Weekend Nazis have ways to make you shiver

[JohnLocke]

(...)

I asked one blond, floppy-haired Aryan specimen, an SS LAH soldier standing in a scout car, about the bad history. The sinister lightning flash runes of the SS were clearly visible on the lapel of his uniform.

SS Floppy: “We don’t represent the SS as such. We’re an armoured division.”

Sweeney: “But the SS was a Nazi fighting machine that went around killing people.”

SS Floppy: “I don’t know about Nazi — I’m Jewish.” He did not volunteer the name of his rabbi.

Sweeney: “But the SS did commit massacres. If you’re going to do this you should do it accurately.”

SS Floppy called out to an officer on the other side of the scout car for help, not realising the full magic of television. Our sound man moved his boom microphone and picked up every word: “F****** get rid of him, Glen, because I’m going to f****** whack him otherwise.”

Oh dear, it must have been the SS at a bad moment.

The more they were asked why they chose to reenact an Aryan killing machine, the more the SS turned and ran away from me. Finally I caught up with Sturmscharfuhrer - which is something like Brown Owl, only more so - Glen Swallow.

Sweeney: “You’ve decided not to talk to the BBC - why’s that?”

Sturmscharfuhrer Swallow: “No comment.”

Sweeney: “You’re wearing SS uniform - why do you choose to reenact a Nazi racial supremacist fighting machine?”

Swallow: “No comment.” Sweeney: “Why is it impossible in England in the 21st century to answer my questions?”

Swallow: “No comment.” A colleague with a hidden camera caught up with Swallow outside the beer tent in the small hours of the morning where he was chatting to a reenactor from another SS group.

Swallow appeared to have been in the British forces and was happy to comment about black soldiers - “all these f****** herberts out of Africa: they’re a waste of time”; and about the “PC” culture inside the British Army, and Muslims.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2327844.ece

[Xithras]

1. Someone has to play the bad guy.

When I was a kid, my dad did Civil War re-enactments on the Confederate side for a few years. The man doesn't have a racist bone in his body, but I still remember him telling me that "When you're re-enacting a war, someone always has to play the loser". That's as applicable to WW2 re-enactors as it is Civil War re-enactors.

This Swallow guy may be a legitimate racist, but most re-enactors are just bored old guys with an interest in history, some free time on the weekend, and a bit of cash to burn. As for their refusal to talk to the reporter: I know that back when my Dad was re-enacting, he used to catch a lot of shit from people who saw him in his uniform and automatically assumed that he was some redneck KKK loving racist (far from it, my dad is a pot smoking chemist, liberal, and Oregon environmentalist). After a while he began to recognize when people were asking questions just to start an argument, and began ignoring them. If he caught that kind of crap as a Confederate, I can only imagine the kind of crap these people have to put up with walking around in a Nazi SS uniform.