JEWISH WORLD

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As part of Thailand’s homegrown ‘Nazi chic,’ has been reinvented as a series of cutesy cartoon characters emblazoned on T-shirts. The Israeli Embassy and TIBOR KRAUSZ the Simon Wiesenthal Center are concerned. HEIL McHITLER: A young woman poses for her boyfriend with the trademark dummy of Seven Star, a shop at a high-end mall in Bangkok that sells popular caricatures of Adolf Hitler on T-shirts, jackets and cigarette boxes

Tibor Krausz Bangkok

HE TOOTHBRUSH MUS- cute, cuddly almost. eyes, jug ears and a pink for an tache, the smug scowl, the In one cartoon representation Hitler is antenna, pouting irritably like a spoiled arm raised in salute – they turned into Ronald McDonald, the fast- EUDWZKLOHÀDVKLQJWKH1D]LVDOXWH instantly give him away. food chain’s clownish mascot, sporting For couples who wish to wear the führer Otherwise, though, it’s Hitler a bouffant cherry-red hairdo and a RQPDWFKLQJRXW¿WVVRPHVKLUWV±ZKLFK Tas you’ve never seen him. Plastered on censorious look. In another he’s shown cost from 200 baht to 370 baht ($7 to $12) myriad designer T-shirts, the Nazi tyrant wearing an oh-so-lovely panda costume apiece – come in both male and female shows up in ever more unexpected hybrids with a Nazi armband. In yet another he versions. On the latter, Ronald-Adolf is of cartoonist caricature. In each he looks appears as a pink Teletubby with doe depicted as a transvestite with fuchsia

