be ironic or just history buffs. That's why you can't kick someone out of a public restaurant merely for wearing a swastika t shirt.
 
Just realised, I have a book on my shelves that has a large swastika on the dust jacket. It's called Golfing for Cats, a collection of humorous pieces by Alan Coren, so named because the top selling books at the time were about golf, cats and the Third Reich.

It's a second impression from 1976, so things were somewhat different then. I don't know what they did about the dust jacket in countries where displaying a swastika was illegal and he certainly wouldn't get away with it today (were he still alive). Not only the fact it HAS a swastika on it, but using that symbol on a humorous book? And him being Jewish? :eek:
 
SteveAitch said:
Just realised, I have a book on my shelves that has a large swastika on the dust jacket. It's called Golfing for Cats, a collection of humorous pieces by Alan Coren, so named because the top selling books at the time were about golf, cats and the Third Reich.

It's a second impression from 1976, so things were somewhat different then. I don't know what they did about the dust jacket in countries where displaying a swastika was illegal and he certainly wouldn't get away with it today (were he still alive). Not only the fact it HAS a swastika on it, but using that symbol on a humorous book? And him being Jewish? :eek:
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I think a lot of books had pictures of swastikas on the cover until, maybe recently. I had an early edition of Fatherland by Robert Harris which was a massive bestseller and had a prominent publicity campaign that features the Nazi eagle with the swastika in its talons on the front. Apparently the original hardback cover had a Nazi swastika and the flag of the EU as Harris equates the two in the novel. The ******

I also remember that when I first went to university accommodation, my housemate walked in to my room and saw history books of mine on the shelf. Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin and Dennis Mack Smith’s Mussolini among them, and him being shocked by them. Later he was telling other housemates about the shocking books he had seen and we had to spend some time explaining what it means to study history.

I think the point here is that you can interpret things incorrectly, and in some cases people will interpret things as uncharitably as possible. I think it is daft to have a zero-tolerance policy where all judgment is made obsolete by making all instances of particular Nazi images or even names or books Verboten.
 
My hardback edition of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has a big swastika on the spine as well. I remember my brother-in-law from Germany asking me if that was a copy of Mein Kampf when he spotted it on my bookshelves.

One presumes the German edition of the William Shirer book has a different dust cover.
 
angrysoba said:
I think a lot of books had pictures of swastikas on the cover until, maybe recently. I had an early edition of Fatherland by Robert Harris which was a massive bestseller and had a prominent publicity campaign that features the Nazi eagle with the swastika in its talons on the front. Apparently the original hardback cover had a Nazi swastika and the flag of the EU as Harris equates the two in the novel. The ******

I also remember that when I first went to university accommodation, my housemate walked in to my room and saw history books of mine on the shelf. Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin and Dennis Mack Smith’s Mussolini among them, and him being shocked by them. Later he was telling other housemates about the shocking books he had seen and we had to spend some time explaining what it means to study history.

I think the point here is that you can interpret things incorrectly, and in some cases people will interpret things as uncharitably as possible. I think it is daft to have a zero-tolerance policy where all judgment is made obsolete by making all instances of particular Nazi images or even names or books Verboten.
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As I mentioned earlier, The Holcroft Covenant (Ludlum), The Odessa File (Forsyth) and SS-GB (Deighton) are ones that I have and those are just the fiction ones. I also have

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen (bloody fascinating book if you are into the history of the early days of the US space programme)

The French Against the French: Collaboration and Resistance by Milton Dank (about the way families were torn apart, and the emotional and physical conflict during the occupation of France, between as those who supported the Régime de Vichy and those who helped the Resistance.)

But there are also plenty of others.

The important thing to remember is that a swastika is not some all-powerful weapon that can do you any harm. If you let it offend you, then you are the problem. If any of the books on your bookshelves have a swastika on them, it does not automatically make you a Nazi, a neo-Nazi, a Nazi sympathizer, or an otherwise bad person. Anyone who is offended by the mere sight of a swastika on a book is someone that you might want to feel sorry for. Anyone come to my house and tries taking me to task for having those books will get a short, sharp lesson on rights, freedoms and history.
 
smartcooky said:
As I mentioned earlier, The Holcroft Covenant (Ludlum), The Odessa File (Forsyth) and SS-GB (Deighton) are ones that I have and those are just the fiction ones. I also have

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen (bloody fascinating book if you are into the history of the early days of the US space programme)

The French Against the French: Collaboration and Resistance by Milton Dank (about the way families were torn apart, and the emotional and physical conflict during the occupation of France, between as those who supported the Régime de Vichy and those who helped the Resistance.)

But there are also plenty of others.

The important thing to remember is that a swastika is not some all-powerful weapon that can do you any harm. If you let it offend you, then you are the problem. If any of the books on your bookshelves have a swastika on them, it does not automatically make you a Nazi, a neo-Nazi, a Nazi sympathizer, or an otherwise bad person. Anyone who is offended by the mere sight of a swastika on a book is someone that you might want to feel sorry for. Anyone come to my house and tries taking me to task for having those books will get a short, sharp lesson on rights, freedoms and history.
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What strikes me is that things have changed dramatically even in the last 30 or 40 years (i.e., as we move further away from the Holocaust and Nazi Germany). There were numerous wargames back in the 1970s where you could play as either side; I remember playing Axis vs Allies and while I preferred playing as the Allies I certainly was willing to defend the fatherland if it was my turn, just as I didn't have any qualms about playing the South in Civil War games. We might as well have been playing the green against the gold as far as I was concerned but putting it on historical battlefields made it more interesting and immediate.
 
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Brainster said:
What strikes me is that things have changed dramatically even in the last 30 or 40 years (i.e., as we move further away from the Holocaust and Nazi Germany). There were numerous wargames back in the 1970s where you could play as either side; I remember playing Axis vs Allies and while I preferred playing as the Allies I certainly was willing to defend the fatherland if it was my turn, just as I didn't have any qualms about playing the South in Civil War games. We might as well have been playing the green against the gold as far as I was concerned but putting it on historical battlefields made it more interesting and immediate.
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We could even ask, hello? U.S.A and the UK and allies were allies with, er, Stalin, mass murderer, prototype blueprint for Putin...?
 
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