Ron Asheton and I had several lengthy discussions about all of those issues when I interviewed for my Stooges retrospective (published in the spring of '95). He always made it very clear that he wasn't a Nazi or a fascist, but just fascinated by that particular era -- he began buying a lot of it as a preteen, which is where the initial momentum for his collecting began.Collecting war memorabilia doesn't mean you have any sympathies with a particular idealism or anything. For me I trace it back to being a kid watching war movies and reading war comics, playing with toy soldiers and dressing up. Singer Chris Farlowe has a huge collection of war memorabilia and it's his clobber that The Clash are wearing in the video for "The Call Up".
Obviously with punk and nazi regalia then it's an extremely fine line between the idea of shocking someone and defining your stance that it's nothing more than just a symbol and we shouldn't fear it and give it further power.
Wearing the swastika is really akin to wearing a t shirt with an image of Pol Pot. The atrocities that occurred during wars will forever be a stain on humanity. It must be treated with respect and we owe it those who lost so much to treat this subject sympathetically.
It's easy when you're a young naive rebellious person to believe in the coolness of art and imagery. But the hurt others have suffered at the sight of those images can never be forgotten.
When did this first appear in rock n roll is difficult to pinpoint but as soon as it went widespread with magazines and later televisual coverage and the images could be seen as visceral.
Ron's comeback to all those who criticized him for wearing Nazi gear was, "Aren't you glad that we won WW II, so that a freak like me can wear this stuff?" To him, it was just part and parcel of an aesthetic, something to piss off the Woodstock Generation, basically.
But he acknowledged that there were many times when it backfired -- he mentioned a certain type of Luger holster that he wore with his white officer's coat, but every cop in Ann Arbor stopped and questioned him the minute they spotted it. He said the resulting run-ins got "too weird," even for his blood, so he ended up putting it away.
There were also, of course, the physical run-ins, such as a guy who took a swing and cold-cocked him, as soon as he saw whatever outfit he was wearing that night. The next thing Ron knew, he came around to see his brother "just whaling away on the guy, kicking his ass." I said, "Well, obviously, what seemed like just another costume to you didn't always come across that way to somebody else."
I thought it was appropriate for that video, too, but it wouldn't have upset me if they'd retired it afterwards. For such an avowedly anti-militaristic band to wear that kind of stuff struck me as a contradiction -- one that their critics used as a stick to beat them with.I remember a pal of mine had a German uniform as a kid which we were all jealous of, though it was a wehrmacht Africa Korps one and did look rather cool. I think using the gear for a very effective anti war song like The Call Up was appropriate, though I can't say I was ever a huge fan of the military look they often sported around 82 and the combat rock era. Didn't have a huge problem with it, just thought they had better looks.
I remember Bill Holdship bringing that up when I called CREEM and gave him a hard time over some of the statements he made in his October '84 article ("They Want To Spoil The Party, So They'll Stay"). He felt that, at best, it muddled the message, and at worst, seemed like an example of "rebel chic," as he called it.
Obviously, none of those issues stopped a generation of hippies from wearing those green Army jackets -- and artists, like a certain J. Lennon, for instance, in the Live In New York City video -- so I guess the connotations of the threads would come down to whatever impressions they conjure up for you. But I agree, there were better and sharper ones in their arsenal than all that green camo drag that characterizes so much of the CR era.