By Mindy Menjou

The punks sought to challenge their society's collective memory of World War II and the Holocaust. The idea was, according to John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols), to "debunk all this crap from the past, wipe history clean and have a fresh approach" (qtd. in Savage 242). For many people, World War II simply represents a triumph of good over evil. It is often forgotten that in the years leading up to World War II, Germany and the other Axis powers were by no means alone in their taste for fascism. Both the United States and Great Britain were home to various fascist groups, including Hitler sympathizers and branches of the Nazi party. Obviously, the fascist movements in the United States and Great Britain never gained enough momentum to have been able to indulge in the excesses of Hitler's Third Reich, but they did exist. Additionally, the Allied powers knew about Jewish repression and the concentration camps as early as the mid-thirties, yet they stood by and did nothing as an entire people were persecuted and brought to the brink of extermination, acting only when it became apparent that Hitler's plans included them as well. Furthermore, neither the United States' nor the United Kingdom's own historical legacies are free of barbarism or genocide. In light of this, the punks took issue with their parents' self-righteousness and their version of victor's history, which the punks interpreted as an attempt by their parents' generation to distance itself from any and all responsibility for the Holocaust and to alleviate its own guilt over past atrocities such as those associated with colonialism/imperialism (slavery, the Opium Wars, the conquest of the Americas and genocide against the Native Americas, sometimes called the American Holocaust, etc.). It was their parents' delusions that the punks were mocking and indeed attacking in songs like "Belsen Was A Gas." The swastika, as the punks used it, can thus be thought of as an accusatory reminder to society of "the atrocities it permits" (Henry 80) as if to say that it is not innocent, that it allowed the Holocaust to happen, that it did too little too late, and that it insists on a pat on the back for simply doing the right thing.

Linked to this idea of neither the U.S.A. nor the U.K. being able to claim the moral high ground is the idea that both simply traded one form of fascism for another: a consumer culture of conformity. In fact, in "God Save The Queen," the Sex Pistol's call the monarchy "the fascist regime." From the punk kids' perspective, their society — from its crass commercialism to its school uniforms and the cookie-cutter education it offered — was all about crushing individuality. The sentiment is perhaps best summed up by a few lines from hardcore punk band the Dead Kennedys' "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" (a song that denounces the skinhead punks who actually took all of the swastika stuff seriously): "The real Nazis run your school. They're coaches, businessmen and cops. In the real Fourth Reich, you'll be the first to go." The punks were painfully aware that they were hated because they refused to do as they were told and pretend to be happy with the inauthentic existence offered to them by society. They were society's new undesirables, but they were also products of society. Their wearing swastikas was roughly equivalent to calling all authority figures (and those who blindly follow them) fascist pigs.