GOP Candidate and his Nazi SS Enthusiasms

Politics International Politics
1

Just when the excitement over conservative radio host Hal Turner was just starting to calm down a bit, we get the news that GOP congressional candidate Richard Iott loves to dress up as an Nazi SS stormtrooper. Given the history of his “Wiking” SS unit, apparently when they’re not pretending to shoot at American soldiers they pretend to round up Hungarian jews for extermination.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11511574

This is a candidate who has been getting massive support from Boehner’s PAC and who is at the center of Republican efforts to try to retake Congress. Add in that among World War II reinactment groups, there has been long-term discussions even among “German” reinactment groups about the absolute unnecessity of having SS units prowling around their play battlefields. Visit even a couple of these SS group websites, and once you get past the text automatically pretending that their “Waffen SS” units were as pure as the driven snow (uh, except for the units that did help in jew and eastertn-european roundups, atrocities, etc.) and just part of a pan-European anti-communistic effort “just like NATO” (except, unlike NATO, the SS had strict racial requirements and direct allegiance to Adolf Hitler), then you get into their merchandise. Has anyone seen the “Wiking” division unit symbol? It’s a frickin’ swastika on a shield. Hard to get anymore “nazi” than that.

If this is what passes for the Republican “mainstream” under these teabaggers, then I seriously wonder what America is coming to.

colbertnation.com/the-colber … zi-uniform

2

It seems to be an overblown controversy to me. It’s a historical reenactment.

wiking.org/

The division was an unusual one, composed mostly of Scandinavian and Low Country volunteers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_SS_Pan … ion_Wiking

A good idea for a prospective politician? No. A sign that this guy is a nazi? Not likely. Creepy, yes, insensitive perhaps, but they are reenacting the combat history of the division, and not the SS war crimes.

3

Yeah, there’s a quasi-excuseable side to it, but even within the realm of German WWII re-enactment groups, it’s considered to be a bit nutty to emulate an actual SS unit when there are so many Wehrmacht units that fought. And then if you go into the sites run by these groups, you see that for every statement protesting the “innocence” of dressing up as SS guys, there’s a comments in the sections on period haircuts where some guys are clearly creaming their pants at wearing nazi haircuts during the workweek and group events where they all go into a local restaurant/beerhall in their SS uniforms to sing their little songs about sticking it to the jew.

Look, when I was a kid we dressed up in various leftover WWII and Vietnam-war gear and “played army”. But we had to take turns playing the enemy because in our young heads we wanted to be the G.I. who was going to stick it to the nazi/jap/commie/whatever. The idea of wanting to dress up as a horrible bunch of nazi bastards was and is about the furthest thing from my mind.

So, in this GOP congressional candidate, we have a man dressed in a frickin’ SS uniform. This could mean: a) bad judgement; b) bad sense of what sort of outfits freak out his fellow Americans; c) a general sense that the Nazis were “cool”; d) a tolerance for or glossing over of Nazi beliefs and history; and/or e) an actual adherence to Nazi beliefs.

I believe a, b, c and d are probably in effect. Hard to say e without further info, but here’s my analysis:

a) bad judgement: You’re running for public office and you want to dress up like an SS guy? Are you nuts?

b) bad sense of what freaks out fellow Americans: How can you be that frickin’ out of touch? Of course it freaks us out.

c) Nazis “cool”: This is an easy trap to fall into. They had jet fighter planes, tanks made by Porsche, and they had uniforms designed by Hugo Boss to look extra-evil. Still, it’s worth reading Albert Speer’s “Inside the Third Reich” to know that Hitler was a massive psychotic with such awful personal grooming habits as to nearly cause people to pass out from the stench when he took his jacket off. The concentration camps may have been run by one branch of the SS, but one would be hard put to find a single Waffen SS group that didn’t commit atrocities on civilians or enemy prisoners, or which didn’t participate in the rounding up of jews, roma and other “undesireables” for the camps. Seriously, fck Nazis, fck the SS, and f*ck the panzers they rode in on.

