No

Neil Davidson

Does it matter whether adults wish to collect, or even adorn themselves with, objects associated with the Nazi regime? I think it does and, while I am not in favour of legally proscribing such activities, we are entitled to take a view about their wider social implications.

These days, the far right prefer not to wear uniforms in public. Those jackboots would tend to give the wrong impression – or rather, the correct impression. Yet any discussion of the rights or wrongs of collecting Nazi memorabilia must begin in the context of the rise of the politics of people like Nick Griffin.

Such an interest tends to be justified on either historical or aesthetic grounds. Garlasco has defended himself on the former, saying he and others “collect war paraphernalia because we want to learn from the past”. One could learn from, say, Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler, but it is not clear what can be learned from close proximity to a uniform or a medal, since historical knowledge is not transferred by osmosis.

Nor is aesthetic appreciation a valid argument. Bryan Ferry was criticised recently for expressing admiration for the cinema of Leni Riefenstahl and the architecture of Albert Speer. But as George Orwell wrote: “The first thing that we ask of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp.”

The urge behind the fascination with Nazi memorabilia is, I suspect, the thrill of transgression, of admiring that which is almost universally despised. This impulse led, during the 1970s, to several leading punks wearing swastikas as a shock tactic. This was, and is, a form of moral imbecility. Certain words and symbols are now inescapably associated with the Nazis and the Holocaust – they are not free-floating signifiers to be given any meaning we choose; nor can they be pulled from the context of Hitler’s Germany and treated as examples of, say, 1930s costume design.

The issue is different from those surrounding the colonial looting of cultural relics from the global South, or the collection of artefacts linked to New World slavery. The former is an ongoing injustice and the latter in poor taste, but these are arguments about history. Fascism is different; it survives, and the fact it now comes dressed in a suit and a tie means we have to treat anything which threatens to trivialise its horrific past with extreme caution.

Reducing Nazi memorabilia to a set of collectable objects with no political content normalises them, and to normalise fascism is to prepare for its return. At best, it is naive; at worst it is the cultural equivalent of the political argument that treats contemporary fascist organisations as conventional, if right-wing political parties, rather than as the inheritors of Auschwitz they truly are.

Neil Davidson is a senior research fellow in geography and sociology at Strathclyde University, and author of several books including Discovering The Scottish Revolution

Yes

Tiffany Jenkins

The suspension of Marc Garlasco, by Human Rights Watch, for collecting German wartime memorabilia, is sinister and illiberal. Yes, we may find the celebration of Nazi relics distasteful, but no-one should lose their job because they keep war relics in their cupboards. Where would it stop? Would you fire someone for collecting Communist Party insignia, because of their associations

with Stalinism?

Some of the best museums in the world are full of curious artefacts thanks to people like Garlasco. Our knowledge of the past is deeper due to collectors who are – let’s face it – obsessive

and odd. If we don’t collect material from the past, regardless of its connotations, there is a real danger that history is cleansed of its darker episodes. Artefacts from the historical period expose the mindset far better than a textbook, a point that applies no matter how offensive the object.

Shrunken or tattooed heads, items made by slaves endorsing slavery: all these collectables may not be pleasant, but they can unlock history. We cannot censor or protect ourselves from it.

The Royal Museum For Central Africa in Brussels, built to show off King Leopold II’s Congo Free State for the 1897 World Exhibition, is full of artefacts celebrating his rape of Congo, which killed 10 million people. Throughout the museum there are portraits, ceramics and even board-games which illustrate the contempt Leopold’s army held for the Congolese people, before they butchered them. The permanent exhibition still reflects the way Europe regarded Africa in the 1960. It is odious. And it should be, for that it how things were. Exposing it for what it was is all the more instructive.

Just go to the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, where you will see magnificent swords and armour on display, which were also instruments of violent oppression. They bring to life the terrifying

physical aggression of war. Society cannot live in fear of symbols and objects. Nor should we over-state their power. The Garlasco case exposes how the visual imagery and objects of the Nazis have come to dominate us. It is as if we are frightened of the relics associated with the German army. This presumes, rather insultingly, that people may easily fall under the spell of the Nazis who created them.

Before it became associated with the Nazis, the swastika was used for thousands of years as a Hindu symbol of good luck and prosperity. In 1916 in Edmonton, Canada, the “Swastikas” was

a girls’ hockey team. There is a lovely (and Googleable) blackand- white photograph of the young team wearing sweaters emblazoned with the swastika. We should use the imagery more and rehabilitate it. That will diminish its power.

So let’s keep calm and carry on collecting.

Dr Tiffany Jenkins is author of the forthcoming book Contesting Human Remains: Muse