Nazi Imagery Continues to Haunt Silver Star, UFC and MMA

Basically, if you come in here with Nazi propaganda, I am going to be like a reincarnated Simon Wiesenthal.

Great question. I’m interested in that answer as well.

IMO Hoelzer Reich was a blatant attempt to sell white power gear. I don’t even know how they thought they would get away with it.

Strike One: Companies name includes Reich.
Strike Two: Companies logo looks like SS.
Stike Three: Cribbing nazi propaganda imagery. And there are a lot more strikes.

Otherwise, the Nazis were very scary people. They liked images that were scary. People have been cribbing Nazi imagery to convey scariness. So I think that having one disconnected image of something like the skull could probably be chalked up to there being a lot of cross over between Nazi imagery and general scary looking stuff imagery.

That is an interesting angle to look at. Where is pdl when you need him? :D

There is quite the white supremacist underground for the sport and those guys would snag that stuff up. Those symbols have also been co-opted by a lot of other groups too, it’s considered “edgy” and “outlaw” to wear Nazi symbolism (either by people who believe the same things or by people who lack higher brain functions). There is always the chance that utterly stupid t-shirt designers could be using symbolism they think appeals to that kind of crowd without knowing exactly what they mean. Of course “I am an idiot who was just trying to market shirts” is no excuse for putting Nazi symbols on them. If you are going to make something that represents your company and sell it to the public then perhaps 30 seconds worth of google work is in order. There is no excuse for “accidentally” selling a Nazi shirt.

That’s crazy talk. My experience differs dramatically.

I think you’re both right. Overall I think most mma fans are a pretty tolerant bunch, but there is definitely a large subset of white supremacists who are drawn to it because of the success white people have had. Try doing a google search for catch wrestling, Sambo, Fedor, or Chuck Liddell and you’ll find racist forums going nuts over how they prove the white man’s superiority. Unfortunately they are rapid fans for mma.

But of course, you can also do boxing searches and find equally racist shit posted by black or latinos. People suck.

I mean we are talking about Americans here, it has become cool to be ignorant. I don’t think most people buy these shirts cause they’re Nazi’s they buy them cause “skulls are cool”. The High school I went to used the Confederate Battle Flag as their school colors, now while I’m sure their was some deep seeded racism in the county I grew up in most of the kids weren’t supporters of the Old South they were just stupid kids who didn’t know any better.

I’m sure they are aware of whats going on. I doubt its just an accident that designs they use consistantly end up being nazi symbols

Yeah. He had a chance to respond. He claims no knowledge.

If the public wasn’t buying them then these clothing companies wouldn’t be in business.

I think it’s somewhat unfair to accuse a company of selling white power clothes based on a relatively obscure symbols use by Nazis. I mean, when your trying to sell scary looking clothes to disaffected white kids, odds are at some point you will end up referencing the Nazi’s whether you mean too or not. Heavy metal, bikers, goth kids… Nazi imagery is in there like choclate chips in a cake.

Agreed. Say what you will about the nazis, the one “positive” thing is that they DID have style. If you for a moment try and disregard all the bad stuff and look at them from a visual aesthetic point of view; their gigantic marches, uniforms, and imagery are all pretty damn cool looking. A lot of that can be said for communist Soviet Union or China by the way, just to be clear.

Personally I don’t really see a problem with someone wearing a shirt with an iron cross, or flirt a little with forbidden imagery as a means to provoke or look bad-ass. Skulls and lightning bolts were probably pretty cool before the nazis uses them too, and chances are they will continue to be. That doesn’t translate to turning people into neo-nazis though. I think most people who wear these kinds of shirts don’t really have such sympathies, and if they do, they’ll probably continue to have those views whether Silver Star produces these shirts or not. Non-issue as far as I’m concerned.

Only the Jolly Roger is tolerable, and only if you’re a pirate. Or an eco hippie throwing stink bombs at whaling ships.

that’s the difference

The Nazi’s didn’t invent that symbol, they incorporated it. As did the skull and bones society as does masonry. Same thing with the swastika, although with native americans the sun wheel turned the opposite way (right-hand path vs left-hand path… white magic vs black magic).

Its dark occult symbolism.

Actually I believe walmart stole the design of their shirt from Obey.

Black colleges accept white people. BET has shows featuring white people, Cain’s tattoo…….well that’s his ugly fucking tattoo. What do you mean, what difference does it make if they were supporting Nazi’s? Are you fucking serious dude?

The Grambling State marching band is teh tits

So we actually had to be in a concentration camp to be offended by what they did there? Seriously?

Hey Snowden why have’t you banned this guy yet?

That’s because Hugo Boss designed the SS uniform. Everything about Nazism was about production. Hitler was a failed artist who surrounded himself with shitty artist and tried to use Europe as his canvas.

Looks like the polish airborne wings that we recently “earned”. I wish I knew how to post links. But just google polish airborne wings.

Here’s Dethrone‘s owner Nick Swinmurn response the similarities between his shirts and Nazi imagery from the "All MMA fighters are Nazi’s apparently" thread on The UG.

unlike hitman we don’t have time to post endless pics or riddles, nor do we waste time trying to deflect attention away from ourselves when something potentially bad, while otherwise begging for attention at every turn.

as the owner of dethrone i definitely wasn’t aware of anything controversial with the shirt referenced above until i saw this thread. i apologize for not having much detailed knowledge of wartime imagery. i have not written papers on questionable imagery and compiled a huge collection of images to use on threads as hitman apparently has. this is the first time anything like this has come up for us. my reaction was immediately WTF and within seconds had removed the shirt from our site, emailed the artist that designed the shirt asking where he got the inspiration for the shirt and instructed our operations manager to offer option of a full refund to any store or individual that had ordered the shirt.

i did a search for “nazi eagle” on google and “diving eagle” quickly just now to get a better feel for how common the image was and couldn’t find the image under either. i don’t know enough to know if the eagle in question is something that is used in multiple genres or has only ever been used in the image mr hitman posted but either way its irrelevant, even if only offends one person not something we want our products to be associated with. i won’t waste time claiming any ethnicity or give you a record of who we sponsor and who we employ. if it offended anyone it sucks, doesn’t matter how you spin it.

i don’t generally post and not constantly online so apologize in advance if get a bunch of rebuttals that i don’t reply to quickly. also dan saying that no negative dethrone mentions because we sponsor the site is stupid, guessing you’d still be sponsoring the site too if the guys that bailed you out hadn’t taken your sponsorship budget away.

And a shit load of Americans were killed fighting the Nazi’s including family members for a lot of us.

Why isn’t this guy banned yet? I thought Snowden was banning people for this shit?

drink bleach

The Nazi’s were such a horrible point in history that the fact that the used them (and they are still being used by Nazi groups to this day) is why it’s such a big deal. There are other symbols used by other hate groups that would be viewed the same way even if the original had a different meaning.

Actually, I also wear Jason High’s shirt which is also pretty cool