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.
After my father-in-law died we inherited his WWII Army locker. Inside were some artifacts "taken" from German soldiers, including Nazi armbands. They remain in the locker, only once taken out and brought to school by one son to show a History class. We don't display them, but we don't destroy them either. Holding them in your hands you can't help but wonder about who wore them, what happened to them, etc. We don't destroy them because they are part of history, not because we get any sort of delight in owning them.
I might point out that Steven Spielberg has an often remarked upon fascination with Nazis as well. In fact, some might say it borders on the fetishistic. Look at the gee-wiz manner in which cool Nazi toys were shown in the first and third Indiana Jones movies. Also, the creepily sexual role that Ralph Fiennes played in Schindler's List, if that performance doesn't strike you as a little to attractive for its own good...
Not that I'm implying anything about the strength of Mr. Spielberg's anti-Nazi sentiments (I'm really not), but one can be fascinated by things that one finds morally repugnant.
Also, ask most boys who are into war stuff what their favorite war is, 90% will tell you World War II. The gear was cooler, the cause was just and it was really, really big. Ask those same boys who had the coolest uniforms and equipment, most will say the Nazis.
@lionel-mandrake: I live in Berlin and came up with a joke that I sometimes air with my close friends: "If WWII had been a fashion contest, we all know who wouldda won." It CLEANS the room. Or in the best case, elicits a loooong moment of silence, when people shift uncomfortably from one foot to another. It's hilarious. (OK, a bit evil, too.) Sorry, but those damn SS uniforms were hideously stylish.
One of the oversights of the NY Times piece is that this guy also collects American WW2 memoribilia. He is not uniquely fixated on the Nazis. He is also quite clearly not a Nazi himself. Furthermore, the fact that he wrote a monograph, which is bandied about as ... I mean, the Nazis are a valid subject to study. Duh.
So, that's the reality. Unfortunately our man seems to have gotten all bogged down with with the whole "perceptions" thing.
Granted, I have no experience with this personally, but I don't think the fact that someone collects this stuff necessarily means they in any way support what the Nazis did such that collecting it should be wrong or a mark against the collector, particularly not when the collector is someone who has dedicated themselves to human rights.
Of course "the fascination bears some relationship to the magnitude of evil." There's a reason Nazi memorabilia is more popular than Coast Guard memorabilia. It belonged to a psychotic regime that people, decades later, are still trying to wrap their heads around. And there SHOULD be an investment of meaning in this stuff. It's the symbol of something terrible. I think it's better those things be preserved and remembered for what they were than buried and forgotten.
As one who supports Israel’s right to exist as an independent Jewish state, I have to say that HRW’s work does not seem biased or unduly focused on Israel. HRW reports on human rights violations everywhere. They do good work.
There may be some dark recesses in Garlasco’s character and imagination, but I doubt they reflect on the HRW or even his work for that organization.
The most unfortunate analogy I can muster: he is like a left-wing Teg Haggard, the equivalent of a conservative Evangelical Christian pastor who denounces homosexuality and campaigns against gay rights all the while pursuing gay sex in his personal life.
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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.
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09/15/09
Myself, I collect Kanye West memorabilia, and hope no one will judge me for it. (Too soon?)
09/15/09
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09/15/09
Not that I'm implying anything about the strength of Mr. Spielberg's anti-Nazi sentiments (I'm really not), but one can be fascinated by things that one finds morally repugnant.
Also, ask most boys who are into war stuff what their favorite war is, 90% will tell you World War II. The gear was cooler, the cause was just and it was really, really big. Ask those same boys who had the coolest uniforms and equipment, most will say the Nazis.
09/15/09
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Oops, I guess that makes me a Nazi.
09/15/09
So, that's the reality. Unfortunately our man seems to have gotten all bogged down with with the whole "perceptions" thing.
I don't think he should be sacked.
09/15/09
Of course "the fascination bears some relationship to the magnitude of evil." There's a reason Nazi memorabilia is more popular than Coast Guard memorabilia. It belonged to a psychotic regime that people, decades later, are still trying to wrap their heads around. And there SHOULD be an investment of meaning in this stuff. It's the symbol of something terrible. I think it's better those things be preserved and remembered for what they were than buried and forgotten.
09/15/09
There may be some dark recesses in Garlasco’s character and imagination, but I doubt they reflect on the HRW or even his work for that organization.
The most unfortunate analogy I can muster: he is like a left-wing Teg Haggard, the equivalent of a conservative Evangelical Christian pastor who denounces homosexuality and campaigns against gay rights all the while pursuing gay sex in his personal life.
09/15/09