d) tolerance/glossing over for Nazi beliefs: Visit the websites of those SS re-enactment groups and it’s pretty clear that there is a certain bizarre “denial” thing going on there. And it’s a bit weird that Nazi march songs get these guys’ blood pumping. If they really wanted to know more about what World War II military life was about, then they’d spend weeks shivering in filthy squalor while being shot at by stuff that can really kill them. But, no, these guys want the part that involves dressing up as a stinking nazi, rolling through Holland, and eating warm food at night. This is about a lot of things, but it sure as hell isn’t about history.

e) actually believing the Nazi stuff: Can’t tell on this. But frankly, given the above, I don’t think this guy would get my vote.

4

Hal Turner is NOT a ‘GOP’ candidate. He is fully supported by the DEMOCRAT PARTY.

5

Looking at his Wikipedia entry he seems to be neither a Republican nor a Democrat. Just a libertarian white supremacist nutcase and a wannabe Republican.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Turner

6

Hal Turner is not a Republican.

His positions place him firmly in line with the Democatic Party.

7

Hal Turner has run for office (and failed) as a Republican. As to “support” from the Democrats, I can’t imagine how you would come to that conclusion given Turner’s years of appearances on Fox and Hannity’s radio show, as well as his numerous and widely publicized rants against Obama. Hannity even gave Turner massive publicity for his run as a Republican.

And of course, the current situation isn’t all that mysterious – David Duke used to sport a brown-shirt uniform and it was only a short while before we’d see some GOP candidate dressing up in an SS outfit. Frankly, we could resolve the dependency on foreign oil right now if we could wrap Lincoln’s corpse in copper wire and put him between a couple of magnets – the “party of Lincoln” has fast become the “party of George Lincoln Rockwell”.

8

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Hal Turner is not a Republican.

His positions place him firmly in line with the Democatic Party.[/quote]

Hey, the Dems don’t have any candidates running about in Nazi SS uniforms. If you were to run a quick survey of political candidates photographed in Nazi uniforms, you’d be 2 to 0 in favor of Republicans.

9

Oh, a conservative uses good sources, eh?

That rules you out!

10

“Wiking” division honor roll:

  1. Josef Mengele – Auschwitz death camp doctor and Wiking unit hero awarded the iron cross.

  2. Obersturmführer Braunnagel and Untersturmführer Kochalty – pulled together troops to assist Einsatzgruppen A with rounding up, beating and murdering jews on the spot in the Ukraine.

  3. Unit commander Eduard Deisenhofer came to the unit from service at the Dachau concentration camp, further eroding the idea that the “Waffen SS” and the “concentration-camp SS” can somehow be differentiated.

  4. Add in all the assholes behind the 1945 death marches of Hungarian jews, murders of “escaped” prisoners, etc. as the unit moved across Austria.

Come to think of it, when you look at the GOP’s rampant rush to add a second front into an existing war by invading Iraq on a pretext, the creation and support of the Abu Ghraib abuses, the use of torture, as well as the use of unaccountable armed units with political ties to the leadership (Blackwater, et al.), perhaps Iott is just showing how the modern Republican party rolls, baby.

11

Hal Turner is a Democrat.

12

Any source or basis for that? I guess not. Last time he ran for public office, he ran as a Republican.

13

You can do the same thing.
Doesn’t make you an official rep of the Rep party.
Go for it.

14

I don’t know what party Turner is, but it seems clear at one time he was a republican, though they apparently want nothing to do with him now.

[quote]A worker within the Hudson County (NJ) Republican Party, that was the website editor for former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler’s campaign for governor, says that white supremacist radio show host Hal Turner has, contrary to Turner’s assertions, never been the head of the local Republican, nor was he as close to Mayor Schundler as he has claimed.

