Hugo Boss got his big break in the fashion business designing uniforms for the Nazis.
In the 1930's, when the company began making Nazi uniforms, it was a family-run business that manufactured police and postal uniforms.
The Nazis awarded contracts to thousands of companies to produce the black uniforms, worn by SS units, the brown shirts worn by SA storm troopers and the black-and-brown uniforms of the Hitler Youth, according to Eckhard Trox, a military uniform expert at the museum in Ludenscheid.
the Waffen-SS was a group of combat units composed of volunteer troops, with its members partially having strong personal commitments to Nazi ideology and also partially selected on a racial basis.
Here's one of the designs Hugo Boss, a genius in terms of fashion and branding... here's what he came up with.
As with many non-camouflage military uniforms, these SS uniforms were tailored to project authority, and foster fear and respect. They used the Black-White-Red colour sheme, characteristic of the Nazi Party, on a variation of the standard SA uniform, with different insignia. The choice of colour was not by chance. Black is traditionally a German colour and the Nazis believed that it reflected their 'Aryan' heritage. Black was a sombre and authoritative colour, popular with fascist movements, introduced by the blackshirts in Italy years before the creation of the SS.
Of course branding was a key element of the Nazi movement. The red and black swastika and the red and black uniforms were celebrated in order to express the power of the movement and the power of their white supremacist ideals.
Can we see similar expressions of these ideas about propaganda and branding in today's politics? What does Sarah Palin's branding tell us about her beliefs and her politics?
It seems to be a recurring theme in her style - a black pant suit with a red basic blouse. We have been watching Sarah Palin’s style a bit. Considering she was once a model and won the Miss Wasilla in 1984, we should probably pay attention. She often wears red and black - power colors indeed.
It wasn't always like this. Palin has changed her image significantly in her run for the VP.
And of course the modern GOP, undoubtedly led by the nose by Karl Rove's marketing "genius," has taken pages directly from the playbook of Josef Goebbels, the Nazi minister in charge of Propaganda.
Sarah Palin also gave many Americans pause in her support of Pat Buchanan.
Buchanan is anathema to the Jews. He is someone who has blamed Israel and American Jews for directing American foreign policy against American interests. He has spoken kindly of Adolph Hitler
Furthermore, both Palin and her husband Todd have strong links to the Alaskan Independence Party, which itself has ties to white supremacist groups.
Quite frankly, I also find her and Todd's overwhelming pride in their Nordic, Viking, and Norman British heritage to be a little disturbing, especially given the fact that they seem to take no such pride in Todd's minority heritage. This in itself is of course only a tangential point, but put in context with her support of Buchanan and her family's ties to the AIP, and given her Dominionist beliefs... it starts to paint a definite picture... one reminiscent of the Nordic-Aryanism that formed the cornerstone of Hitler's philosophy.
Also, let's not forget that this cornerstone played on the iconography of the roughhewn German woodsman. Hitler, a failed painter, was obsessed with the nationalist idea of a return to traditional rural German values. The iconography of the German cabin, the frotiersman with his hunting dogs... it was the hallmark of Hitler and his lieutenants obsession with the physical superiority of the German male. Hitler's "Eagle's Nest," a birthday present, was the concrete distillation of these principles at the personal scale (while of course Speer's work dealt with the issue of power at the civic scale).
Hitler's Eagle's Nest
Kehlsteinhaus, Eagle's Nest.
We all know the what kind of voters Palin is supposed to be cementing for McCain. The vast majority of these white lower class rural evangelical conservatives are going to be easily manipulated by the kinds of symbols, signs, and expressions of white power that we've seen throughout history.
Whether or not Sarah Palin is a white supremacist is ultimately critically important, but whether we'll have enough information to know this for a fact before November 4th is very much in doubt. However, what we can assert is that she seems to be playing up a lot of the key symbols and signs that white supremacists look for, and have used throughout history.
It certainly looks like Karl Rove has branded his candidate to suit... or power suit, as the case may be.
