Sweet “Nazi Chic”: It Could Only Have Happened In Thailand?

Forgive us for being slightly passed the deadline with this one – it’s worth a mention nevertheless: How a Thai school had to apologize to a Jewish organization for a Nazi celebration.

You heard it right: The “Sieg Heil” salutes happily performed by Thai school kids and the black Hitler swastikas affectionately made by the same kids – both actually meant to be fun.

Well, we farangs just have no sense of sanuk. What should you care as long as you look sexy and mega-chic!

Here’s an Associated Press report dating back to October 17th, 2007:

BANGKOK, Thailand: A Thai school has apologized to an international Jewish human rights organization for its sponsorship of a celebration that involved a Nazi-themed parade, according to an announcement received Wednesday.

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a press release that a group of students at Thewphaingarm School in Bangkok chose to dress as Nazis on sports day, an annual event held in September that divides students into teams.

Photos from the event showed about 200 students — between the ages of 6 and 18 — dressed in red outfits with swastikas on their baseball caps behind a large sign with “NAZI” in shoulder-high letters.

Some students at the school — which also offers an English-language curriculum — wore elaborately stylized stormtrooper uniforms, carried fake rifles or performed the “Sieg Heil” salute.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote a letter to the school earlier this month, protesting that such activity mocks the memory of victims of Nazi aggression and has no place in an educational institution.

“We are long past the time when such incidents take place in Asia that can be excused due to “alleged” ignorance of the Nazis’ atrocities during World War II,” the letter said.

According to the center, school director Kanya Khemanan responded with an apology, saying that the Nazi celebration happened mainly due to a lack of oversight.

The teacher responsible has been removed from his position and the school has since held lectures and discussions on the Holocaust, the center said, citing Kanya’s letter.

Calls to the Thewphaingarm School went unanswered Wednesday.

Nazi regalia and symbols surface from time to time in Thailand and other parts of Asia, often treated as chic design elements for otherwise unrelated products and services.

In 1988, a Nazi-themed bar in a trendy Bangkok mall drew protests from foreigners because of its glamorization of the Third Reich. In 1998, a Thai company used Hitler’s likeness to sell potato chips.

Hong Kong and Japan have witnessed a growth in the casual wearing of SS uniforms, as well as increased interest in “white power” music, popular with neonazis.

South Korea several years ago experienced a surge of public fascination with Nazi imagery, and earlier this year, a pro-Hitler group in Taiwan with approximately 1,000 members attempted to gain official status from the government.

Western reaction to the Asian phenomenon has been one of sharp criticism and utter astonishment. Western diplomats, especially Germans and Israelis, have complained heavily, pointing out that Asians suffered during World War II under occupation by Japan, Nazi Germany’s ally.

Says the Associated Press report.

The problem of “alleged” historical amnesia though runs much deeper in especially the wider Asia. Not that Asians are supremacists, no no.

What brings us to that older story – properly reported by Simon Masnick, a freelance writer living in Hong Kong.

His story back then in October 2005:

Let’s keep Nazis out of fashion

In a crowded marketplace there is a constant battle to stand out. A glance at the numerous magazines on display at a newsstand is a case in point.

And a glance at the moment might find your eyes landing on a quarterly magazine called Akasi, published by the Flying Wind group. The cover displays a scantily clad young woman posing as a Nazi tank commander with a Nazi general, Heinz Guderian. Inside, the magazine continues the theme with a centerpiece explaining Guderian’s life and times. Clearly they are aiming to offend and I will take the bait.

This is the latest example of a long line of “Nazi chic.” Fashion chain Izzue had an infamous campaign involving shops adorned in Nazi flags, swastikas and even Nazi propaganda films playing on the shop wall. There was also Bar Pacific with its photographs of Hitler and Nazi executions lining its walls. Last year another fashion chain was selling Nazi-themed bags. In Singapore earlier this year a school team chose the name “Hitler” for their leadership idol. These are not isolated examples. Rather they are all too common.

Many wonder what the fuss is about. Nazism is poorly understood in Asia, largely because the continent was thankfully immune to its effects. Instead Asia was tied up with its own war, with its different and incomparable evils. And herein lies the problem. There would be a massive outcry should a magazine cover feature a woman wearing Japanese Imperial Army uniform, cavorting with a World War II Japanese general.

Such imagery touches on highly symbolic and still open wounds of the past. There are painful memories to confront and are still the cause of visceral anger, as the anti-Japan riots earlier this year across China will attest. The images of Nazism are the analogous symbols for Europeans and the many victims of the Holocaust and Hitler’s aggression.

