Apparently our old friend Andrea “JudgyBitch” Hardie — oft-banned antifeminist Twitter “activist” and alt-right hanger-on — was once again feeling a bit ignored by the internet, so she bought herself a Nazi t-shirt and made a lovely video.
Despite the video’s deliberately provocative title (“Hello Fourth Reich!”), this is one of the duller “provocative” videos you’re likely to encounter on the YouTubes — at least until Hardie puts on her swastika t-shirt roughly three-quarters of the way in.
Hardie begins the video wearing a different t-shirt entirely — one adorned with the Rising Sun flag of Imperial Japan. Over the course of the first half of the video she offers a rambling, ignorant and often nonsensical take on the issue of populism — or at least the oversimplified and completely ahistorical caricature of populism she’s got bouncing around in her head.
Her main point, insofar as she has one, seems to be that anyone who’s critical of the current outbreak of “populism” is “sneering at the idea that common, ordinary, everyday people are the best people to identify what the problems in their own lives are.”
Well, no. Demagogues like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen may claim the label of populism, but they are in fact racist right-wing autocrats who really aren’t much interested in democracy at all. “Populism” has, historically, always had a dark nativist streak to it, suffused with anti-Semitism and what historian Richard Hofstadter called the “paranoid style” of politics.
But let’s not linger too long on the history of actual populism, because we haven’t even gotten to the real point of the video, which is that Nazi t-shirt.
Hardie starts the t-shirt portion of the video by pretending to be shocked that the Rising Sun t-shirt she’s wearing isn’t likely to elicit the same outrage as a t-shirt festooned with a swastika — even though the Japanese military forces flying that flag did all sorts of truly horrible shit over the course of many years, from the Rape of Nanking to Pearl Harbor.
But those who wear Rising Sun t-shirts in public aren’t generally going to get accused of supporting any of these terrible things. To most people, Hardie declares, the Rising Sun is nothing more than a “fun meme,” and it turns out that’s just fine with her.
“What i want to know,” she asks, “why is this shirt ok, why is the Rising Sun ok, but” — she dons her Nazi t-shirt — “this shirt is not?”
This is a question that could actually lead to an interesting discussion. Why is the Rising Sun, at least here in North America, seen by most though definitely not all people as a rather innocent cultural symbol — much as the Confederate flag was back in the day when it flew unprotested from every southern state capital and adorned the top of the Dukes of Hazzard’s beloved creek-jumping car? Will perceptions of the Rising Sun change, much as they have for the Confederate flag?
But instead Hardie offers a rambling rant even more incoherent than the rant on populism in the first chunk of her video.
After informing us that the Nazis “were socialists; hey Bernie Sanders, hi” she indignantly asks why it’s considered “not ok” for people to wear Nazi shirts, so much so that YouTube probably “won’t let me monetize this video because of this shirt.”
Maybe because most people rightly connect Nazi symbolism with the Nazis and their hateful history? Maybe because virtually everyone who adorns themselves with Nazi symbols is either an actual Nazi or some other related kind of hateful shit? (Or perhaps the ghost of Sid Vicious.)
But Hardie has another theory, albeit one that makes no fucking sense whatsoever: Apparently people get mad about swastikas because they want to demonize true populists who stand up for the people! By “weaponizing the swastika” these evil liberal lefty anti-populists try to make ordinary people look bad!
I’m not even going to try to transcribe this portion of Hardie’s rant; I’m afraid it might damage my brain. Just watch. The video below should start at the beginning of her, er, explanation, a little more than 15 minutes in. Watch for the next two minutes or so, if you can manage it. Feel free to stop when she starts talking about Pepe the frog. Or if your head literally explodes.
https://youtu.be/A3Qi8VKb_dI?t=15m17s
Shortly after her Pepe digression, Hardie informs her viewers that
everyone, at the end of the day, is a stupid violent brute. Everyone. Violence is the only truth.
Huh. That sounds an awful lot like something a Nazi would say.
The only question to her is who controls this violence — evil leftists who actually hate the people, or
the common ordinary people who think, you know what, some of us is dumb assholes and, you know what, those are the first ones we’re gonna shoot. The people have a unique way of taking care of business.
That’s human history. That’s all of human history.
Er, there are are forms of government that don’t involve whatever group is in power just going out and shooting everyone they don’t like.
And all the swastikas in the world aren’t going to change that.
No. They’re going to make that sort of thing more likely. That’s why most people FUCKING HATE NAZIS. That’s why people tend to get mad when idiots put on Nazi shirts and make videos defending other idiots who put on Nazi shirts.
If you need to clear your head a little after watching that video, this might help.
