@Mediahohoho: Secret Muslim Hindu Terrorist Socialist Nazi Kenyan. I'm beginning to think this is like the people who put their degrees and certifications on their business cards. Obama's business card must be running out of room by now.
@Mediahohoho: ah, this is one of those times where you say something funny, but then you look at it later and it's not funny. thank god for the edit button--i've been destarred already, a ban would just be salt on the wound.
@thegreatfratsby: YOU lost your star? Boo! =( Da heck did you do?! Don't worry, you're still a star in my book. Fire away the funnies, and I'll protect you. Either it works or we get banned together.
@snugbug: I believe I criticized a certain editor's use of "piloted to the ground" instead of "landed" to describe... well, a plane landing. The world is unfair, no?
@notsofresh: Why would you be amazed? The studidity of anyone who believes the president is a Nazi is about equal to the stupidity required to consistently write a swastika backwards. I'm actually suprised they managed to spell "I" correctly.
@notsofresh: How is it rendered incorrectly, again? The swastika can be either at an angle or pointing left or right. There are pictures of it in all directions. Can you tell me what I'm missing?
@Ron Draper: Well, from what I understand, the swastika as used by the Nazis goes in a different direction. The little horizontal lines should all be pointing to the right as you go around. And since it's become popular to link Obama and Nazis/Hitler these days, we have to assume that that's the link they were going for. Unless they were trying to say Obama is decendent from Native Americans, who also used a form of this symbol.
Sigh. The Nazis had cool stuff. Did awful things, had cool stuff. This guy likes the stuff and dislikes the awful things. It just doesn't seem worth crucifying him for it.
(1) It isn't just "advocates of Israel" who are concerned about Garlasco's peculiar "hobby." Critics of Israel, including Helena Cobban, M.J. Rosenberg and Daniel Levy were moved to protest. (Hey, John Cook, it's called "Google")
(2) Garlasco was caught lying, and lying is bad, m'kay? He declared: "Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people,
including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things." However, under his online pseudonym, Flak88, he wrote: "So I am trying to figure out what to do. My book is close to done, but I am not sure if I should put my name on it. If folks at work found out I might very well lose my job."
@snugbug: Well, if he's posting online with an "88" in his name -- unless he's twenty-one years old -- then he's far enough into villain territory for me.
That being said, I completely disagree with the premise that collecting Nazi junk is inherently disturbed. I don't know anything about this guy, but I certainly hope the reports that there are worse sides than this to him are accurate, because I don't think it alone forms sufficient ethical grounds for canning someone.
@Halo_Override: The "Flak88" username is a reference to the famous Nazi anti-Tank gun. The guy wrote a book on Flak patches. Do a google search -- this is a guy with a hobby, not a 19-yo neo-nazi ranting on Stormfront.
@march_of_folly: I know as little about military equipment as I do about the fellow in question, so if the "88" is an unfortunate coincidence, my bad -- I should play more Call of Duty. But you've got to admit that someone whose hobby is Nazi memorabilia and who posts with an 88-related name is going to raise some eyebrows, because I can't be the only undereducated fellow out there.
Part of the issue here is that there are really no museums or other establishments where you can look at Nazi memorabilia. The Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin has a section devoted to this stuff, but it caused such an uproar when it opened in 2006 that they almost had to shut it down. Plans to create a memorial/museum on the former site of the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin (Topographie des Terrors)have been stalled forever. It's still an enormous heap of rubble that I pass by sometimes. It has to do with German sentiment about this--they still cannot even talk about it.
People are curious about this stuff, but the fact that you can't see/observe it adds to the mystique in a bad way. I think it'd benefit us all to expose some of these artifacts openly--and demistify them.
Principle aside for a moment, this hobby does happen to be a primary revenue source of white supremacist groups. Should be avoided, if only because the dollars you spend on this have a very high chance of buying jackboots for some gang of bonehead thugs.
Good lord. The contortions so many of you are willing to go through to dismiss as innocent fairly compelling prima-facie evidence of anti-semitism rather than admit the barest *possibility* of institutional anti-semitism at HRW--or at least anti-semitism on the part of Mr. Garlasco.
You sound *exactly* like the right-wing apologists you so rightly skewer when they attempt to explain why "Barrack the Magic Negro" isn't racist per se.