When the large majority shrugs their shoulders when Nazism is used as a marketing tool, it is incumbent upon us to raise our voices. In the words of American columnist Jonah Goldberg, “Hitler is supposed to define the outer limits of evil, not the lowest threshold.” Hitler and Nazism are the extremity, not a gimmick to sell magazines. The usual indifference to this blatant use of evil to make a buck reflects a broader intolerance that is all too common.

Ignorance of history is not an excuse. Trivializing the deaths of millions of people across Europe is a slap in the face to their collective memory and is not worthy of modern, civilized people. Ignorance breeds intolerance and hiding behind “I didn’t realize it was offensive” cannot be an excuse, just as it is not in law or other contexts.

The important thing is to find solutions. Governments across the region must ensure that history courses in schools include comprehensive coverage of the European experience in World War II. Along with the Israeli and German embassies, Asian governments should lead a widespread publicity campaign using media, exhibitions, seminars and exchanges to improve knowledge of the evils of Nazism and World War II in Europe.

The media and public need to remain vigilant against such crude desecrations of memory and bring pressure to bear if it happens again.

This is not about free speech. It is about the bounds of good taste and common decency, and making people aware of what those bounds are. Instead of Chief Executive Donald Tsang worrying about the “privatization of morals,” he needs to worry about the “privatization of ignorance.” We all do.

Need we say more?

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Comments

26 Responses to “Sweet “Nazi Chic”: It Could Only Have Happened In Thailand?”

panmoria on March 26th, 2008 12.00 pm

There was an article about exactly this “crippling cultural amnesia” and “blatant revisionism” here in Asia in Newsweek once. Couldn’t find it in the archives, here’s my own copy:

At War With History

A visit to a controversial shrine and a new text book spark familiar complaints that Japan is soft-pedaling its past. But a closer look at history books around the region reveals that most countries in Asia share a crippling cultural amnesia

By Nisid Hajari

NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL

Aug. 27, 2001 – Only the guys who cut off their fingers were new. Otherwise the drama played out in North Asia last week followed a familiar script: Japanese prime minister visits controversial war shrine, while refusing to alter a new junior-high-school history book that allegedly whitewashes Japan’s record in World War II. Neighboring capitals protest loudly; some Japanese protest more quietly. (And in South Korea, 20 young men lop off the tips of their pinkie fingers in a morbid gesture of fury.) The lingering impression is an all-too-common one that Japan still refuses to come to grips with its warmongering past.

WHAT IS LESS FAMILIAR is the fact that nearly every Asian country betrays a similarly slipshod memory. The finger-chopping protesters probably don’t realize that their own high-school history books contain only one sentence on the Korean comfort women abused by Japanese soldiers. Indonesian textbooks don’t even mention the estimated 500,000 people massacred in 1965 after Suharto came to power, an event one CIA report described as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century. New history books in the Indian state of Gujarat, run by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, claim that Aryans are indigenous to India and all other non-Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Parsis are foreigners. A university-level textbook in neighboring Maharashtra says bluntly, Islam teaches only atrocities.

The vast gaps and distortions in memory raise the obvious question of whether there is some willful cultural forgetfulness at work in the region – whether Asians in particular cannot look squarely at the past. Even Youk Chhang, the Cambodian researcher most responsible for collecting thousands upon thousands of documents chronicling the terror inflicted by the Khmer Rouge, says his countrymen’s reluctance to face up to the genocide is perhaps a matter of an Asian way. Face is more important than truth or justice. The fierce debate in Cambodia over whether and how to try Khmer Rouge leaders underscores how critical the process can be in one particular society. Many historians wonder whether the region itself requires a similar catharsis, one that might free minds to see flaws in contemporary Asian society as well as in the past.

Only the guys who cut off their fingers were new.

In Japan’s case, the issue of the war continues to bedevil relations with China, while South Korea has withdrawn diplomats and threatened to block Japanese cultural imports over the current textbook row. The dueling histories promulgated in India and Pakistan naturally fuel their rivalry on the Subcontinent. But in other countries the danger of not engaging in a re-examination of the past is perhaps more subtle: how healthy can Thai democracy be when its high-school students learn virtually nothing about Army-led student massacres in 1973 and 1976? “One reason we have so many ethnic, religious and social problems is because important subjects are either taboo or explained incorrectly,” says Arief Rahman, director of the Lab School, a private school in Jakarta. “We have to start openly writing about and discussing all controversial issues in the classroom if we want to promote understanding and peace.”

