The Waffen SS in Ohio

A reader recently sent me a chilling article from the Atlantic magazine. In Ohio, Steve Iott, a Republican congressional candidate  of the "Tea Party" wing of the party has as a hobby activities that would have gotten him thrown into jail during WWII and ostracized for many years afterwards, 

 He has with likeminded associates dressed up as a member of the Hitlerite Waffen SS in order to re-enact battles of WWII.  Iott is a fan of the military achievements of the Waffen SS, but claimed in a subsequent New York Times story that this did not mean that he was a supporter of Nazism.

The NYT story omitted most of what was really important and let Iott and his friends off the hook.  The Atlantic story did not. 

Because it really gets much worse than just the Waffen SS, the tens of thousands of fascist volunteers whom the Nazis recruited to fight  what was their own holy war for a racist imperialist New Order in Europe. The group  of reenactors has its own website, in honor of the Wiking division of the Waffen SS.  Iott (I am tempted to call him Idiot) claims that he and his friends chose Wiking because they fought on the Eastern Front, where of course over 27 million Soviet people, 6 million Polish people, half of them Jewish Poles, the other half mostly of Roman Catholic background perished, along with millions of others.

It then gets much worse.  The group's website in honor of the Wiking division goes on to say "Nazi Germany had no problem in recruiting the multitudes of volunteers  willing to lay down their lives to ensure  a 'new and free Europe', free of the threat of Communism....we salute these idealists: no matter how unsavory the Nazi government was the frontline soldiers of the Waffen--SS (particularly the foreign volunteers) gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free."

With the exception of the faint criticisms of the Nazis, this is  recycled Hitlerism minus the rabid anti-Semitism.  The Attantic article has comments from distinguished historians, Charles Sydnor and others who challenge  the complete ahiwtorical absurdities of these views. 

 The best though, and one that should be written on Iott's uniform is from Professor Rob Citino of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas:  The entire German war effort in the East was a racial crusade to rid the world of 'subhumans' Slavs were going to be enslaved in numbers of tens of millions.  And of course the multimillion Jewish population of Eastern Europe was to be exterminated altogether.  That's what these folks were doing in the East.  It sends a shiver up my spine to that that peole want to dress up and play SS on the weekend."

I would add a few points to anyone who  even passively takes Iott seriously on any level.  Freedom in occupied Europe meant freedom from Hitlerite domination.  Those who joined the Waffen SS were largely involved in fascist and ultraright groups before the Nazi occupation gave them a license to kill.  And kill they did.  The Waffen SS, as against the regular German army was along with the Regular SS an organization of murders.   Denying their major role in many atrocities is like denying the Holocaust itself  and those atrocities were not only committed in the East, as if that would be any justificaqtion for them.

 In late 1944 at the Battle of the Bulge for example Waffen SS forces murdered American prisoners of war in the same way that they murdered Soviet prisoners, partisans and innocent bystanders in the East When Ronald Reagan went to a  german military cemetary  at Bitburg which included Waffen SS troops along with regular German army draftees in 1985, this led to a U.S. and international wave of protests which led Reagan to "balance" his trip with a visit to a concentration camp.

I would not call Ronald Reagan a Nazi and I doubt he would dress up in this way except to play a role in the movies, where the characters in Nazi uniforms would be villains.

 Given the statements on the website, I am not so sure about Iott or those who have usurped the name of the Tea Party the way Hitler usurped the term socialist.  If there are Polish Americans in Iott's district, they should know that the Wiking website has video footage of the Nazi "victory parade" in Warsaw in 1939.  The merciless bombing of defenseless Warsaw, the atrocities committed widely by the SS forces against Polish people they regarded as subhuman, are not included in a website dedicated to the exploits of these "idealists."

 But what Iott and his ilk represent in this election is a third wave of Reaganism, which in political terms is less a rising of the angry but the overflowing a cesspool which has been untreated  and allowed to grow over the last three decades  while people were told that from this cesspool would come prosperity and power..

