News Of The Weird
Human Rights Watch military analyst, when not accusing people of Nazi-like war crimes, is a closet Nazi artifact fan! Apparently he was quite enthusiastic about his hobby. Nazibilia collector Marc Garlasco, aka “Flak88,” reportedly gushed online, “That is so cool! The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!” NYT.
Yeah, well, it sounds bad when you put it that way.
I’m sure Garlasco had an appropriately awed sense of horror, as he suggests himself, along with the fascination for military history. Nothing wrong with collecting evil regime stuff. Like a lot of press types who find themselves wandering around war zones, I’ve got a couple of shelves full of it. Milosevic’s Serbs and Saddam’s Baathists, mainly. Picked up in the course of business, the cost of which is only that one might get one’s legs or head blown off in the process. No online handle or swap-meet attendance required. I don’t have any Nazi stuff, but then again, I never got to wander around the wreckage of the Nazi regime. Too bad. A flattened, cowed Germany frantically ridding itself of Nazi paraphernalia and trying to pretend like it was all someone else’s idea would have been a sight to behold.
(You could say that the remade Germany, including the post-war pacifism of Garlasco’s Luftwaffe grandad who inspired the Nazibilia collecting, is the greatest military history artifact of them all. It demonstrates what a dramatic effect carpet-bombing and the onslaught of several million Russians, Americans, Brits, etc., can have on one of the world’s worst repeat offenders. Especially the Russian onslaught part. Talk about fighting fire with fire. That really gave the Germans religion, helped them figure out who the good guys are. They haven’t misbehaved since. If anything, they’ve become useless. Memo to Germany: The war’s over. A little more heavy lifting, please. No one’s going to hold it against you. Except maybe Human Rights Watch.)
As for Garlasco, he explains in a bit of a Huff that he is not a Nazi, if regretfully inspired to exuberance by his hobby. Though by Human Rights Watch standards, as a reformed Pentagon intelligence analyst involved in targeting Saddam Hussein for the hated Bush-Cheneyites, he might as well be. In fact, you could say Garlasco is a military artifact of a hated regime himself.
(Not to overanalyze this, but Flak88’s grandad would have been firing his 88 at Flak88’s great-uncle up in the B-17, prior to being provided with religion compliments of said B-17. Now Flak88’s aimed his own guns at the people he used to gun for, while getting gushy about the fashion sense of the crowd who so sorely abused grandad and great-uncle. The levels of self-loathing complexity start to hit critical max.)
Garlasco’s problem isn’t so much the WWII fascination. It’s that he and his organization are major Israel and America bashers, with a long history of having a hard time figuring out who the good guys are, complicated by some difficulties getting the facts straight. The greater Judeosphere, which has long had issues with Human Rights Watch’s view of IDF operations, is not pleased with Garlasco’s hobby. And they are taking issue with the accusation that Garlasco’s Nazibilia pantsing is an insidious Israeli plot. Memo to Garlasco’s pals: Blaming an international Jewish conspiracy for your problems never really works in the long run. Sheesh, every student of military history knows that. Just ask the Germans.
Surber gives props to the lefty UK Guardian for having principles, and includes the HRW associate director’s letter with the latter-day blood libel.
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Topics: Nazis, do-goodism, moronocy
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:23 am on Tuesday, September 15, 2009
One Response to “News Of The Weird”
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September 15th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
A couple of generations from now, Nazi memorabilia will be like Confederate memorabilia, spurned by some, regarded as history by others. People collect Soviet memorabilia, and nobody seems to mind that. My uncles brought home Japanese flags and bayonets from WWII, and hung them in their garages (more as trophies of war than as collections, I suspect). My dad didn’t bring anything home from the war except an Irish shillalegh(??). Since he served in Italy, we have no idea where he got it.