Dark Side Reenacting
I used to be an active reenactor and may be again someday but I have always struggled with understanding those who are drawn to the dark side of reenacting. These are the people who actively seek out the ‘bad guys’ in a historical period to portray. I put ‘bad guys’ in quotes because you can always debate who was or wasn’t a bad guy. Pirates are popular at the moment to reenact and pirates were perfectly horrible people but what most pirate reenactors are ‘reenacting’ is pirate movie pirates, cartoon characters rather than real villains.
Real bad guys often are hard to pin down. There are few who care which side of an English Civil War reenactment is the good guy. Too far gone for most. Same with Romans, viking and the like. The American Civil War is harder. I regard the Union as the good guys, I am very pleased they won and in doing so destroyed slavery in the United States. I have met Confederate reenactors who have a very different take and feel they are honoring ancestors who fought bravely for a flawed cause. I have talked to several extensively and found no sign of racist motivations or hidden attempts to sugar coat the bad side of the southern cause but I have also seen the cars of some Confederate reenactors with bumper stickers that left me with a much worse opinion and some I am sure are actively engaged in the dark side, using reenacting as a means to justify their racism and hatred of the modern world’s politics.
Confederates don’t hold a candle in my view to Nazi reenactors. I just can’t find a way to justify those who choose that path. This article in the Times is a lead in for a BBC special on Nazi reenactors. It seems to confirm my worst suspicions of the type of folk drawn to portray an SS trooper. Now that alone to me is worrying, as I don’t really trust the media to get a story like this right. I have seen enough bias in the media that a story that fits right into my stereotype is immediately suspicious to me but my instinct is that this is provably a sadly accurate story. One telling point in the story is that the SS guys frequently out number the guys doing the British Army or the other allies. These guys aren’t doing this because the ‘good guys’ need some ‘bad guys’ to shoot at to make it a a reenactment, they are Nazi fans. Even as a reenactor, I just can’t get my head around that. Cartoon pirates, sure I can understand the appeal. I can’t make the SS into cartoon good guys, all I get is bad guys. Anybody have any ideas? Am I being narrow minded here? Keep it civil but I wouldn’t mind hearing from folks who don’t agree.
August 27th, 2007 at 7:45 am
I seem to remember reading an insightful quote from Werner Klemperer but I can’t find it now. The more I think about it, I don’t think it would apply anyway. I think it was about keeping the memory alive to prevent the evil from rising again. Clearly, not what a lot of these guys are about.
August 27th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I never tended towards the WW2 stuff but a couple of friends did the german thing. I think it was because of the much cooler guns. I never got a bad vibe off of them, but its a pretty small sample size.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:27 am
There are folks who would take on doing Nazi just for the challenge of doing an accurate impression and of those, some would be racist. The reporter went in looking for racism and found it… on a hidden camera outside a beer tent in the early morning. I understand that there is a dark side to folks who are drawn to war, but I think it’s a pretty broad brush to paint all “bad guy” reenactors with the same brush. You get in because of an interest in the time period, the guns or because it’s what your friends are into.
Years ago, we were throwing around the idea of presenting religious intolerance in the Maryland line (which was mixed Catholic and Protestant) during the revolution as a way to spark interest and debate for visitors (or maybe it was just for fun… we were younger then). None of us actually cared who was “papist” or not. We also cross dressed Brit/Rebel at certain events. The dark side, as it were, attracts for different reasons, but I think it’s a love of history, not a denial of the Holocaust that causes people to want to do a German impression.
The Holocaust denier had not been invited to the event, he used the event to draw free press. He is abhorrent and has served jail time only furthering his egocentric view of himself. *yick*
Not all folks who collect WW2 or Holocaust memorabilia are supporters of the Nazis, some may be Jews or Roma, proud of their family’s history as survivors. Some are history buffs eager to own items of known lineage. I am not one to judge antique collectors and caveat emptor as far as authenticity for such gruesome items anyway.
So that’s my take. One guy got riled up at being challenged on his hobby while on national TV, another is a racist (though apparently not anti-semitic despite the rise of that in Europe recently. They surely would’ve touted that instead of his private racist and anti-Muslim sentiments). An author tried and succeeded in getting publicity and a salesman tried to inflate prices on a tea tray. Sorry to see our hobby (in the broad sense of all reenacting) represented as loonies.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:33 am
Oh, I do feel bad for the vet, though. I didn’t understand some years ago when reenactors were saying that WWII was still too recent to reenact, but WWI was starting to gain popularity (think was in the late 80s, early 90s). I didn’t see anything wrong with the guys who did “Cold War” stuff either (as bad guys) though that would clearly have been too recent. To me, it just meant that it was easier to research and obtain than Rev War, but I can understand how it would freak out someone who sees what they fought against being presented with shiny new buttons.