Hopefully, voters on election day will send Iott the message that weekend Nazis, couch potato fascists, have no place in the U.S. Congress.  Hopefully, those on the left who are falling for the media pessimism that a Republican victory is coming will realize the danger that Iott and his friends represent and turn back these sinister reactionary forces.  At best, they would if victorious represent a new 1994 and Gingrich Congress.  At worst, something like the German elections of the early 1930s, when the Nazi party emerged with the largest bloc of seats in the German Reichstag, which frankly a "Tea Party" Republican majority, might resemble.

There is still time to stop them and mobilize to make real the change that voters elected President Obama to carry forward in 2008 and which is the antithesis of everything that the Republican party represents today.

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  • Hopefully,brother Markowitz those in our own CPUSA will start to understand that fascism here is akin to fascism in Europe,and not only in "theory".
    Our CPUSA has shown a dangerous tendency to try to distance itself from anti-fascism,in trying to distance itself from Euro-Communism.
    This Communism has indeed made serious mistakes.But its anti-fascism was not one of them.
    Imperialism and capitalism have falsified history to make the mistakes of socialism and the atrocity of fascism one in the same. This is a deliberate lie. This fight between these diametrical opposites was fought out in the horrifying battle between Sovietism and Nazism in World War II,at Leningrad,when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were allies.
    The proponents of imperialism,now and then,would rather highlight the Soviet/Nazi Non-aggression Pact as a solid cut and dry pact,rather than,as it was regarded by Hitler's Nazism,a tactical temporary maneuver to achieve the military objectives of fascism's expansionism.
    This expansionism,both Soviet socialism and U. S. capitalism took belligerent exception to.
    The worker/soldier element in both socialism and capitalism had a unique view of this conflict,which will yet crystallize into a determined international working class force for peace which the whole world will inherit.
    Peace activists Paul Leroy Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois acted on this force,and now communists over the globe are compelled to follow this legacy.
    The first step,for justice and peace lovers,is to vote to stop the Tea Baggers with their fascist content,on 2 Nov 2010.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 10/13/2010 8:28pm (14 years ago)

  • Thanks for the correction Aaron, although it doesn't change the content. I don't think he changed the name from Steve to Rich, the way Adolf's father changed the family name from Schickelgruber to Hitler. Rich sounds better for a rightwing Republican, just as "Heil Schickelgruber" wouldn't have gone over that well
    Norman Markowitz

    Posted by norman markowitz, 10/13/2010 6:13pm (14 years ago)

  • Much has been written implying the fascist nature of the Teabaggers-now we have a clear fascistic connection of a movement in history we know something about,the Waffen SS,Nazism and anti-communism.
    More will be coming from this writer on this,since it seems our CPUSA,as a whole,does not see why and how all communists should have a clarity about the historical connections and the logical contemporaneous connections with them(the communists)and their dialectical opposites,fascists.
    As Lenin has written,imperialism is capitalism gone wild. In the past,it has manifested itself as fascism. It is through building unity for democracy and economic rights for the international working class,against this extremely dangerous Tea Party movement,that these extreme dangers may be countered and eradicated.
    Consolidation of the One Nation Together movement,starting with what our own Norman Markowitz correctly calls the 2 Nov mid-term elections, a score card on the healthy development of the positive,progressive movement for working peoples'interests.
    Let's help the workers get out to consolidate the victory of Nov 2008,and the One Nation Together Movement,by voting 2 Nov 2010.

    Posted by peaceapplause, 10/13/2010 5:38pm (14 years ago)

  • That's right. The Nazi impersonator is a Teabagger named Rich Iott.

    Posted by Smarter-than-a-teabagger, 10/13/2010 10:12am (14 years ago)

  • It's "Rich" Iott, not "Steve" Iott.

    Posted by Aaron M., 10/13/2010 9:21am (14 years ago)

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