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Stealth Hitler: Who would ever guess he was a Nazi?
So roughly 150 neo-Nazis, alongside some alt-rightists who are basically Nazis but kind of like to pretend that they aren’t, went a-marching in Pikeville, Kentucky this past weekend, dressed to the 88s in an assortment of Nazi-esque uniforms, carrying flags festooned with swastikas and an assortment of other Nazi-ish symbols, chanting chants containing the word “heil” and occasionally breaking out in Nazi — sorry, “Roman” — salutes. A few even brought assault rifles along with them, in case they needed to invade Poland or something.
Now some Nazis are wondering if the Nazi marchers were maybe a bit too obviously Nazi-ish during their Nazi march.
On the neo-Nazi internet tabloid The Daily Stormer, Eric Striker declares the rally “a sleeper hit,” predicting that it will lead to even bigger rallies in the future as “millions of hidden Alt-Right and Nationalsocialists in America” overcome their fears and embrace an explicitly racist agenda.
But Striker is worried that his Nazi buddies were perhaps a bit too blatant about the whole Nazi thing.
I actually support unironic use of the Roman salute, but only in its historic context as a gesture of honor to fellow comrades and leaders. When the goal is to lure Antifa to take off their “peaceful” masks, triggering them by Roman saluting them is also appropriate.
But at this demonstration, where nationalists outnumbered the increasingly irrelevant left, the two NSM affiliated individuals who were doing Roman salutes at a local media outlet zooming in on them committed an extreme propaganda error. It’s not so much the Roman salute itself, but that the image projected was that the rally was about shock value rather than real issues impacting local whites.
So maybe cool it with all the salutes, fellas? They’ll be time for those later!
Striker also has issues with some of the marchers’ fashion choices.
The citizens of Pikeville agree with 99% of what the Nationalists there believe, but superficial blunders like this, and the poor attire choice of wearing Schutzstaffel [SS] collars, distract from the frame we’re trying to build, and cause people to tune-out.
Also, maybe try to hide all your Nazi tchotchkes when the lugenpresse is nearby? In one Youtube clip, Striker notes,
there’s Third Reich memorabilia laying around, which should’ve at least been put away when the press was arriving. Again, optics aren’t everything, but this kind of stuff just triggers inculcated defenses of common folk who otherwise agree with us from joining. After winning them over, you can teach them the truth about the Third Reich, but getting them to listen first is the most important part. …
[F]ew will disagree that if the [National Socialist Movement] toned some of the outward eccentricities, they would have far greater appeal along with way fewer agent provocateurs/federal informants/misfits harassing them.
I guess if they didn’t leave so many swastika souvenirs lying around no one would have ever figured out that a group called the National Socialist Movement was really a bunch of Nazis.
Here are some of the Pikeville marchers in all-out Nazi mode:
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Nazis Nazi-ing
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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And here are some of the same people in STEALTH MODE:
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The subtle approach
Clearly, without all the “seig heils” no one could have possibly figured out they were Nazis.
In the end, Striker urges his fellow Nazis to emulate European fascist groups like Greece’s Golden Dawn and the Nordic Resistance Movement.
There is no reason their methods can’t be applied to America, with a few adaptations. Being a National Socialist isn’t about flying a Swastika or having an edgy tattoo, it’s about what you project from the inside: Honor, strength, courage, pride, love, loyalty and most importantly: confidence in the final victory.
Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin follows up Striker’s post with a few of his own thoughts on Nazi “optics.” Anglin, who’s been known to throw “Roman salutes” around in public himself, isn’t worried that Nazi outfits and the like are too “edgy” to appeal to Americans, but that they really aren’t hip or sexy enough to get the cool millennial kids on board.
“The Golden Dawn and Nordfront,” Anglin writes, have created an
aesthetic which is both serious and sexy, and that is the model we need to be following. Nazi uniforms, swastika flags and people in bad physical shape are a part of an aesthetic which has been tried for a very long time in this country, with very little in terms of results.
Nazi uniforms not sexy? Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS must be rolling over in her imaginary grave.