The Ian Curtis memorial thread

Re: "Atrocity Exhibition", it's always struck me as a close relative of the United States of America song, "The American Metaphysical Circus".

But, wow, yes, Sven Hassel books were everywhere in the 70s. Probably only the Richard Allen Skinhead/Suedehead were as widely read.

xpost
Yep, agree with your analysis there. I didn't mean to say Atrocity Exhibition is explicitly Nazi-related but I do think this fascination for public torture and punishment is somehow related to his interest in Nazi imagery

I think I read also that Curtis saw the movie Cabaret a dozen times or something, that might also play into the whole 1930s aesthetic of Joy Division (severe haircuts, trench coats etc)

... Sven Hassel, who only died in 2012! (xp)

There was definitely a strange kind of Nazi/fascist chic thing going on in the 70s which predated punk, and seems to have been more about style, fashion and eroticism - which surely influenced Siouxsie Sioux's look - which you can trace to arthouse/semi-arthouse movies like "The Damned", "The Night Porter" and, not much remembered now but significant at the time, "Salon Kitty". All of which are Italian, interestingly enough.

... and then there's Bowie's Nazi salute @ Victoria Station, Bowie moving to Berlin, Bowie prancing about as a Prussian in "Just a Gigolo".

Wow unfamiliar w Hassel. What a weird story.

fwiw the swastikas on the rocket from the tombs gig poster are as far as I know related to the headliner Electric Eels

(xp) You're American, that's why.

(xp) Yeah, the Electric Eels def. used the swastika to annoy people, annoying people was their whole shtick.

I mean yeah they had a song that's basically just the phrase I See A N-word over and over

Yep Bowie is definitely in the mix there. He had that whole 1940s look going in his Berlin years which probably influenced Joy Division. Kraftwerk Man Machine look probably an influence too. Although Kraftwerk is more about what came just before the Nazis, nostalgia for the pre-Nazi world

Sparks too

Sparks, not really, that was more obviosuly jokey, plus didn't people suspect they were Jewish all along?

(xp) Absolutely, though I'm not sure how adept some random tossers from Macclesfield were at recognizing nostalgia for the pre-Nazi world when they saw it tbh.

Idk I wasnt there obviously, I thought Ron’s leering hitlerstache schtick and songs like Girl From Germany ruffled some feathers

I've really enjoyed reading the recent posts in this thread

on this subject I often think of the lyrics to Walked in Line, which doesn't seem sympathetic to nazis, while being interested in them:

<i>All dressed in uniforms so fine,
They drank and killed to pass the time,
Wearing the shame of all their crimes,
With measured steps, they walked in line.</i>

forgive my coding but you get the point

In more recent years Bryan Ferry was on the Nazis look sharp train.

on this subject I often think of the lyrics to Walked in Line, which doesn't seem sympathetic to nazis, while being interested in them:

oh definitely. Nazis are an interesting topic! Why wouldn't someone be interested in them? They're like cults and serial killers ... aspects of humanity at its worst.

I like most of Joy Division's output, but the early punkier stuff I like best. "An Ideal For Living" is an all-time favorite EP.

Have not read any of Ian's political essays.

Hey, I've been getting into Motorhead lately you don't think Lemmy was into anything proble-oh jesus christ

Nazis are definitely an interesting topic! I am fascinated by them. I have also never felt compelled to cosplay in Nazi regalia or deliberately make people wonder if I was maybe a Nazi. Those activities go a bit beyond being "interested" and cross the line into "asshole" territory imo

you're also not a 20 year old in 1977 manchester? I'm not sure there's any worth in staking the claim that your less of an asshole than Ian Curtis.

https://external-preview.redd.it/1OLj4ZYhUO9Ewtf68UPruKbKpOY5sCQQlYbThrr4xVA.gif?format=png8&s=a012f22b2392e05f9d65a95701809f6c1536457a

I think it's weird that 40 years later people still make lame excuses for it, is all.

I also think it's interesting that there wasn't really a similar current in the US, where we also had a generation of parents that fought the Nazis and constantly went on and on about it, but I don't really remember many baby boomers flirting with Nazi iconography just to piss them off. The Americans of that generation that flirted with Nazi iconography (the aforementioned Asheton, Dee Dee Ramone, etc.) weren't trying to annoy their parents, that was not their goal. They had genuine sympathies with Nazis/Germany ("little German boy, being pushed around...")

lol moodles

Electric Eels didn't have genuine sympathies with Nazis.

I don't think people are excusing it, it was dumb, most of them stopped doing it. Would Ian Curtis have further developed his nazi intrigue into a career as an actual nazi? We'll never know. But they fucked around with the iconography for an EP and a year or two and moved beyond it. Not sure what the point of endlessly debating it is, when Ian's not here to defend his choices.

well my original post was just about trying to tease out what his actual politics were, since they're obscured by a lot of hagiography and I can't really tell what they were based on his work with JD. the more general Nazi trope discussion spun off from there, I'm not in control here.

