Protest

[IainH]

My contemporaries were born to the generation who were kids during WW2. It was the defining event of their lives. They were subjected to a steady diet of anti-Axis Propaganda. After the war that propaganda became Official History, which meant by definition the Official History was a  combination of half truths, convenient truths and outright lies and this was taught as real History in schools. In 1975, some wartime secrets were declassified and by '77 it was clear to many an adolescent that the curriculum which, had remained unchanged was another example of adult hypocrisy. Teenage outrage is impotent because they have no political influence. To express our anger, punk rock music, clothing and the oh so important "punk attitude" became our outlet. One of the ways to shock the grownups was adopting Nazi imagery. For us, the black uniforms, the Totenkopf, SS runes, other stuff like nazi eagles, iron crosses and especially the Swastika were cool because parents and teachers absolutely hated it. Nazi ideology wasn't even on our radar.
An infamous punk figure was Simon Paul Ritchie AKA Sid Vicious, he sometimes wore a Nazi flag t shirt. It was a custom shirt from his manager, the late douchebag Malcolm McLaren's clothing store "SEX". Of course every punk rocker kid wanted one but, at the time they weren't commercially available so, we used black markers to  draw them on our clothes. Personally, due to fact that mother was a narcissistic psychopath for whom her public standing as a proper lady, was the most important thing and if that meant embarrassing her kid in front of his friends so be it, my sensibilities did not exist. My role was to slavishly serve mother, Joan Crawford was mother of the year in comparison so, I used charcoal which could be easily erased. I kept my punk outfits at my friends house whose Mom was a schoolteacher and understood the faddish nature of youth and was tolerant of our foibles. Thank Mrs Macdougal and Mrs Thompson for treating me as your own and showing me a true mother's love. Anyhoover, back to the novella.
  Wearing swastikas was an act of adolescent rebellion, nothing more. After that lengthy back story, I'll  tell you, when I found that Sid tee, I was like a giggling schoolgirl. "Wow, I gotta buy this" and I did. Then I was in a bit of a puzzle and rationalized a feasible reason. I'm shocked that I could revert so easily back to Western BS. "For Shame T" 
 After it arrived, I looked at it, a nice quality red Gilden tee with a decal and I asked myself "what were you thinking, where are you gonna were this...Thing!". Outside of the house, very likely never. 
     Let this be a cautionary tale for dummies. I'm the King of Dummies. Hoo ha he ho hoo.

I never knew that about Sid and the swastika, despite being involved in a tangential music scene. I imagine a lot of photographic evidence of that is carefully edited, being so many in that culture are on the left.

That's a shame about rebelliousness. There can be so much potential in rebellious paradigms, but the worldly desire to fit in at all costs that is jettisoned by rebels is replaced by another form of materialism (not talking about the swastika, but the hedonism).

 There's an animation of Sid wearing his Swastee in Julien Temple's The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. He wore it often in the UK. Testimonial evidence suggests he only wore it once in America, in NYC. He was ignorant of NYs large Jewish population and that several people in the original NYC Punk scene were of Jewish extraction. I can imagine that a surly,  large NY jew would persuade young Sid of the folly of his ways with a look. He is a sad figure and after watching a documentary about his final days in NYC, I don't believe he killed his GF, apparently he was Semi-comatose on Seconal, laid out on a mattress the night NS was murdered. He was a forerunner of what is ubiquitous today,  the celebrity with no discernable talent. Famous for being infamous.