On the website www.GETNJ.com, edited by Anthony Olszewski, who first worked with Schundler in the 1997 campaign for governor, Turner has never had anything to do with the recognized Republican Party of Hudson County. “Hal Turner claims to be the ‘Chairman of the Republican Party of Hudson County, NJ Corp,’” the website reads. “This group is in no way involved with the Hudson County Republican Party that is recognized by the state and national GOP. Local Republicans have never heard of Turner’s ‘NJ, Corp.’ Hudson GOP figures believe that Turner’s ‘Party’ is no more than a paper corporation with little or no membership.”

According to his biography found on his website, Turner was elected to the Hudson County Republican Committee in 1991 and served for two years and in 1992 became North Jersey Campaign Coordinator for the Presidential campaign of Patrick J. Buchanan. In a phone conversation with Olszewski, he confirmed that Turner was indeed a committeeman at one time and is a registered Republican, but any association with the GOP ends there.

His associations with Schundler were few and less than cordial. “Some years back, Hal Turner sought the support of then Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler for a proposal to end rent control immediately and abruptly,” Olszewski writes on his website. “Knowing that this would mean economic dislocation for the city’s most vulnerable residents, Schundler refused to support the measure.”

In the phone conversation, Olszewski termed what Turner was trying to do reeked of ethnic cleansing. Although Turner is reputed to have had at least one tie to a hate group, and was considered a racist, he was still denying any associations with racist groups and beliefs around this time. Still, he managed to make himself a pariah among the local GOP, so much so that in 1997, his organization attempted to raise money on behalf of Bret Schundler’s reelection bid that year. “Hal Turner was circulating some fund raising literature that gave the appearance of being for Schundler,” Olszewski wrote in an email, noting later in the phone conversation that the Schundler campaign sent letters out at that time telling supporters not to send Turner money on Schundler’s behalf. "Schundler threatened to sue. Turner stopped.

The curious thing about this is the fact that also in 1997 Turner was the campaign manager for Murray Sabrin’s bid for Governor - on the Libertarian Party ticket, not the Republican Party. . . [/quote]
onepeoplesproject.com/index.php? … ntifa-news

15

There is no such party in the US as the “Democrat” Party.

16

Tainan Cowboy, I don’t know what problem you have. Boehner and the rest of the GOP appears to be fine with Iott running about in his SS outfit, and they had not qualms about David Duke when he was prancing about as well. Why turn your back on Turner now? In any case, Iott has made a bad choice. Getting photographed in an SS uniform is likely to have the same effect upon voters as if he’d been photographed in an SM uniform with a ball in his mouth.

17

He worked for Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign-another Republican white supremacist.
He ran for Congress in the Republican primary…and lost.
Which of Hal Turner’s views is in line with the Democratic Party?
White supremacy? Antisemitism? His calls for the assassination of candidate Obama?
To claim that Hal Turner is a democrat is just dumb.

18

Let’s not forget that an adult who dresses up in military outfits and acts like he is killing people is probably a little :loco: Sure, kids play war games, but grown men? Please. It’s fucking weird. Now add to that the fact that he is not only reenacting war, but reenacting the SS…that’s really fucking weird.

19

i don’t know whether he’s a GOP or a Democrat, and TC is just a little self-serving in his posts, but after doing some research, it’s clear Turner is a racist as well as dangerous “celebrity” who incites violence against elected officials and judges (incl. Judge Posner, etc.) and has been indicted for it. I won’t say he’s a Republican, BUT if he gets voted in as one…

and emulating the Wehrmacht is one thing in re-enactments; emulating the clearly ideological divisions of the Waffen SS is another.

20

Hal Turner became a celebrity because Sean Hannity helped make him one.

TC is just trying to make it seem as though calling Turner a republican and calling him a democrat are equally ridiculous. He used to identify as a republican. Let’s be clear that it’s republicans he supported and republicans who supported him in his rise to fame. Perhaps TC would rather not call Buchanan a republican anymore either, since the new criteria for not being one is that one is a racist. Buchanan and Turner are both racist republicans. That doesn’t mean that all republicans are racist.