The Americans of that generation that flirted with Nazi iconography (the aforementioned Asheton, Dee Dee Ramone, etc.) weren't trying to annoy their parents, that was not their goal. They had genuine sympathies with Nazis/Germany ("little German boy, being pushed around...")

Bollocks.

I don't even know whether Ian Curtis's parents were old enough to fight the Nazis, tbh.

Asheton just seemed like he was a jerk. Dee Dee's angle (which is p clear from "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World") is obviously sympathetic to hapless Germans being pawns of Nazi machinery. I don't think Dee Dee was a Nazi by any means, but he wasn't writing that song to piss off his German forebears, he was expressing empathy for their situation.

OK, you got us, the joke is on us.

I think there's more to it than that:

This song was written by Dee Dee Ramone about growing up in Germany and being bullied (...) Dee Dee was also bullied when he moved to the US for being of German descent as discussed in the documentary, “End of the Century”.

https://genius.com/Ramones-today-your-love-tomorrow-the-world-lyrics

so far the consensus of this thread seems to be that a) Ian Curtis' actual politics are a bit inscrutable (aside from the oft-repeated Thatcher-voting anecdote) and b) the Nazi stuff was youthful idiocy, attempts at being "provocative"

xp

I do remember in elementary kids def drawing swastikas on stuff as a sorta shock thing, often alongside a pentagram, anarchy symbol also (weirdly) the Dead Kennedys DK symbol was popular even though i'm not sure anyone in my small farm town had ever actually heard them, just the name Dead Kennedys was known

haha yeah I def recall that kind of thing

also OZZY with the Z's having those little cross bars through them

the Van Halen logo

I guess now we're just listing things that were easy for kids do doodle while bored in school

so far the consensus of this thread seems to be that a) Ian Curtis' actual politics are a bit inscrutable (aside from the oft-repeated Thatcher-voting anecdote) and b) the Nazi stuff was youthful idiocy, attempts at being "provocative"

xp

― Οὖτις, Friday, January 4, 2019 9:54 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wouldn't call his politics inscrutable. if his widow is to be believed he was a strong supporter of the tories with vehement anti-immigration views. he was a right-wing conservative.

I can't argue with m@tt's post about the prevalance of "shocking" iconography in grade-school vandalism in the US around the same time, but I def don't recall anybody in the US ever being so aggravated by their parents (or grandparents) going on and on, smugly or otherwise, about how they beat the Nazis/how awful the Nazis were that they felt compelled to dabble in Nazi regalia/iconography/media representations as an adult in an effort to shock and horrify them. Like, that just was not prevalent in the US to the extent that it seems to have been in the UK, this desire to provoke the elder generation by playing at being a Nazi. Whereas in the UK you had pretty big punk bands getting a lot of attention putting it front and center, and I'm not sure why that is. You didn't even really see it with US metal bands (which was definitely a genre with a "let's be as shocking as possible!" contingent) until, what, Slayer?

americans don't like a wind-up as much tbh

Idk but, just riffing, one factor might be that the UK had actually been bombed by the Nazis. Another might be the larger Jewish population in the US?

Whereas in the UK you had pretty big punk bands getting a lot of attention putting it front and center

Who did this?

americans don't like a wind-up as much tbh

I think Οὖτις does because I have no other explanation for some of his wide-eyed idiotic comments in this thread.

I def don't recall anybody in the US ever being so aggravated by their parents (or grandparents) going on and on, smugly or otherwise, about how they beat the Nazis/how awful the Nazis were that they felt compelled to dabble in Nazi regalia/iconography/media representations as an adult in an effort to shock and horrify them.

Jesus, this has to be a wind-up.

in the late 70s/early 80s? who did this? the sex pistols were on a huge night-time talk show with a member of the crew wearing a swastika. what was comparable in the US at the time? I can't think of anything.

granted punk wasn't as big here as it was in the UK at the time, but you didn't see the NYC or LA contingents (such as they were at the time) running rampant with this imagery like the UK did

here's some relevant links:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/feb/27/never-mind-swastikas-secret-history-punky-jews

an entire academic paper here:

http://usir.salford.ac.uk/23153/2/Punk_%28IWM_2009%29.pdf

I'll finish off with a quote from Hebdiger's Subculture : The meaning of Style " We must resort, then, to the most obvious of explanations - that the swastika was worn because it was guaranteed to shock...The signifier (swastika) had been willfully detached from the concept (Nazism) it conventionally signified and placed in an alternative context ( ie punk music)...it was exploited for an empty effect."

https://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/punkswastikafashion3.htm

that Hebdige book is so good. I found a copy lying in the street decades ago, having never even heard of it, and was amazed at how well thought out it was.

in the late 70s/early 80s? who did this? the sex pistols were on a huge night-time talk show with a member of the crew wearing a swastika. what was comparable in the US at the time? I can't think of anything.

One of their fans, you mean?

granted punk wasn't as big here as it was in the UK at the time, but you didn't see the NYC or LA contingents (such as they were at the time) running rampant with this imagery like the UK did

'Running rampant' lol.