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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2089 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Let's check in with that self-destructive dumpster fire, the Alt Right, shall we?

I read it a couple days ago but the gist of the article was arguing that LARPers are secret nazis:

    The significant overlap between Nazi fans and European history fans has led to a phenomenon medieval scholar Paul Sturtevant calls “Schrödinger’s Medievalism”: “a piece of medieval culture found in the wild that you know has been appropriated as a symbol by right-wing nationalists or racists ... You can’t tell which is it until you get more information—and sometimes doing so is impossible. So, sometimes you are left in the uncomfortable position of having to treat it as both benign and hostile at the same time.”

The Black Sun became a Nazi symbol because the Nazis took over a castle that had it in the middle of the floor. By that logic the Muppets are members of Al Qaeda.





user-inactivated  ·  2089 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The Black Sun became a nazi symbol because nazis started using it as a nazi symbol once waving swastikas around became unacceptable. I read that less as "LARPers are secret nazis" than "nazis are why we can't have nice things."

kleinbl00  ·  2088 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Just looked up #sonnenrad on Instagram. Am sad now.

kleinbl00  ·  2089 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I get the sentiment but at the same time if there's anybody who should be able to rock Norse symbols it's the LARPers and whatever Norse symbols the Nazis haven't appropriated yet, they will.

That the bulk of the article was a riff on "oh, shit, you mean I need to be offended by this symbol now?" kinda rubbed me the wrong way. The article was about "some Nazis are LARPers" but it was trying for "all LARPers are Nazis."