What is Digg?175 Comments
- borninda818, on 10/12/2007, -15/+120I don't.
I foresee a couple pissed phone calls to Wall-Mart headquarters followed by Wall-Mart executives having the shirt pulled from the shelves.
Furthermore, what will they sue for? Insensitivity?
If you don't like the shirt, don't buy it. - neutrascrub, on 10/12/2007, -17/+108There is nothing illegal about that...
Free Speech anyone? - ThugEsquire, on 10/12/2007, -3/+47"Nazi symbolism or anything Nazi-esque does not fall under the category of free speech. I think you confuse free speech with anarchy." -- SportBilly
Actually, here in the U.S., it does fall under the category of free speech.
And the Nazis certainly hated anarchy. - DDoSAttack, on 10/12/2007, -3/+42"And there's no citation listing WHERE that image came from. If you do an image search on google for "deaths head", there are a ton of different variations of the skull and crossbones. There's no way to be certain which ones are original and which are modern interpretations."
Your searching for the wrong thing...
Do a search for "SS-Totenkopfverbände" and you will see that they have a very strong resemblance to that skull on that shirt.
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=SS-Totenkopfverb%C3%A4nde&btnG=Search - atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -4/+40I agree, it's not possible to arive to that by mistake. It's a copy, the only question is if the person knew what he copied.
- taotehue, on 10/12/2007, -2/+29first result from google when i search for SS-Totenkopfverbände
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/SScamp/SSHistory.html
what do you see? The skull.
I have seen it on WW2 footage personally.
I don't see what your problem with wiki is. It is a great research tool with an error rate that is similar to a standard encyclopedia. It is a great place to start a search for further information. - sephiroth965, on 10/12/2007, -9/+36The symbol on the shirt is basically identical to the "Death's Head" symbol. This was almost certainly purposely by the designer.
- Azap, on 10/12/2007, -3/+29Either 1 of 2 things happened,
1. Some designer found a original looking skull, not knowing the source of the image, no one double checked its historical ramifications, and bang its on the shelves.
2. There is a secret Nazi conspiracy going on within Wal-mart, and they decided that to further their cause they will subliminally implant Nazi images into the American youths brains...
I smell "Davinci Code: The Nazi Wal-mart Connection" - nixonrichard, on 10/12/2007, -7/+32Yeah, my girlfriend bought the plunger with that handle . . . I always wondered why it smelled funny.
- interrogate, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23"Nazi symbolism or anything Nazi-esque does not fall under the category of free speech. I think you confuse free speech with anarchy."
What are you talking about? Why wouldn't they fall under free speech? What do they have to do with anarchy at all? - Revadarth, on 10/12/2007, -4/+24@carapi:
So you're basically saying that everything only has one symbol?
The American flag is the only thing that can represent America?
And even though the swastika had been used by Christians and Hindus before the Nazis took it that that is the one and only thing that can represent a Nazi?
Also, what source would you prefer to be cited? - diggenerate, on 10/12/2007, -10/+30To the above comment...
I don't know how you folks over in Europe do things but in America we don't punish people for thought crimes. If we do not allow people to express theirs views about a subject then how are we any different from people like Stalin, Hitler, etc... who tried to repress and eliminate all that opposed them? I think that allowing people to express their views however twisted is necessary. Not only will it allow everyone else to know who the perpetrators are, but it is self deprecating to them. A person may be stupid but people generally are smart and able to think for themselves. I think that the laws that are in place in Germany and other countries which prohibit any form of Nazi-ism are ridiculous. Who are they trying to protect? I doubt that anyone will ever be allowed to come to power in any country with ideas such as Hitlers, especially when we have already seen what will happen.
You are a moron. - happyperson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21i think this is quite appropriate...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO5WoLnOOlU - iNcubi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22I'll say that when a Nazi symbol isn't recognized as a Nazi symbol right away its a good thing. It means that the Nazi era is long gone... Stop giving the power back by "banning" or whatever, it just makes the symbols mean what the Nazis want.
- Cthalupa, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20SportBilly, flag burning IS legal in the US.
