Image via Daily Mail

There’s a certain craze sweeping through Thailand at present and it’s at it’s strongest with teenagers in the country, it’s called Nazi Chic.

T-shirts and posters featuring Hitler as a Little Big Planet ‘Sackboy’, a Hitlerfied Ronald McDonald and various other pop culture symbols which have been given the full Nazi treatment are for sale throughout many shops and boutiques in Bangkok. Younger local kids are apparently leading the craze with many wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Swastikas and cartoon versions of Hitler’s face and it’s been reported that in September of last year a group of students at a school showed up dressed in full Nazi uniform for a Sports Day. Of course there may be a reason for this craze and as one commentator explained on the Daily Mail’s website:

As a character – a character like Mickey Mouse, Napoleon, or Hello Kitty – Hitler is a very distinctive one, with that scowl, caterpillar moustache, and hairlick. And he’s not just a grinning nonentity type character like Mickey or Hello Kitty – he has a presence. This character is well known worldwide, and moreover is not copyrighted. This new Thai fashion just piggybacks off that. They have not had it drummed into them from birth that Hitler was the worst man in the world, worse than the devil; they really know rather little about him. Also the Thai view of the world is not dualistic, dividing the whole universe into black and white. They understand that there is good and bad mixed in every impermanent thing. That’s why they see nothing wrong with using the image. A bit like the way we see Napoleon today – yet in the nineteenth century he was the devil incarnate.

Image via Daily Mail

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