@Dan:
You’d have to ask someone who’s more of an expert on Thai culture than I (and there are few people who are less of an expert than I am.) It’s my understanding that it’s just a character-goods thing, no different from having Hello Kitty on your shirt, and without any ideological implications. This is absolutely baffling to me as a westerner, for whom it’s difficult to imagine anything with greater ideological implications; but I suppose it’s a reminder that culture is always local.
Vice did a good piece on it:
Poor Andrea, so this is what she’s been reduced to get clicks?
Addendum to the above:
Thai people, for whom Hitler is just “that foreign king who dressed funny and had a weird mustache”, can be forgiven for dressing like him.
Andrea Hardie, for whom Hitler is more than that, cannot be forgiven for dressing in his symbols. She knows what she’s doing; and as Lea said, she’s a shitty, shitty person for doing it.
The swastika is extensively used in Bali, where they are primarily Hindu. You see it at the entrance of people’s homes a lot and it is also a last name. As a result of being around it in this context the ugliness was taken away from it in my mind.
But… VERY unlikely that Hardie knows or cares about any of that. The people of Bali are brown, so I expect she has *another* opinion.
Here’s another palate cleanser.
The swastika was a common symbol in the U.S. southwest (New Mexico and Arizona), common enough so that the 45th infantry division (New Mexico National Guard) used it as their unit identifier.
It was changed rather suddenly in 1940 to the ‘Thunderbird’ symbol that it still uses today. The original patch is something of a collectors item.
The local groups who used the symbol stopped using it publically during World War 2, but still use it privately for religious ceremonies.
I see your ignorant Nazi screed and raise you the last living Nuremberg prosecutor.
Watch it, if you have time. It’s some powerful brain bleach. You may want to skip the part where they show a video (there’s a “this is hard to watch” warning).
This is not the confederate flag
That’s the battle flag of North Virginia
This is though:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Flag_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America_%281861-1863%29.svg
@Devon: next step will be to get the swastikas tattooed on her tits like a Frank Miller character.
Re: Nuremberg Trials
I was very fortunate to receive some training from a chap called Irvine Younger. He was a judge but also a bit of a WW2 history buff. To illustrate a point he told an interesting anecdote about the Nuremberg Trials. He repeats it in this video. Relevant bit from about 23:30 onwards.
That interview with the Nuremberg prosecutor was really, really interesting. that perspective is so valuable, especially today. I think a course on either the Holocaust or genocide in general should be required in high school.
(Full openness: My username is after a Democratic Socialist mayor, who worked with some of Bernie’s heroes, like Eugene Debs)
Ugh once again.
Bernie is a DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST. Which is different from regular kind socialism, which is totally different from National Socialism (which isn’t socialism at all), which is totally different from Communism (which is different than the communism most countries end up developing)
If you don’t understand the conversation, Andrea, maybe you should just stay out of it?
@ Victoria
We make it a large part of the Year 9 History Scheme of Work at our (English) school, and have managed to get speakers in who are Holocaust survivors, such as Mala Tribich, to do a talk to the whole year group (about 240 students).
(For more on Mala, follow this link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11561349/Bergen-Belsen-survivor-Mala-Tribich-retraces-her-steps-back-to-Nazi-concentration-camp.html
We do a cross-curricular project in which students look at the facts of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany in their History lessons, discuss and plan responses to in their RE lessons, and create a memorial in their Art lessons. We get some really thoughtful stuff from this.
We have also done workshops on the 8 Stages of Genocide, and the Rwandan genocide as well.
@EJ
Agree with you, especially your addendum.
Also: the presence of a ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ sign in the background of someone spouting Nazi bullshit – I’ve overloaded my irony circuits and now need to lie down for a bit.
You just know one of these days she’s going to be picked up by the cops for running through traffic dressed in a pastiche of racist stereotypes, snapping selfies as she dodges buses and bicycles shouting “LOOKA MEEE ERRYBODY!”
On a semi-related side-note, I’m getting really tired of the knee-jerk false equivalencies that get drawn between the blatantly white supremacist alt-righters and their Antifa opposition. I don’t know how my fellow Mammotheers feel about Antifa–personally, I find myself siding with them in light of who it is they’re standing against–but it seems like I’ve seen a dozen Twitter fights pop up in my feed between a social-justice minded follower pointing out some awfulness an alt-righter has belched out and some rando sea lion who immediately proclaims Antifa a terrorist group on par with the Klan because one of them threw a punch once.
Is this really where we’re going? Propping up guys like Richard “Friendly Ethnic Cleansing” Spencer in the name of some nebulous concept of free speech (because they’re just words and all opinions are valid, guize!) while demonizing the one group that’s been on the front lines standing in their way because one of their members engaged in fisticuffs? Or because they’re those icky icky anarchists and communists?