- riffic, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21National Socialism isn't thinly veiled, it IS Nazism.
- dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15"Freedom of speech is a global thing, not an American thing."
No... It's an American thing. There are plenty of places where it is illegal to say certain things, granted I can't think of any off the top of my head, and most "civilised" places have enough freedom that they can say quite alot before any legal action is taken, leaving them with an effective freedom of speech (with the exception of defamation). I believe it's specifically a part of your constitution, or an amendment thereof. - megaloid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Surely, some of the people on this thread realize that the German army tankers still use the "Totenkopf" symbol as their official insignia. It's kind of a tasteless holdover from the Nazi era but for whatever reason they still wear it.
- Knaveswikert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14actually it comes from Prussian culture long before germany was even a unitied germany. so it is a tasteless holdover of prussia. much like most of the songs the nazi's promoted were from the same period of german national awareness awakening.
- jonnyeh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Yes, Nazis are legal in the US:
http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/strwhe.html
Just read up on the famous Nazi march in Skokie Illinois in 1977. - mancat, on 10/12/2007, -8/+20Yeah right!! You're drunk right now, aren't you? Aren't you?!?
- unnamedjoe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14This reminds me of a couple of years ago, when I worked for walmart and they had something that looked like a A male organ, and well, I mentioned it to management and soon after it was pulled off the shelf. Evidently no one really noticed it before.
- grooviekenn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I thought this comment on the site was interesting:
"Well, in April of 1978 some 15,000 former members of the Nazi party came out publicly against National Socialism (Read: Thinly veiled Nazism) in a public demonstration." - an0nymous, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15I have to say that, in general, (maybe not here) the Nazis were some snappy dressers.
I know, I know, you hate Nazis. Very principled and courageous of you to take that stand. But for design? Fantastic.
They were some spiffy looking bad guys. - felyduw, on 10/12/2007, -7/+18I don't think it's because of Hitler vs Stalin. I believe it's because Nazi symbols turned out to be symbols of racism, hatred and violence whereas USSR symbols didn't.
We (should) all know that both regimes killed millions of people but there's a substantial difference between the common usage of each symbolism nowadays. - iFrank, on 10/12/2007, -8/+18Yeah, but nobody says anything about the CCCP shirts now ubiquitous among the chic uninformed. Why is Hitler's mass genocide more controversial than Stalin's mass genocide? The USSR is just as inextricably linked with death and terror as Nazi Germany.
Baffles me every time I see one. - saifatlast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Nazi = Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeitspartei (pronounced in German, the National begins with a "Nazi"). Translated word for word, this means National Socialist German Workers Party.
Just to give some extra weight behind riffic's comment.
And of course, the inevitable Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSDAP - gnomon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Wal-Mart isn't endorsing Nazism. This has happened before--the people who design their clothes see kids wearing something on the street and try to copy it, thinking it's "hip." This happened a few years back with shirts that said "88". Wal-Mart had no idea "88" meant "Heil Hitler." Settle down.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Wow! You were so outraged about it that you can't remember ANY now?
Sounds pretty credible to me. - postal21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6If people want to be dumb and buy Nazi shirts let them. I dont care.
- blueface, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6just for anyone who still had any doubts as to the "authenticity" of this actually being the totenkopf...
following links are from or relating to skrewdriver.net, a combat 18 (read white supremacist) website.
http://isdrecords.com/store/index.php?cPath=22
http://www.skrewdriver.net/index2.html
seems like walmart have undercut these people though... zing!
seriously, this totenkopf, in this form and slight variations has been used by combat 18 as well as other neo-nazi/white supremacist groups for years now. i remember first seeing this skull drawn onto someone's bag when i was in school (about 8 years ago). and yes, he did know what it meant... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -16/+22I give walmart kudos for standing up to political correctness and denfending freedom of expression. (or being too stupid to notice)
- wvdavis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@ truegodofwar – “kudos for standing up to political correctness and denfending freedom of expression”?
Did you know that Wal-Mart won’t sell albums with the “Parental Advisory” label on them? From their web site: “Wal-Mart Stores, Sam's Club and Walmart.com (collectively "Wal-Mart") do not carry recordings designated with the Parental Advisory Label.”
