The Holocaust is not a costume, so why put it on like one? Just to see if one can get away with it? For the laughs and for the thrill? It is disturbingly easy to procure a full set of Nazi regalia and German Wehrmacht uniforms through popular platforms like Amazon.
In 2005, the former Prince Harry was severely criticised for wearing a swastika to a fancy dress party when he was 20-years-old. As it turns out, in 2003, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet similarly donned a Nazi-themed costume for his twenty-first birthday party, followed by an apology and admission of being ‘deeply ashamed’.
On Friday, 27 January 2023, we will commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. This year’s theme is “Ordinary People”, for it was ordinary people who looked the other way as their fellow citizens, other ordinary people, were loaded onto trucks and deported to concentration camps and eradication facilities. Ordinary people let ordinary people die. Many decades after, they told journalists that they, too, were deeply ashamed of what they’d done.
Ordinary people have choices. So why do some choose ideological fascist cosplay today, knowing full well the genocidal backstory to these symbols?
Read the article by Dr Benjamin Nickl on ABC Religion and Ethics.