Unlike many Asian countries, Germany has learned the value of facing history squarely; the country has not simply owned up to the atrocities committed during the war, but delved into them in a way that inspired a reappraisal of German society itself. The impetus, however, came more from political will than from cultural inclination. The country had lost two major wars, not just one, and “there were no more excuses,” says Rainer Riemenschneider, a historian at the Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany. Key postwar politicians had spent the war in exile or out of favor with the Nazi regime, and even among ordinary citizens, a consensus quickly developed that the country had to make a break with its past if it was to move forward. Integration into NATO demanded that the country mend fences with its neighbors, which now promotes the kind of easy economic and social intercourse that is still lacking in North Asia. “If you face your own past, you can better plan your future,” says Riemenschneider. “It’s the same for individuals as for the psyches of nations.”

Japan’s inability to follow the German example, on the other hand, has similarly little to do with any innately Japanese characteristics. The seven history textbooks currently used in junior-high schools do admit Japanese responsibility for atrocities like the Rape of Nanking, in which up to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Imperial Army soldiers, and for the brutal occupation of Korea. Guidelines issued by the Education Ministry instruct teachers to make [students] understand that our country did great harm to many foreign countries, particularly Asian nations. One could argue, in fact, that the minds of Japanese youth are not being poisoned by right-wing revisionism: Even the New History Textbook that has provoked such ire in Seoul and Beijing – and which doesn’t deny the Nanking massacre, only its extent – was ordered for use only by six special-education schools and six private schools.

The problem is outside the classroom, where adults are enacting a debate about Japanese nationalism by promoting such textbooks. For the authors of the New History Textbook, the real question is how assertive a role Japan is going to allow itself to play in the region today. “It has become a kind of symbol of what these people [involved in selecting books] believe in, rather than what and how children should be taught,” says Tetsuya Hashimoto, a history professor at Kanazawa University.

That same dynamic plays out across Asia, where education is often confused with indoctrination. Not surprisingly, a great many of the most egregious historical errors in Asian schoolbooks stem from these countries’ authoritarian beginnings. Dictators from Taiwan to Indonesia to Cambodia actively rewrote textbooks to engender loyalty to regimes and ruling ideologies. “History taught to the current generation of Chinese youth has less to do with learning than with ensuring that they will support the Communist Party,” says a Beijing middle-school instructor who has taught history for more than 20 years. North Korean textbooks continue to deify both Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il. In Pakistan, where textbooks still blame the creation of Bangladesh on propaganda spread by pro-Hindu teachers in the former East Pakistan (and don’t mention the thousands of civilians massacred by Pakistani troops), historians were formally instructed by the military government in 1981 to guide students toward the ultimate goal of Pakistan – the creation of a completely Islamized state.

Where blatant revisionism takes place now, it’s usually driven by such ideological concerns. In India, Hindu chauvinists have gradually infiltrated cultural, academic and government institutions ever since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took power in 1998. A new school curriculum is being introduced in which history will be subsumed under the subject of heritage, and the period from 1000 to 1800, during which Muslim emperors held sway in the Subcontinent, will be ignored completely. New textbooks haven’t been written yet, but an indication of what’s in store can be gleaned from schools in Gujarat. There, history books for 14-year-olds call the caste system ìa precious gift from Aryans to all mankind and say of untouchables, or Dalits, that their ignorance, illiteracy and blind faith are to be blamed for [their] lack of progress.
BangkokDan on March 26th, 2008 4.37 pm

Emailed a friend:

“Welcome to the real world. However, we should not shoot too fast at the “perpetrators” as Westerners do not have a full grasp on Asian history and what is acceptable either.”

BangkokDan
Thailand Links: Bangkok Dangerous, Scorpion Eating and Nazi School Sports Day · Thailand Backpacking: Travelhappy.info on April 1st, 2008 4.12 pm

[...] say this is an April Fool’s joke, but it’s all too real – Absolutely Bangkok reports on one of Thailand’s schools recently holding a Nazi Sports Day, where the children dressed up in homemade Nazi uniforms and created huge Nazi style banners. You [...]
BangkokDan on April 6th, 2008 1.21 am

Take Korea’s quiet admiration for the Nazis: Here (Nazis & Korean cosmetics) and here (a forum on it) and here (CNN on it) we go again.

BangkokDan
gonzobrains on April 22nd, 2008 1.43 pm

You know, it is ironic so many Westerners complain about censorship in Thailand yet YouTube removes these cosmetic commercials from their site.
BangkokDan on April 22nd, 2008 7.31 pm

Agreed gonzobrains.