The pictures from the Pikeville, Ky were pretty illustrative of the dynamic. You’ve got swastika-tattooed goosesteppers with cardboard shields on one side and you’ve got a diverse group on the other carrying signs opposing hate in all its forms. I know which side I’m going with and it’s not to pretend they’re “both just as bad.”
When are any of these freeze peach champions who claim they’re not in favour of the alt-right actually going to raise their voices loud enough to win the “battle of ideas” they insist is so important? Let me guess, that’s someone else’s job, somebody nice and imaginary….
JB begging for attention: sad.
Animals begging for attention: adorable.
@Victoria
In Germany, we do the better part of a year on Weimar and the Third Reich, and visited one of the concentration camps. It’s quite a major topic for obvious reasons. Sadly, other genocides aren’t covered as extensively.
”but they are in fact racist right-wing autocrats who really aren’t much interested in democracy at all” THIS is why I started to hate this site and feminism. Seriously if you BELIEVE preventing islam to grow is anti-democratic you are just an idiot. Feminists love sucking the D of islam, its laughable. Islam is the most woman hating thing ever existed and islamic cultures AND ITS PEOPLE are backwards (surely there are people in those countries who oppose islam and I respect them). Hurt your feelings? I dont care. Sweden and germany (I live in germany and around refugees who cant behave at all, Im an arabic/ asian girl myself btw, no country has the obligation to take in millions of illegal migrants) have so many issues with crime now its insane and people like you try to belittle it an call someone like Marine le pen a racist (Islam is not a race you degenerate feminist, she doesnt hate on the race but the religion/ death cult) . I used to like this site but you have lost all my respect. Why are jews over a million times more likely to win a nobel prize? Because islamophobia of course (lol) . Im aware you will delete my comment because of your feelings, shows how much YOU like democracy and free speech.
Fashionably late, per the norm.
…I can’t say I’m too surprised. Another person flying the Nazi colors and logos, and one that’s been warm to the topic for a while now. Offensive? Indeed. Troubling? Very. But unexpected? Sadly, not in the slightest.
What a world we live in.
Saying the Nazis were socialist is about as factually accurate as saying that the Whig party was all about hairpieces and bad spelling.
@Someguy
“Apart from anything else, the whole “sneering at the idea that common, ordinary, everyday people are the best people to identify what the problems in their own lives are.” is just classic anti-science”
Thinking that science should be taken as unquestionable truth is also anti-science. Science is in constant flux, and experts often are wrong. The problem with anti-vaxxers and climate change denialists is that they buy into pseudoscience, not that they dare to question medical or climate experts based on their personal experience.
I will never think of populism as being “bad”. Any political system that privileges a few to rule over the masses, even on the excuse of expertise, will invite abuse. Not that allowing people to do whatever they want as long as they feel they are not harming others is any better. The magic is in the middle, as it so often is.
I am now mesmerized by the cat with his boy.
She did have a Patreon, but she started asking for money to buy a crossbow to shoot feminists with, and it turns out that Patreon frowns upon those shenanigans.
Is there a problem with Patreon? I currently support three people on there, and I’d like to know if I’m doing something bad.
@ gussie
FWIW, I’m probably a bit more amenable to kinetic solutions than a lot of peeps here; I do think there are some specific issues around Antifa action though.
Like animal rights, I think sometimes you get people who are more motivated by the opportunity to fight than the cause itself. That’s not necessarily a problem; if you need extra muscle does it matter where it comes from? But it is something to consider maybe?
There’s a danger that, if every protest results in violence then you can end up excluding people who, for whatever reasons, are unwilling or unable to fight. That’s a particular problem if those people include folks you’re supposedly trying to stand up for.
The people who escalate the issue aren’t necessarily the ones who face the consequences. You can have your fun day out, but then you go home to your own space. The fascists may run off with their tails between their legs; but when they regroup who do they take it out on? It’s ok taking the fight to the streets, but if you don’t have to live in those streets yourself it can be somewhat presumptuous.
Those are the issues that leap out to me; I’m sure you can think of others.
That’s the key. I think violence is morally neutral. It all depends purely on why you’re using it. There’s a world of difference (to me at least) between punching someone who’s both happy to promote hatred and is enabling that in a way that has real consequences, and attacking people purely because of their identity.
Just my $0.02 though, as we used to say back in Usenet days.
A common aspect of fascism is the idea that the left and minority activists must be suppressed at all costs or you’ll end up with gulags and a reign of terror. It’s “they will do the same to us if we don’t do it to them” thinking.