The Weirdest Things Hate Groups Tried to Co-Opt
Being mad that they’re not the dominant culture is kind of a hate group’s whole deal, so it makes sense that they’d try to steal as much of it as they can. Some of the things they try to steal don’t make any sense, however. Things like…
Christmas
In 1921, Hitler gave a rousing Christmas speech denouncing “the cowardly Jews for breaking the world-liberator on the cross,” but the Nazis had a weird relationship with Jesus and Christmas. In an effort to bolster German nationalism, they tried to redefine Christmas “as a neo-pagan, Nordic celebration,” encouraging children to craft “Odin’s Sun Wheel” decorations and bake cookies shaped like fertility symbols. Gift shopping was problematic, as many department stores were owned by Jews, but they’d already started taking them, so the ones that weren’t proudly assured customers that “the department store has been taken over by an Aryan!” It was the most horrendous time of the year.
Nudism
Likewise, the Nazis initially outlawed nudism, but the man in charge of physically training the German army, mostly naked, changed their minds. Hans Surén even wrote a whole book that became popular with the Nazi higher-ups about the benefits of exercising naked, especially covered in oil, which was for the purpose of training the body to withstand low temperatures and definitely not a sex thing. Surén was eventually kicked out of the Nazi party for masturbating in public, but it was not a sex thing.
Hawaiian Shirts
There are few garments more chill than the Hawaiian shirt, but in 2022, it became the uniform of a decidedly unchill group of people. After the rise of a meme involving the kind of exhausting wordplay that makes Cockney rhyming slang look coherent, “luau chic” was the name of the game for right-wing message board trolls who soon started showing up at the grossest kinds of protests. Fortunately, the same year, Top Gun: Maverick returned the Hawaiian shirt to its rightful owners: traumatized thirtysomethings who dress like their dead dads.
Runes
Swastikas are out; they were getting too conspicuous. For the neo-est of neo-Nazis, it’s all about runes. If you’ve never seen runes outside of 2007’s Stardust, it’s just a type of alphabet used by ancient Scandinavians, who neo-Nazis have declared racially pure or whatever. That’s it. It’s like misogynists getting tattoos of random letters because the alphabet was ostensibly invented by men.
John Carpenter’s ‘They Live!’
Carpenter just wants to eat popsicles and not bother anybody, but for about 15 years, anti-Semites have been trying to claim one of his most iconic works as their own. For reasons that only make sense in their weird little heads, the aliens in They Live! are obvious stand-ins for the Jews that supposedly control the world. It couldn’t be more obvious that they actually represent the wealthy Reaganite conservatives that actually did, but Carpenter was still forced to explain that in 2017. “THEY LIVE is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism,” he wrote. “It has nothing to do with Jewish control of the world, which is slander and a lie.”
God, they’re so dumb.