28 THE JERUSALEM REPORT JANUARY 30, 2012 as Statement

hair, lipstick, long lashes and a timid image of Hitler as a yellow Teletubby. while. “When foreigners complain [about smile. Panda Adolf’s manlier alter ego, “Actually, I don’t know much about him,” my representations of Hitler],” Hut tells The meanwhile, wears a Brownshirt uniform. he admits. “In school we only learn Thai Report, just as a series of Thai shoppers stop history. But I know he was a communist by to pose cheerfully with his doll, “I tell N BUDDHIST THAILAND, WHERE leader,” he says, unwittingly demonstrating them it’s Charlie Chaplin.” spiritual rebirths are believed to the level of ignorance the average young Do they buy it? “No!” he says and laughs. Ibe a fact of life, the führer has been Thai has about the Nazi leader and the Shoham wants all Hitler imagery reincarnated as a popular fashion accessory. genocidal crimes of his regime. removed from the shop. He’s spoken Some Jews and Israelis aren’t amused. Following a popular vote, Hut’s clothing to the mall’s managers, who have been “They get upset [when they see my label has been named by a local youth noncommittal about the issue. So he plans T-shirts]. They come to my shop and streetwear magazine as one of Thailand‘s to recruit other ambassadors, such as complain,” laments the owner of Seven Top Five T-shirt brands of 2011. On Germany’s and Austria’s, to apply further Star, a small clothing shop at Terminal 21, his Facebook page, the up-and-coming pressure on Thai authorities, who, he says, a new high-end designer mall in central designer basks in his fame by proudly have promised to see if there are grounds Bangkok. He’s a thirtyish, wiry fellow displaying photos of soap opera starlets, for legal action against shop owners selling who crowns his wavy, shoulder-length actors and pop stars posing at his shop merchandise with Hitler’s likeness. locks with a jaunty bowler hat. A graduate with his trademark dummy. The ambassador may be facing a losing of a local university’s arts program, the battle. Unlike in Israel and , Nazi cartoonist does brisk business selling his F GOOD MANNERS DON’T regalia aren’t illegal in Thailand. Across ³0F+LWOHU´7VKLUWV+HLGHQWL¿HVKLPVHOI help, I may go back and break the town at another fashion mall, another small only by his nickname as “Hut.” “Ihand of that doll,” fumes Itzhak shop hawks its own cutesy caricatures Covering walls in Hut’s garage-size Shoham, Israel’s ambassador to Thailand. of Hitler plastered on T-shirts, including shop are large hand-drawn comic strip The Israeli Embassy is located just a few Panda Adolf. The Nazi leader takes pride panels. They feature his caricatures hundred meters from Terminal 21, and re- of place among Smurfs, pop stars and of Michael Jackson, Kim Jong-il, Che cently Shoham came face to face with the Japanese manga characters. “Hitler shirts *XHYDUDDQGRWKHULFRQLF¿JXUHV%XWWKH Hitler look-alike dummy saluting nonstop are very popular, especially with teenage most prominent character by far is Adolf with its electric arm. “You don’t want to boys,” notes the shop’s owner, Sirinapa McDonald. In one panel by the entrance, see memories of the Nazi period trivial- Hemmaruk, 30, whose family operates a the Nazi dictator greets visitors with a ized in this manner,” he stresses. “It hurts clothing factory. Sieg Heil salute and a friendly “Hello the feelings of every Jew and every civi- On Bangkok’s Khao San Road, a everybody.” In another, he smiles and lized person.” backpacker haven popular with young declares: “Time to party!” He decided to confront the shop’s owner. Israeli travelers, yet other T-shirt 2XWVLGHWKHVKRSVWDQGVD¿YHIRRWWDOO ³, VDLG WR KLP ލ, GRQ¶W PLQG WKH GROO MXVW designs boast images of Hitler. These McHitler dummy, whose motorized left take the face off,’” recalls Shoham, a portly, include Photoshopped prints of the arm goes up and down, up and down, in the grandfatherly man in his 60s. “He completely führer sunbathing naked on a tropical . A week before Christmas, the ignored me. He just turned his back on me. So EHDFK 6KRSSHUV ORRNLQJ IRU 1D]L ÀDJV dummy wore a Santa hat. A week before I lost my temper.” He chuckles. reproduction Third Reich propaganda that, it had a sign soliciting donations Hut still seems frazzled by the posters, pennants with the for the victims of the recent devastating experience. “Israeli big boss came in here and Nazi eagles, and faux SS helmets for ÀRRGVLQ7KDLODQG and got angry,” he complains, with the air PRWRUF\FOLVWVFDQ¿QGWKHPDWWKHVSUDZOLQJ “It’s not that I like Hitler,” Hut insists RIVRPHRQHXQIDLUO\ZURQJHG³+HUXIÀHG Chatuchak weekend market, where they’re defensively. “But he looks funny and the some of my shirts and crumpled one of my on sale alongside Bob Marley portraits and shirts are very popular with young people.” business cards.” Rastafarian accoutrements. “Hitler looks cool because he seems like Now nearby shop owners alert him to the When I show him pictures of Panda Adolf an interesting character,” agrees Pitawat presence of approaching foreigners who and Hitler as a Teletubby, Shoham sighs. Chaiyot, a 21-year-old university student look like trouble. In such cases he yanks “There’s no ill intent [in such designs],” who buys himself a green shirt with the down the shutters and disappears for a he concedes. “Let’s be realistic: Thais just