Scary though is that newer breed of Asian fascism. Cosmetics and fascism hand in hand?

BangkokDan
endre on July 2nd, 2008 9.37 am

Ya know, I dont think they need to apologize.

What’s done is done and as long as it’s not meant to insult then you shouldn’t take it as one.
Psalm on October 22nd, 2008 10.37 am

It’s like a western company using the Japanese war flag in a commercial. China would go berserk.
fouse, gary c on November 17th, 2008 1.47 pm

I recall in the 1970s, being in a 2nd class hotel lobby in Bangkok, which I don’t remember. A group of elderly German tourists were standing in line waiting to check in at Registration. I went to a house phone and asked them to please page Martin Bormann, which they proceeded to do repeatedly for the next 10 minutes, as the Germans turned and looked at each other with puzzled looks on their faces.

gary fouse
dea bangkok 1975-78
fousesquawk
joe on May 22nd, 2009 2.07 pm

Dumb and ugly.

Sick of the moronic expats from the sewers of Europe and their Thai collaborators who wear their ignorance like a badge.

Good bye thailand … your waters are too shallow.
commons on June 8th, 2009 10.45 pm

What about if farang would stop bullying Asian cultures to feel as ashamed and guilty as they do?

It’s just symbols, guys. Obviously it means a lot to you and it’s fine to call Simon Wiesenthal Center as witness – but sorry, let’s get real, how comes you believe Asia has to suffer deep psychological reflexes same-same as europe?

btw – there’s a long tradition in European thought on “Nazi chique.” & as I write this, in June 2009, I can tell you some Finland people are in the makings of a film … that will, for sure, generate an outcry among the ethical elite.

— but actually, it’s just a game with symbols. personally i see that as some kind of liberation.
myfriendyou on August 20th, 2009 5.24 am

Funny how the Jews would like the whole of Asia to bow down before what has become their holocaust cult of WWII, while in the meantime you can freely wear or display the Imperial War flag of Japan in the West, which in the East raises the same feelings as the swastika in the West. Like always, what is good in this world is what is good for the Jews.
jyoheaux0114 on October 7th, 2009 3.16 am

I find Nazi chic to be rather sexy.
BangkokDan on October 18th, 2009 5.00 pm

More Hitler fashion down in Pattaya:

Diplomatic Fuss: Thai Museum Covers Up Saluting Hitler Billboard

BangkokDan
Hitler's Not So Triumphant Return | Thailand Land of Smiles on October 21st, 2009 7.18 am

[...] a great look into the Asian fascination with the Nazi’s check out Sweet “Nazi Chic”: It Could Only Have Happened In Thailand? over at Absolutely Bangkok Related PostsThe WaiMr. Toom’s Taxi ServiceWat Suthat in BangkokHow [...]
Nina on October 25th, 2009 3.59 am

Great article. Some of the comments here are just as shocking as the facts above. I agree with Joe on “dumb and ugly.” Thanks for reporting!
Asian Person on December 23rd, 2009 10.07 pm

OMG, you Westerners need to stick your nose in your own countries. Quit trying to browbeat us into being like you. We have no interest in being either Western or “modern.”

If you don’t want to adopt our culture, fine. When you come to a country, the least you can do is not to intrude upon its culture. Westerners have more in common with the minaret people than they realize.
Western Person on December 24th, 2009 2.05 am

Dear Asian Person:

I don’t think anyone is trying to browbeat you into being like Westerners. All we are asking for is some simple respect, which I’m sure you can appreciate and understand since your culture puts such a high premium on respect.

It’s not an issue of adopting your culture, which many Westerners freely do, however I didn’t think that disrespect and disregard for the highly charged history of others cultures was a part of Thai culture.

No one is trying to intrude on your culture, unless you think that blatant disregard for the feelings of others is part of your culture. If that is the case then I will freely intrude on your culture to try and teach you something about humanity and basic human decency.
Rich on December 24th, 2009 7.30 am

@Asian Person:

You might like to remember that it was the westernizing influence that dragged you out of the 16th century. For this you have the great Rama 5 to thank, and those colonial powers that helped and encouraged (for reasons of their own of course).

In more recent years you have fallen behind in the race to modernise and develop, fallen behind many of your Asean neighbors who are making much more rapid progress. For this you have someone else entirely to thank.

Typical isn’t it? So long as you can kid yourself that you have no interest in being westernized, you can take all the benefits of Western society, while still kidding yourself that you are unique and that the Thai culture is something other than a gigantic millstone around your necks. Which, one day, will drag you down to the bottom of the pond. And you just love to take the money of course, mustn’t forget the money, so long as you don’t have to earn it yourselves of course.

