(Oh God, am I whoring for hits with a headline like that, or what?)

After the past four or five years of watching Hollywood produce hagiography about international communists such as the murderous Che Guevara, Castro, and the Stalin-worshiping Frida Kahlo, and stores as mainstream as Burlington Coat Factory selling Che T-shirts, I can't say I'm at all surprised that National Socialists are worshipped in Hong Kong. It is, after all, under control by a regime with a similarly bloodthirsty totalitarian lineage:

Akasi, a quarterly publication for the discerning Nipponophile, has become the latest convert in Hong Kong’s love affair with Nazi Germany. The October issue of the top-shelf glossy is dominated by pictures of an attractive young lady partially dressed as a tank commander and cavorting with wartime general Heinz Guderian.
But unlike every other local business that naively or cynically cashes in on Nazi notoriety, Akasi has yet to generate a single raised eyebrow. Until this reporter spotted a copy on the top shelf in a Causeway Bay 7-11 last week.

In Hong Kong’s English language media, there are few subjects more likely to generate an outraged print campaign than the use of Nazi memorabilia as a marketing gimmick.

There's nothing a Hong Kong girl loves more than a man in Hugo Boss with a handbag. To many Hong Kongers, Nazis represent the epitome of desirability. Their tanks were made by Mercedes and Porsche; their uniforms were original Hugo Boss. Twenty years after the last British skinhead tired of the joke, it’s still not unusual to see a Hong Kong teen in an Adolph Hitler European Tour t-shirt.

And whether it be a karaoke den with photos of Germans executing prisoners (a strange choice of decoration, admittedly), a fashion store decorated with swastikas, a TV station describing its ad breaks as “the final solution” or a coffee shop picking Hitler for its daily quote, German wartime symbolism is never far from the editor’s outrage button.

From Simon's World, which has the above article minus its photos, and a link to the article itself, which should you follow it past the Simon's World blog, is most definitely not safe for work. (Found via Charles Johnson.)

Jodie Foster has already announced that one of her next projects will be a biography about Leni Riefenstahl:

In an interview in the latest issue of Premiere magazine (September 2005), Ms. Foster was asked: "For years, you've been planning a biopic about Leni Riefenstahl, who directed the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will and who died two years ago. Are you still going to make it?"

Foster replied: "Yeah, we're still working on the script, and I'm still going to play her. I met her a couple of times...She wrote a biography that's almost all lies, but it's interesting. I wanted her archives, but I didn't want her involvement (in the film) -- and that's something she really wanted, because she'd been libeled so many times. She was not a member of the Nazi Party, and she was not Hitler's girlfriend--that's just stupid. But she's a complex morality tale."

[Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies] said: "Foster is wrong. There's nothing morally complex about what Riefenstahl did as Hitler's favorite filmmaker. The only thing complex is Foster's confusion on this issue."

Should do boffo box office in Hong Kong's cinemas, particularly if Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom produce it.

Update: Sadly, this isn't too surprising either, come to think of it. Hey, attractive young women sporting Nazi paraphernalia--they aren't just for Hong Kong anymore!

Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans.

They may remind you another famous pair of singers, the Olsen Twins, and the girls say they like that. But unlike the Olsens, who built a media empire on their fun-loving, squeaky-clean image, Lamb and Lynx are cultivating a much darker personna. They are white nationalists and use their talents to preach a message of hate.

Known as “Prussian Blue” — a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes — the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.

“We’re proud of being white, we want to keep being white,” said Lynx. “We want our people to stay white … we don’t want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race.”

Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. “They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening,” said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins’ father. “I’m going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would.”

April home-schools the girls, teaching them her own unique perspective on everything from current to historical events. In addition, April’s father surrounds the family with symbols of his beliefs — specifically the Nazi swastika. It appears on his belt buckle, on the side of his pick-up truck and he’s even registered it as his cattle brand with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.

“Because it’s provocative,” explains April of the cattle brand, “to him he thinks it’s important as a symbol of freedom of speech that he can use it as his cattle brand.”

As Rob Port (currently profiled on the Pajamas Media site) adds:

What an ironic thing for a Nazi twit to say. Ideals like “freedom of speech” don’t exist when the Nazis are in charge.

Exactly.

To paraphrase something that Jonah Goldberg wrote this past summer, and Simon's World quoted elsewhere in his post above, Nazism is supposed to define the outer limits of evil, not the lowest threshold. That its symbols are joining its linguistic expressions (ala Dick Durbin, Janeane Garofalo, and many, many others), to slowly become part of the dumbed-down pop culture vernacular is a depressing sight to observe.