THE JERUSALEM REPORT JANUARY 30, 2012 29 JEWISH WORLD

don’t know about history, including their them on merrily from the sidewalks as for- expression is mai tong kit mak (Don’t think RZQ6WLOOZHKDYHWR¿JKWWKLVUDWKHU eign tourists looked on stunned. too much).” unpleasant phenomenon.” In 2007 hundreds of students at a gov- “The Jewish concept of memory, which During his previous posting in ernment school in Bangkok staged a simi- emphasizes an overarching connection of Singapore, Shoham says, he encountered lar Nazi-themed costume parade. On both the past to the present, is not a universally similar manifestations of so-called “Nazi occasions an international hue and cry en- practiced or even accepted idea,” explains chic,” an appropriation of Nazi imagery sued. At each school teachers blamed the Cooper, who has studied the phenomenon as subversive symbols in popular fashion, students, pleading ignorance of their plans of Nazi chic across Southeast and North- which traces its origins to the punk for using Nazi designs during their cos- east Asia from Thailand to Taiwan. subculture in Britain, in the 1970s. In Japan tume parades. In the case of the recent pa- It’s not that countries in the region don’t and Hong Kong, Nazi-themed costumes are rade, though, it didn’t help matters that the have their own cultural taboos. Several popular in cosplay, a fashion fad that sees students came from Sacred Heart College, Thais, for instance, have been sentenced teens dress up as their favorite Japanese a Catholic preparatory school attached to to long years in prison for posting doctored comic book and cartoon characters. the local diocese. The city’s bishop has images on Facebook of the country’s invio- “” has even been adapted as since apologized to Shoham. lable royals, who are protected by a draco- a manga-style comic book in Japan, where “It’s true on one level that [such displays] nian lèse-majesté law. “Thai people know “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is a are all down to ignorance,” says Rabbi full well where they must draw a line on perennial bestseller. Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the parody,” Cooper notes. Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Then there’s the issue of cultural discon- AST SEPTEMBER IN THE “But with ignorance comes lack of sensi- nect. Jews recoil at the very sight of the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, tivity,” he adds. “We’re not blaming the swastika, which, as Cooper puts it, “has L a group of high school students children. But teachers should have known a toxic and foreboding image as a living managed to outdo their rivals by show- better, especially at a Catholic school.” symbol of pure evil.” Yet to Hindus and ing up for “sport day” in something truly Harry Soicher, a Romanian Jew who Buddhists, the swastika, which Hitler ap- eye-catching: homemade Nazi uniforms, teaches geography at a Bangkok high propriated as an emblem of Aryan superi- complete with swastika armbands and toy school, isn’t so sure about the teachers. ority, is an ancient good luck symbol. Dur- guns. Led by a fresh-faced teenage girl in “The foreign teachers [at my school] were ing World War II, countries in Southeast a Brownshirt uniform, sporting a painted shocked, but the Thai teachers didn’t un- Asia came under the yoke of Japanese oc- Hitler mustache and wielding a cheerlead- derstand what the fuss was all about,” he cupiers, but they had no direct experience er’s baton, they paraded around downtown says. “They just want to live their lives of Nazi atrocities. And so, shorn of their in their SS uniforms, carrying a large Nazi stress-free. They don’t want to know about historical context, the potent imagery and ÀDJ DQG VDOXWLQJ VSU\O\ /RFDOV FKHHUHG subjects like . Their favorite hallucinogenic pageantry of Nazi visual

Nazi Chic Merry-Go-Round key chains with Hitler’s likeness. In Hong Kong, a clothing store decorated its FEW YEARS AGO TWO ENTERPRIS- chef, a pair of Nazi and the mot- premises with Nazi flags and banners. In Aing restaurateurs in Taipei, Taiwan, to in Gothic font: “Fine Dining Macht Frei.” South Korea and Japan, Nazi-style mem- came up with a novel idea: an eatery mod- Both eateries were redecorated, willy- orabilia are coveted by many fashion- eled after a concentration camp. nilly, by their owners after an outcry from conscious youths, who often enjoy Called Jail, the designer restaurant in- foreign embassies. listening to white power music, for vited diners to polish off their plates of Such incidents across the region follow good measure. gourmet dishes among hand-painted a predictable script: Some locals decide to In 2002, “The Times of India” surveyed murals and WWII photographs of skeletal use Nazi imagery for commercial or fash- students at elite colleges across the death camp inmates in striped pajamas ion purposes; foreign embassies express subcontinent about who they saw as an staring from behind barbed wire or lying outrage; the culprits plead ignorance of exemplary leader. Hitler finished ahead of on their bunk beds. Toilets were dubbed the Nazi period and issue apologies. Then the likes of Nelson Mandela and Abraham “Gas Chambers” and decorated with gas comes another case of blatant Nazi chic Lincoln, coming close behind Mahatma pipes and pressure gauges. somewhere else. And so the merry-go- Gandhi. The students cited his drive, Not to be outdone in its embrace of Nazi round spins on. discipline and efficiency in their choice for chic, India, too, had its own Hitler-themed A decade ago, a Thai advertising agency the führer. café. Catering to a posh clientele of busi- thought it a swell idea to market potato “The fault,” the paper’s political edi- nessmen and Bollywood stars in Mum- chips with Hitler’s image. Two years ago tor lamented, “lies with the collapse of bai, Hitler’s Cross – as the restaurant was a new waxworks museum in the country the higher educational system.” The lack called after the Nazis’ Cross of Honor of followed suit by advertising itself with a gi- of teaching history to young people, he the German Mother, a crucifix with a swas- ant billboard featuring the führer with the opined, has led to “the atrophying of soci- tika awarded to fecund German mothers words in Thai: “Hitler is not dead!” ety’s value[s].” ‡ – boasted a logo with a Hitler-mustached In Taiwan, 7-Elevens sold dolls and T. K.

