advertisement


Clapton’s new single

A lot of the early touring groups of the '60s owed more to the work of Bo Diddley, Elvis and Chuck Berry, I remember as a schoolboy dancing to their music at local dance halls, Clapton emerged from that scene, not the Robert Johnson scene which was more folkish.
 
homophobia has been pretty much endemic in Christianity, Islam, Judaism etc throughout history and countless numbers have been murdered over the centuries as a result.
I suspect that was a factor in Morrissey’s journey to fascism. A misplaced belief in Islam as inherently more homophobic than Christianity, leading him to fall under the influence of violently anti-Islam outfits like Britain First.
 
Well, I guess it still shouldn’t be a problem for a professional taylor of today to say that the German uniforms were the best, for the technical reasons he understands. Or for a military engineer to say that, say, the Blitzkrieg strategy was ahead of its time in Europe. Or that the V2 were a brilliant technical achievement. I can’t help it, they were.

Likewise, a singer should be allowed to say the same things. Why not ?

Let's say it's in bad taste. Killed six millions Jews, but had smart leather coats.
 
IIRC Hugo Boss made those coats, and they are still held in very high regard as a brand, as are BMW, Mercedes etc all of whom made killing machines for the Nazi Reich. The one that amuses me the most is the VW Beetle’s transformation from Hitler’s People’s Car to hippy peace icon in only a couple of decades. Rightfully so too, it is a design classic.
 
IIRC Hugo Boss made those coats, and they are still held in very high regard as a brand, as are BMW, Mercedes etc all of whom made killing machines for the Nazi Reich. The one that amuses me the most is the VW Beetle’s transformation from Hitler’s People’s Car to hippy peace icon in only a couple of decades. Rightfully so too, it is a design classic.
Yes it’s true that companies that contributed to the Nazi war effort exist and prosper still, and you could also cite the fact that the US was complicit in assisting Nazis to evade justice in return for cooperation with the development of U.S. military technology. That however should not obscure the fact that comments in relation to the stylishness or quality of Nazi uniforms is simply crass, insensitive and offensive.
 
That however should not obscure the fact that comments in relation to the stylishness or quality of Nazi uniforms is simply crass, insensitive and offensive.
Let's agree on inappropriate in our times. By (shaky) comparison, it comes to my mind that I'm not telling a 20-stonish woman that she's fat either, even though she sure is a little chubby.
 
Let's agree on inappropriate in our times. By (shaky) comparison, it comes to my mind that I'm not telling a 20-stonish woman that she's fat either, even though she sure is a little chubby.
If she'd killed six million Jews, maybe.
 
Yes it’s true that companies that contributed to the Nazi war effort exist and prosper still, and you could also cite the fact that the US was complicit in assisting Nazis to evade justice in return for cooperation with the development of U.S. military technology. That however should not obscure the fact that comments in relation to the stylishness or quality of Nazi uniforms is simply crass, insensitive and offensive.

History is complex and multi-faceted and surely one can separate the interesting out without simply applying a simple binary good/bad filter. I cited the VE Beetle above as an example of something (a fascist “people-wagon”) that shifted to design classic and even hippy peace icon. There are countless other examples, e.g. the communist art and technology of the Soviet Union (Stalin murdered more of his population than even Hitler) which has many fans. Pretty much every lavish old city building plus countless vast country piles in the UK or USA which were built on the proceeds of human trafficking and slavery and a lot of that wealth is still very much in play to this day being passed from generation to generation. One could make a strong argument that much of the industrial revolution was built upon resources generated from slavery. It is also best not to look at the UK monarchy too closely which is based upon nothing more than the tyranny of violent conquest. Up to their necks in blood, brutality, and stolen wealth, yet many view it as a tourist industry selling cheesy souvenirs and trinkets. Is a Hugo Boss Nazi coat really that different?
 
IIRC Hugo Boss made those coats, and they are still held in very high regard as a brand, as are BMW, Mercedes etc all of whom made killing machines for the Nazi Reich.

More to the point they ran their businesses with slave labour from concentration camps. And Ferdinand Porsche was an officer in the SS.

But yes, I agree, history is complex. Though I'm glad many of these companies have acknowledged what they did.

Not quite the same thing at all but I thought it was interesting Fred Perry went as far as stopping sales of their t-shirts in the US because they were so unhappy they'd been adopted as uniform by the far-right Proud Boys.
 
History is complex and multi-faceted and surely one can separate the interesting out without simply applying a simple binary good/bad filter.
I don’t disagree. My point was purely in relation to comments about Nazi uniforms as ‘stylish’ (of which I’m not accusing you). I wasn’t actually aware Ferry had made those comments but I’ve heard similar from others. Whether it’s technically accurate from a sartorial point of view or not is entirely irrelevant. A Hugo Boss coat in and of itself is, of course, subject to the same historical filters you cite. That is entirely different from flippant comments in relation Nazis.
 
More to the point they ran their businesses with slave labour from concentration camps. And Ferdinand Porsche was an officer in the SS.

I hadn’t realised the extent of Ferdinand Porsche’s Nazi past or that the French had arrested him as a war criminal afterwards. An interesting Wikipedia entry. A transition from slave-labour-built tools of fascism to a producer of modern Veblen goods. By saying that Von Braun went from a similar background to landing America on the moon.
 
My point about Ferry is that it was a hugely tasteless provocation, who I think was suggesting that the Nazis looked cooler than the Brits. Assigning this coolness as separate in some way from the symbolism and meaning of the Nazi uniform is rather different to saying the Nazis made good cars. And anyone who has visited the Olympic stadium in Berlin cannot be troubled by ones surrounding.
 
IIRC Bryan Ferry is a Tory and supports hunting, blood-sports etc, as only utter pricks can. Roxy Music did some amazing stuff, especially early on, but Ferry is certainly best ignored as a person. Eno talks exponentially more sense.
 
Ferry’s son was the ringleader of a rabble of Henry Hoo-Ha blood sport enthusiasts who invaded the floor of House of Commons in 2004. They received an 18 month conditional discharge. I can imagine the response if a bunch of Asian kids had tried the same stunt. Ferry Snr. later praised the action of his son.
 


advertisement


Back
Top