In the approximately millionth article by a left-wing hack comparing Trump and his followers to Nazis, Tom Nichols, whom Wikipedia laughably describes as an “academic,” resorted to the last refuge of the limp-wristed scoundrel — fashion criticism.
Nichols’ piece, lazily titled ‘The Republican Party Has a Nazi Problem,” hits the ground running with its accusation that a Trump administration official’s choice of dress represents a sartorial signifier of latent Nazism:
Over the past few months, during his agency’s chaotic crackdowns in Chicago and Minneapolis, the U.S. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino has worn an unusual uniform: a wide-lapel greatcoat with brass buttons and stars along one sleeve. It looks like it was taken right off the shoulders of a Wehrmacht officer in the 1930s. Bovino’s choice of garment is more than tough-guy cosplay (German media noted the aesthetic immediately). The coat symbolizes a trend: The Republicans, it seems, have a bit of a Nazi problem.
The rest is the usual bland mix of straw men, out-of-context quotes or posts, and outright hoaxes that we’ve come to expect from the last decade of attempts by the propaganda press to smear MAGA as a band of latter-day National Socialists. But Nichols’ choice to zero in on the Trump administration’s fashion sense raises an interesting point about aesthetics in our culture.
Now, of course, only Nazis and other right-wing authoritarians have ever worn greatcoats. It definitely hasn’t been a standard piece of military dress for a couple of centuries. If you don’t believe Nichols, peruse these images of infamous Nazi sympathizers like Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bernard Montgomery, and George S. Patton in their *gasp!* fascistic greatcoats!
In reality, it should be needless to say that the greatcoat was used by practically every Western-style military long before the rise of the Nazis. What’s worse, Nichols is supposedly a specialist in “national security affairs,” meaning he should be intimately familiar with the U.S. military, so there’s no conceivable excuse for why he doesn’t know this, aside from his own Trump Derangement. And there’s the rub. Nichols and his ilk don’t care about facts or historical context or even common sense. They only care about attacking their enemies. And they’ll spew all manner of lies and distortions, because they know some people will be gullible enough to blindly believe them. The New York Times rightly pointed out that the greatcoat was everywhere in both World War I and II, but they still chose to specifically connect it to Hitler and the Nazis anyway. Politico argued that, while it is not an exclusively Nazi symbol, it is still an emblem of something sinister, at least in their eyes: “the increasing militarization of immigration enforcement.”
The Nazis knew the value of aesthetics, and they were obsessed with how they were perceived. Most German propaganda footage from before and during the war testifies to that fact. The crisp uniforms, the precise formations, and the carefully choreographed public displays of spectacle made them look like they were a force to be reckoned with, a force that really could achieve Hitler’s insane goals, and that was the intention.
Side note: If you want to dispel yourself of the utter myth that the Nazis were some kind of hyper-competent, high tech juggernaut, I can’t recommend this book enough.
The Nazis wanted to be portrayed as the suave-looking professionals who actually had a shot at world domination, and the Western press, especially Hollywood, fell for it hook, line, and sinker. They wanted symbols of Western civilization to be seen as exclusively Nazi symbols. And leftists have indulged that desire.
The truth is, Nazi propaganda won. Pick just about any classic World War II movie from the 1950s and ’60s: it pits the scrappy Iowa farm boys in their ragged yet functional government-issued kit against ze aristocratic Prussian officer corps in their snazzy Hugo Boss uniforms (monocle optional). From those films and other media that came out in the post-war era, that image trickled down into the wider culture, and it fundamentally changed the way we view morality in media.
Our media landscape has trained us since birth to regard people who dress like Bovino as evil would-be tyrants and those who dress like Antifa as plucky freedom fighters. The most enduring example of this is probably the visual dichotomy between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars. The uniforms worn by Imperial officers in those films are directly inspired by SS uniforms, with George Lucas himself noting, “The Nazis are basically the same costume as we used in the first film.”
So now if someone of authority doesn’t dress like they’re a scrappy, down-on-their-luck rebel, they’re a Nazi. It takes a nanosecond of research to find American, British, and Russian generals, while actively destroying the Nazi regime, dressing as Bovino does. But under this post-war paradigm, anything that carries a hint of decorum reeks of fascism, according to leftists like Nichols, and in that case, the desires of both slovenly hippies and actual Nazis align.
The greatcoat that Nichols denounces as fascist is, in its own small way, a symbol of Western civilization. It signifies the fundamental Western values of decorum and professionalism. The Nazis may have co-opted those cultural signifiers, but that doesn’t make them any less integral to Western civilization. Leftists, and those on the right who try to appease them in order to be “one of the good ones,” throw the baby out with the bathwater when they tie those things to Nazism (i.e., exactly what the Nazis wanted) and then insist that they must be shunned.
In effect, the leftists are not shunning Nazism. In fact, they’re edifying it, but they are shunning Western civilization and its symbols. This is likely because many of them see Western civilization itself as wholly evil and practically indistinguishable from Nazism. In one sense, Nichols is a puppet to the cultural forces that have molded how we view uniforms and figures of authority for the last eight decades. But in another, he’s a malicious partisan who knowingly leaves out facts and is more than willing to allow the Western tradition to become collateral damage in his crusade against a president he dislikes.
Nichols seems to know that aesthetics are important, hence his choice to use it as an avenue of attack against Trump, but he doesn’t know or care to learn why. Something as simple as a greatcoat can convey a powerful message, whether its worn by the Border Patrol chief, the Supreme Allied Commander, or by a regular citizen walking down the street. Those symbols and images of Western civilization are intrinsic to our Western identity. And if we lose them, whether it’s to the bonfires of cultural nihilism stoked by the left or to the exclusive dominion of the fringe right, then we lose ourselves.
Hayden Daniel is a staff editor at The Federalist. He previously worked as an editor at The Daily Wire and as deputy editor/opinion editor at The Daily Caller. He received his B.A. in European History from Washington and Lee University with minors in Philosophy and Classics. Follow him on Twitter at @HaydenWDaniel
