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The Holocaust is not a costume, so why put it on like one? Just to see if one can get away with it? For the laughs and for the thrill? It is disturbingly easy to procure a full set of Nazi regalia and German聽Wehrmacht聽uniforms through popular platforms like Amazon.聽

In 2005, the former Prince Harry was severely criticised for聽聽when he was 20-years-old. As it turns out, in 2003, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet similarly聽聽for his twenty-first birthday party, followed by an apology and admission of being 鈥榙eeply ashamed鈥�.

On Friday, 27 January 2023, we will commemorate聽. This year鈥檚 theme is 鈥淥rdinary People鈥�, for it was ordinary people who looked the other way as their fellow citizens, other ordinary people, were loaded onto trucks and deported to concentration camps and eradication facilities. Ordinary people let ordinary people die. Many decades after,聽聽that they, too, were deeply ashamed of what they鈥檇 done.

Ordinary people have choices. So why do some choose ideological fascist cosplay today, knowing full well the genocidal backstory to these symbols?聽

Why do they choose the attention that a swastika armband gets them at a fancy dress party, or among their adolescent peers at a twenty-first-birthday mixer? Has the attention value of Nazi symbolism and the alleged humour in wearing a Nazi costume become a rite of passage marker for the 鈥渟hock-jock bro鈥� and the聽?

The history of racist ideology drag is long and continues to be problematic for those who think it deceptively decorative 鈥� much like ripping a page out of the history book and wearing it out of context. And while there are聽聽about the ethics of celebrity costumes and calls for cancellations over cultural appropriation in the troublesome tradition of yellow face, black face, and brown face, the ethical issues surrounding聽聽are distinctly sartorial.

Here, it is the very morality of clothing that comes to the fore: the social fabric of a wearable ethicality or lack thereof. In an聽聽that resides in the National Austrian Library of Vienna, Jewish German thinker and philosopher聽, who escaped the Nazi regime and fled into exile in California, wrote about this vexing issue of聽Klamottenphilosophie聽鈥� the German term for a 鈥減hilosophy of clothes鈥�. It seems that such a philosophy is much needed today, as digital screen culture and an army of popular social media apps puts us and our outfits on constant and never-fading display.

It used only to be film archives that stored Nazi regalia permanently on celluloid. Now, the internet never forgets our clothing choices as an externalisation of our values. Which brings us to the politics of dressing up like Hitler in public.

Countries like France Germany and Israel have聽聽on the wearing of any Nazi items. Even with film productions and television, public broadcast content regulation permissions are required when portraying SS troops or Gestapo agents. Why, then, does Australia, despite聽, continue this uneasy costume collaboration with the Nazi look that flirts with eradication entertainment and goes straight to the question of guiltless masses? For if everyone decided to dress up as a Nazi, where would be the harm in that? If everyone is implicated, nobody is adjudicated. After all, if it is the norm among ordinary people, it becomes no crime at all.

This line of thinking goes to the same moral argument that Second Amendment purists in the United States have been pushing, when they insist that聽. And so, we could say: neither do uniforms. But neither guns nor Nazi uniforms are innocent items of clothing or metalwork, nor are they historically neutral technologies. Instead, clothing is a popular public device that broadcasts our intentions and attitudes: serving to send messages to others about who we are and what we support and with whom we align ourselves 鈥� and, of course, what we will turn a blind eye to.

聽is a curious case in point. This Trump-sympathising Hitler lookalike took part in the 6 January 2021 riots at the US Capitol. When the courts聽, the prosecutors鈥� brief stressed Hale-Cusanelli鈥檚 鈥渄esire for a civil war and antisemitic conspiracies鈥�, and his belief that 鈥淛ews controlled Democrats, President Joe Biden and all of government.鈥�

As survivors of the Holocaust have聽, the persistence of Nazi barbarism in our time depends on the steady weakening of the cultural cage that we put it in. Genocide requires ordinary people to let it happen 鈥� to take the antisemitic skeleton out of the closet and put it on as聽, as occurred during the 2020 Sunday carnival parade in the Belgium city of Aalst. This was precisely the point Charlie Chaplin was trying to make in 1940 by 鈥渄ressing up鈥� as Hitler in聽: one puts on the part in much the same way as one wears the uniform.

When history becomes a ready-made costume, when it becomes drag and thus drags reality, it blurs the lines between the ridiculous and the real. And each time this happens, the cage opens a bit wider, giving the monster within the opportunity to escape 鈥� which is to say, to roam freely around the space of normalised reality. We might laugh about it when it鈥檚 safely behind bars, but will we find it equally funny once it is let loose?

Nazi uniforms are devices that de-individualise us. They de-realise us and de-historicise the past. They wear out our sense of moral agency until we no longer feel as though we鈥檙e individually responsible for the things that we聽all聽do because it becomes impossible to say who is the singular 鈥淚鈥� that is responsible for an action. As I said, if everyone is implicated in some way, no one is guilty in any way.

In that sense, Nazi drag becomes an anti-responsibility box that 鈥渨ears out鈥� our sense of outrage as impossibly famous and powerful people like former Prince Harry and the Premier of New South Wales 鈥渨ear it out鈥� in public.

顿谤听Benjamin Nickl聽is a Lecturer in International and Comparative Literature and Translation Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures. He is a co-producer of the聽, based on the exile diary 鈥淲ashing the Corpses of History鈥� by Jewish-German thinker and philosopher, G眉nther Anders.