The Atlantic’s Josh Green reports that millionaire businessman Rich Iott, the Republican nominee challenging Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D) in Ohio’s Ninth District, has an unusual hobby: He likes to pretend he’s a Nazi.
Iott, a tea party-backed candidate, spent time fighting another battle before he hit the campaign trail against Kaptur as a member of the 5th SS Wiking Panzer Division, a group of Ohio World War II reenactors.
According to their website, the Wikings strive to “salute” the “idealists” from occupied northern Europe who saw the Third Reich as “the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life” and signed up to fight for the Wermacht and “gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free.”
Hat tip Kevin
Here they are playing:
Nazis. I hate these guys.
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The actual 5th was a foreign volunteer division, I believe. Quislings. Lovely bunch of people to choose to “salute”.
Quislings. I hate those guys.
Boy oh boy.
“… gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free.”
Yeah, that’s a good one. They were fighting a non-existent threat. They *were* free and yet they felt a compunction to murder Jews, fags, gypsies and anyone who would oppose their tyranny. This guy should move to Az – I think he’ll fit right in with the morons like the current governor and spineless doddering old fools like John McCain who claim there’s a “brown threat” from Mexico.
A couple of weeks ago over at Ed Brayton’s place I managed to send a neo-Nazi into a spluttering rage by pointing out that by virtue of being inclusive rather than ostracizing, the average 20th century US Communist Party member was more patriotic than he was. It was so very, very much fun watching him try to jam the word “punk” into as many places as possible in his response. I just pointed out the irony of being called treasonous by a Nazi…
Who’s surprised at anything the Tea-pots get up to? And in WW II the “American” pro-Nazis kept the U.S. out of it, while the Brits stemmed the Nazi tide for 18 months, until Pearl Harbor outraged the American people.
Goosestep, I want to see them goosestepping….
At Stalingrad, at Leningrad, at Moscow, at Kursk, and finally at Berlin these wimps lost. The Commies won the war, which these idiots don’t realize. Shoot a real bullet or Stalin Organ at them, and they would shit in their pants.
OK, that’s creepy. I know quite a lot of historic reenactors, covering a good variety of periods, and they do it for fun, for educational purposes (their own and others), for the sense of community. None of them, as far as I know, are in it for political, ideological reasons (other than maybe the ones who are fervent supporters of the local museum educational services!). I’d also love to sic the medieval combat enthusiasts onto these guys and see who wins. (Assuming we nick their machine-gun rounds first, my money is on the large people in chainmail.)
He also doesn’t know, or is intentionally obscuring, the distinction between the Wermacht and the Waffen SS. The Wermacht was the regular army. The Waffen SS was the armed branch of the Nazi Party. The Wermacht was regular Germans doing their duty when drafted; the Waffen SS was Nazis fighting for the Nazi ideology. He’s not playing soldier; he’s playing Nazi.
More than that; he’s playing volunteer quisling Nazi. I watched the trailer with interest, waiting for the re-enactment of this part:
“Members of the (5th SS)division assisted Einsatzgruppe A in rounding up Ukrainian Jews. Witnesses report that the Jewish victims were forced to run a gauntlet formed by soldiers who would beat them as they passed, and when they reached the end of the gauntlet, Einsatzgruppen officers murdered them and their bodies were pushed into a bomb crater.” (from Wikipedia)
But the trailer seems to have left out that bit. Puzzling.
I guess our monthly Spanish Inquisition reenactments are on hold for a while. ‘Til after the election, anyway. What am I going to do with my $800 custom-made Tomas de Torquemada costume?
Duh! Halloween is just around the corner. Autos de fe for all the little heathen trick-or-treaters! (Flesh and blood, though, for all the good Catholic kids in the neighborhood, natch.)