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=547092 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6My money is on The Turner Diaries being published in 1978.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Diaries
It's the book Tim McVeigh was trying to re-enact when he bombed Oklahoma City. Also helped establish the National Alliance, one of the biggest neo-nazi groups in the US. - orientis, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I have a t-shirt with Osama Bin Laden on front and back. Full colour, doing the two fingers/one thumb thing near his head. Down the bottom it says "Well-Known"
My mum's partner gave it to me. Someone else gave it to him as a joke gift. I don't know where the ***** it came from, but it's pretty weird.
I wear it around the house and as pyjamas. Once I forgot I was wearing it and walked down the road to the shop. Got some funny looks from the guy behind the counter. Next day I went down wearing a dodgy shirt my dad brought back from the US, it has some old fisherman bursting out of an american flag with a speech-bubble "These colours won't run!". It's even more embarassing than the Osama one. I think I confused the hell out of him. - gwolf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I agree
Whether its a flag or a death’s head they are symbols, just shorthand for a set of ideas. That particular shirt stands for a particularly bad set of ideas. You can’t defeat a bad idea with tanks or bombs anymore than you can win a war on the ideals of terrorist by killing some of them. You defeat bad ideals with better ones. That shirt wouldn’t get sold at Walmart if the ideals behind it had been defeated by the war; that war never ends. - Alniner, on 10/12/2007, -16/+21OMG...I went to a local walmart and found this:
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/images/skull-crossbones-pirate-fla.jpg
They support Pirates!!!!!
And worse yet....
http://pencenmuseum.com/shop/images/100_0046.JPG
Canadians!!! They support Canadians... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@davecor:
While it is true that companies the size of WalMart don't do anything on a whim, they are a bit like drunken elephants. They often do things they don't know they are doing.
It is a good bet that some buyer for WalMart had a t-shirt makers portfolio come across his desk, flipped through it, liked what he saw and bought the entire portfolio.
I am always hesitant to subscribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetents , ignorance, and/or indifference. - MrSunshine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Skateboard is the right catchword:
http://www.88footwear.com/
88 stands for "Heil Hitler". - WebsterJTC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5actually, flag burning is not illegal. you can do whatever you want to the flag. That's not to say you won't get arrested for public endangerment if you start a fire in public...but the actual burning of the flag is legal. See Texas v. Johnson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._Johnson
- jimbouk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Nazi symbols are not illegal in the EU, although there are some very strict laws in Germany about references to, or symbols of, the Nazi period.
EU laws generally do not extend to such precise issues as these, which are up to each state to decide upon. - zdiggler, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I have never seen anybody in America with CCCP symbol lynching people. Not even the russian mobs.
There are plenty of stupid Nazi wannbes in America thought. - darkdaedra, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Well that's a shame because I love you and your sexy name, omnidatacenter!
- orientis, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8@gwolf
"Hey buddy, my dad died for that flag!"
"...really? I bought this at K-Mart."
The map is not the territory. - stoppedcode12, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11yup, that's what happens when you outsource design, fabrication, and manufacturing to third-world countries.
- BlogCruiser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4No, this shouldn't be an issue in America. If Walmart or anyone sells this shirt it doesn't really matter, it is legal and should be. Thank you for sharing the knowledge and onward I move. Now, if I would buy this shirt I will know of many things it was once an emblem for. Even if I decide for it to represent something new altogether or not. Does the two finger wave mean victory, peace or something else? I guess it is all relative to the person interpreting it.
- jordanrobbins, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7That reminds me! I need to play a little Return to Castle Wolfenstein
- davecor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I vote for option 1. I bet it was a shoddy cut & paste job. (or the artist is a cynic who is now laughing his ass off)
But keep this in mind, a company this size doesn't do anything on a whim. This shirt was selected by a buyer who had to show it to a room full of executives for approval. It was also probably run past a focus group or two.
Expect a lot of finger-pointing and one poor sap to be made the fall-guy.
Let's hope a review is made before they release those red and black armbands with that crooked Hindu thingy on them. -
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