A friend once explained to me, when talking about Heidegger, that when you push against the Liberal Experiment you push hard and on all fronts. So it’s weird to observe the back alleys where National Socialism and Corporate Capitalism run together. It’s a place where the very obvious flaws of both ideologies begin to parallel each other. You can see this most literally in the appropriation of beauty images. The languid, strung-out looking models you see on billboards have become something other than an end unto themselves and instead are meant to make you feel unsexy so that you’ll give people money. The Nazis used pagan, homoerotic images of the human body in order to get you to kill other people, and then eventually yourself.
In fact, one of the most popular books in Nazi Germany was a well-made series of glossy black and white photos of nudes sunbathing and engaged in various physical activities called Mensch und Sonne. Originally published by photographer Hans Suren in 1924, a new Olympics edition was printed after the Nazi’s took over. Believing that physical activity should be promoted ahead of and in place of such decadent pursuits as thinking and reading about stuff, it appealed to the Teutonic bros that eventually became the Schutzstaffel. And also people who just liked to be naked. In fact, it’s shocking how quickly nudist movements in Germany were co-opted by the State. And not to belabor the point or compare them in anything other than very general terms, but it happened just as quickly to the Free Love movements in America, which was also quickly co-opted by corporations. When you push hard against something, make sure you’re pushing in the right direction.
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