@JustinElpenor: Are the U.S. army memorabilia he also owns "prima-facie [sic] evidence" of anti-anti-semitism? Or is owning something not the same as espousing an ideology? As I've said, I don't really know what this guy's story is. What I reject are rushes to judgment based on the same kind of thinking that calls Obama a terrorist because he befriended Bill Ayers.
"It seems to us that the fascination bears some relationship to the magnitude of the evil."
Yes. Of course it does.
Best call in for questioning everyone who owns a copy of that last "Batman" movie or has ever watched "The Exorcist," then. Or, if your point is that the Nazis were real and the Joker is imaginary, better make sure everyone who ever played "Battlefield: Vietnam" votes Democrat.
Look I read and comment on Gawker quite often, so I would like the board certified psychologists that apparently write for Gawker to tell me about my Collection of Kennedy memorabilia. Admittedly, I can't afford the really great, and ultimately expensive items I've found, but I have a modest collection of papers from the day both John and Robert were shot as well as books, pictures, campaign material, some reproductions, etc.
So, I would take it that, based on your professional assessment of Garlasco there is something wrong with me as well?
I mean, after all, you can't possibly have an interest in collecting parts of history without having something wrong with you right?
"Does it make its practitioners apologists for Nazism, or Nazis themselves? No."
So. What exactly is the problem? What did this person do specifically, aside from collect items that you seem to see as distasteful to possess?
What about people who collect confederate money and uniforms? What about Brits that collect colonial American memorabilia?
This article doesn't simple seem weird. It is weird.
@Voyou_Charmant: Yes, according to Gawker, your collecting memorabilia from the day that both Kennedys were assassinated means you have an unhealthy fixation with murdering people. It certainly has nothing to do with history.
10/14/09
Maybe these people need to lay off the meth for awhile. It's messing with their brains.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
As you can see, Hindus have a way better sense of aesthetics and design than Nazis.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
That's right! Either we all hang together, or we're all well hung!
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
I hate it when my lamb tikka goes the wrong way.
10/14/09
10/14/09
Because Joe Pesci would have wanted it that way.
[www.youtube.com]
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
1943-2009
May he rest in peace.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
[images.google.com]
[media3.washingtonpost.com]
Laura Bush's ass ain't got what DiNiro is looking for.
09/15/09
09/15/09
(1) It isn't just "advocates of Israel" who are concerned about Garlasco's peculiar "hobby." Critics of Israel, including Helena Cobban, M.J. Rosenberg and Daniel Levy were moved to protest. (Hey, John Cook, it's called "Google")
(2) Garlasco was caught lying, and lying is bad, m'kay? He declared: "Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people,
including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things." However, under his online pseudonym, Flak88, he wrote: "So I am trying to figure out what to do. My book is close to done, but I am not sure if I should put my name on it. If folks at work found out I might very well lose my job."
09/15/09
09/15/09
That being said, I completely disagree with the premise that collecting Nazi junk is inherently disturbed. I don't know anything about this guy, but I certainly hope the reports that there are worse sides than this to him are accurate, because I don't think it alone forms sufficient ethical grounds for canning someone.
09/15/09
09/16/09
09/15/09
People are curious about this stuff, but the fact that you can't see/observe it adds to the mystique in a bad way. I think it'd benefit us all to expose some of these artifacts openly--and demistify them.
09/15/09
09/15/09
You sound *exactly* like the right-wing apologists you so rightly skewer when they attempt to explain why "Barrack the Magic Negro" isn't racist per se.
09/15/09
09/15/09
Yes. Of course it does.
Best call in for questioning everyone who owns a copy of that last "Batman" movie or has ever watched "The Exorcist," then. Or, if your point is that the Nazis were real and the Joker is imaginary, better make sure everyone who ever played "Battlefield: Vietnam" votes Democrat.
Logical fail.
09/16/09
09/16/09
09/15/09
So, I would take it that, based on your professional assessment of Garlasco there is something wrong with me as well?
I mean, after all, you can't possibly have an interest in collecting parts of history without having something wrong with you right?
"Does it make its practitioners apologists for Nazism, or Nazis themselves? No."
So. What exactly is the problem? What did this person do specifically, aside from collect items that you seem to see as distasteful to possess?
What about people who collect confederate money and uniforms? What about Brits that collect colonial American memorabilia?
This article doesn't simple seem weird. It is weird.
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
Myself, I collect Kanye West memorabilia, and hope no one will judge me for it. (Too soon?)