This week in fascism

Maybe it really is springtime for Hitler. In the last few weeks, Nazi and fascism references have been everywhere, flying from the right, the left and landing on everything in between, from the Olympics and the Dalai Lama to pasta and Puget Sound. Let's take a quick tour of jackboot country. On the local front, you had the recent dust-up when a writer for the Building Industry Association of Washington newsletter penned a lengthy column comparing Northwest greens and slow-growthers to the Nazis who--drum roll here--also loved nature! That explains also those folks in the Mountaineers you see on weekends goose stepping in Lederhosen and acting like the world belongs to them. These accusations of "ecofascism" are a nice set-up for this week which, you may not know, is Islamofascism Awareness Week. In addition to references to fascism in the "War on Terror," the Nazi influence is felt elsewhere in politics. The Olympic Torch relay is in trouble because protesters have been using it to highlight human rights problems in China and Tibet. One factoid that's come to light: the torch ceremony was created by propagandists for the 1936 Berlin Oympics. In other words, it was invented by the Nazis. A dead giveaway should have been that the torch is carried in Hitler's favorite car, a VW bug. In a counter-attack, some anti-Tibet commentators were quick to remind folks of the Dalai Lama's own Nazi "connections." It's not at all clear that the Dalai Lama, now visiting Seattle, was smitten with the Nazis (unless Hitler had an obsession with "compassion" that I haven't heard about), but they certainly were interested in him. The SS sent researchers to Lhasa as part of their quest for the roots of the Aryan "race." The Dalai Lama was tutored by an Austrian. The chilling result: a Brad Pitt movie. In his own attempt to parlay Nazi connections into spiritual enlightenment, Scientologist Tom Cruise is playing an anti-Nazi Nazi in his next movie, which we learned this week has been delayed. In domestic politics, the "f" word flies. It reminds me of the in-depth political arguments we had at Evergreen in the 70s that went: "You're a fascist!" "No, you're a fascist!" Yes, such deep political discourse. A conservative writer (surprisingly not Ann Coulter) has written a book purporting to show that liberalism is rooted in fascism (Hitler was a vegetarian, after all). On the other end of the spectrum presidential candidate Ralph Nader says we're all living under "corporate fascism," which if I'm not mistaken is a bit redundant. But not all corporations are fascist. Proof of that this week when a men's magazine had to retract its allegation that Heinz made cans of Swastika-shaped noodles for the Nazis. (Were they called Spa-Nazi-O's?) The editors should have known better. That kind of niche marketing was so a '90s thing. The biggest Nazi scandal of the week, however, was the revelation that the son of a famed Nazi-sympathizer hired prostitutes for sex games where he was caned by girls in Nazi uniforms. Max Mosely--a major figure in the auto racing world and son of fascist Sir Oswald Mosely--also switched roles and paddled a gal dressed as a German prisoner. A sampling of this orgy is, of course, available on the Internet. No word on whether Prince Harry has checked it out. Weirdly, that is not the most shocking Nazi-sex revelation of the week. The New York Times and the Village Voice both carried stories about a new documentary on the 1960s and 70s phenomenon of S&M porn magazines about female Nazi guards torturing male prisoners in Nazi camps. Only these popular mags were written by and for Israelis! Maybe it's the psychodrama, rather than the Reich, that will last 1,000 years.