Now, Thailand is considered more corrupt than it was five years ago, and the Thai economy is an Asean basket-case. So much for doing things the Thai way eh? One estimate of the cost of corruption in your wonderful culture is 40% of the government budget. No wonder you are sinking like a stone, you can’t even grasp simple rules of behaviour and ethics.

Self-delusion is a wonderful thing is it not? You can tell almost any fairy-story to yourself and you will believe it.

So no more of the “not interested in being westernized” claptrap if you please, my bullshit meter went off the scale already.

@Western Person:

S/he (95% it is a she – probably of the dumb as a blonde variety) knows this already. The first word of his/her post was OMG, which clearly speaks of a Western privileged and probably somewhat airhead education.

So. S/he doesn’t mind taking a Western education because the standards of Thai education is so ridiculously poor, but s/he doesn’t want to feel grateful or indebted in any way and so s/he adopts an inverse position in order to feel more “independent” and “Thai.”

Ironic, isn’t it?
BangkokDan on December 24th, 2009 3.36 pm

As long as the glorification of a race’s superiority has no modern-day precedent in Asia – such as in the West -, your comment Asian Person makes complete sense. But I assume you’re not Asian, as even the most nationalistic of all Asians, the Han-Korean, keep quiet about their own sense of superiority.

Regarding the minaret people, that’s the world’s fastest growing religion. There you go.

BangkokDan
Mithran on December 24th, 2009 4.56 pm

Asian Person, I wasn’t aware the Third Reich *was* part of your culture. Still, at least Sombat Himmler and the boys got their comeuppance in the end, eh?
bosunj on December 25th, 2009 3.54 am

Sounds like a fair amount of I’m better than you to go around from several corners. As I’ve said before, if your feelings about Thailand are that negative then kindly catch the next taxi to the airport. If because for whatever reason you can’t return to whence you came then kindly refrain from diatribes against your hosts. Yes, in Western culture you feel as though you have the right to confront I get that. Kindly remember how you would react were someone to come to your country and run it down. With that in mind how could you possibly do here what you’d be angry if a foreigner did in your country?

I’m not a big holiday follower though I think that this is the season to be more neighborly. Very soon it’s going to get really bad everywhere. Might it be time to enjoy a respite from discord?

All the best to one and all.
Mithran on December 25th, 2009 11.12 am

bosunj, I agree with all your points in a general sense, though I’m not sure they apply to this particular case. It’s not a case of Westerners sticking their nose into Thai culture, but Thais causing offence by incorrectly reading Western culture.

Joking about genocide is a no-go area. You’d hope Asian magazines could understand that. They have their own no-go areas, after all. If a high school in the U.S. put on a show making fun of the Thai king I assume they’d hear from the Thai embassy.

Same thing here, no?
Rich on December 25th, 2009 2.53 pm

I fully agree.

If I were to throw a theme party where the theme was the Thais getting their asses serially and roundly kicked by the Burmese, and glory in that, I suspect the Thais would be apoplectic.

Because the Burmese certainly did a good job of kicking Thai asses. As did the Khmers. As did the Japanese.

In fact is there any country who hasn’t kicked Thai asses for a pastime at one time or another? The Inuit perhaps …

Same same with the poor taste and poor historical knowledge surrounding the Nazi taboo. As Mithran rightly says, it is rightly a no-go area for anyone with an IQ or EI or an education better than a potato.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all.
Ron on December 27th, 2009 3.04 pm

Rich is right in his suggestion of how Thais would feel were people to start wearing regalia from an era when the Burmese routed the Thais.

I have seen:

A motorcyclist in my neighborhood who has a Nazi flag waving from the back of the bike.

A huge Nazi flag hanging from the balcony of an apartment building.

Young kids with nazi insignia on their clothing.

I recently one guy, probably in his mid-thirties, walking with another person in Robinson’s. The other person looked well dressed and even the man I mention had good shoes, slacks and a decent hair cut. But his shirt was white with a Nazi cross across his chest.

What is so ludicrous is, if these people were in Nazi Germany they would probably have been arrested and gased.
Rich on December 28th, 2009 7.51 am

Indeed so, SE Asians were regarded by the Nazis as being only slightly less sub-human than blacks. The Japanese had the same view of them, but in their case it was because they surrendered more or less as soon as the Japanese gathered on the Thai border.

It always amuses me to hear the Thais refer to themselves in their national anthem as courageous and fearless fighters. The triumph of wishful thinking over history I fear.

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