30 THE JERUSALEM REPORT JANUARY 30, 2012 ment for students. Cooper has an answer for that. “Had the Nazis prevailed during World War II, their racist ideology would have eventually tar- geted all races the Nazis deemed ‘inferior,’ including Asians,” he points out. “Many neo-Nazis today loathe and demean and sometimes attack people of Asian descent.” Yet if online comments are any indica- tion, quite a few Thais have adopted a haughty leave-us-be attitude in the face of foreigners’ criticism of Thai-style Nazi chic. “This is just a song, grow up already!” one commenter opines in English on You- Tube in defense of Slur’s Nazi-themed music video. “Shut the [expletive] up and enjoy the music,” advises another. On Seven Star’s Facebook page, mean- while, fans of the clothing label complain that foreigners upset about Hut’s führer car- toons have “no sense of humor.” Soon after his run-in with the Israeli am- TIBOR KRAUSZ bassador last December, the Thai designer taped down his McHitler dummy’s mus- tache with a small piece of paper scrawled “sensor” on it. (He meant “censored.”) OH SO CUTE: A collection of cartoonist designs with Hitler’s image from designer T-shirts Presently, though, the sign was off. on sale in Bangkok Arguably, playful depictions of Hitler can be seen as just mischievous satire. Af- propaganda continue to fascinate fashion- death camps. “They were shocked,” he says. ter all, it’s unlikely that the intensely image- conscious youngsters across the region. “But many of them found it hard to believe conscious Nazi dictator would be pleased to Unlike in neighboring Muslim-majority something like this could have happened.” see himself depicted as a fast-food chain’s Malaysia, anti-Semitism among Thais is A recent interview with Thai college stu- red-haired clown or a pink Teletubby. SUDFWLFDOO\ QRQH[LVWHQW PRVW GRQ¶W HYHQ dents suggested that most educated young Jewish humorists, too, have engaged in know who Jews are. Yet “in the era of Thais have only a very vague notion of subversive parody of the führer and the the Internet, where anything can go viral neighboring Cambodia’s recent , Nazis, most notably in Mel Brooks’ 1968 overnight,” Cooper stresses, “we can’t never mind the Holocaust. This, despite ¿OP³7KH3URGXFHUV´DFRPHG\LQZKLFK afford to let the frivolous use of Nazi the fact that the policies of the communist two down-on-their-luck Jewish theater pro- imagery go unmentioned.” Khmer Rouge regime, which was respon- ducers hatch a get-rich-quick scheme that And some Thai-style Nazi chic has gone sible for the death of an estimated two mil- involves staging a harebrained play glorify- viral. A recent music video by a popular lion Cambodians between 1975 and 1979, ing Hitler. Ahead of his new movie “The Thai pop group called Slur shows its four directly impacted politics and events in Dictator,” due out next summer, British- members each dressed up as Hitler. “The Thailand for decades. Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s pro- mohawk or the skinhead... is it hip?” the Undaunted, Shoham and Cooper are both motional posters feature a scantily dressed catchy refrain goes in a jejune song about working on plans to offer educational proj- Megan Fox with a Hitler mustache standing fashion. The Thai expression hit ler (mean- ects for some Thai schools about the Nazi LQIURQWRID1D]LÀDJ ing “Is it hip?”) is a homophone that rhymes period, using learning materials developed Seven Star’s own motto is “Made for with the dictator’s name. In their video, by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem and the Simon Fun,” and Hut insists he means no harm or which is highly popular on YouTube with Wiesenthal Center. “It will have to be very offense. Meanwhile, buoyed by great de- millions of hits and thousands of “likes,” EDVLFGH¿QLWHO\EXW\RXKDYHWRVWDUWVRPH- mand for his hybridized Hitler drawings, the Thai musicians prance about and tor- where,” Shoham notes. he has just started selling jackets, cigarette ment prisoners in striped pajamas. Some locals, though, don’t think Thais boxes and postcards with them as well. should bother learning about at Cooper doesn’t see such images of Hit- OLLOWING THE NAZI-STYLE all. “Why should they [Thais and Asians] ler as a laughing matter. “In a country that parade in Chiang Mai, Soicher de- care about a period in European history? seeks and welcomes millions of tourists Fcided to organize a lecture at his Why should they have Westerners’ cultural every year, claiming these designs are a school about the Holocaust. He showed hang-ups about it?” insists an editor of a joke just won’t do,” he insists. “They are a students old photos and newsreels from the prominent daily, which publishes a supple- parody of what? Mass murder?” ‡

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