Keep Nazi uniforms out of our bunkers

How very tasteful!

It's come to my attention in the last couple of days that a small bust-up has occurred in the last week within the fortress subcommittee (FSC) of the Channel Islands Occupation Society, and it's given me a bit of a wee cause for concern.

You might remember from a blogpost I wrote back in September, criticizing the increasingly common presence of Nazi swastikas graffitied onto the island's German bunkers, that I'm not such a fan of edgy neo-fascist symbology around our bunkers.

You may also be aware that last week's meeting of the Occupation Society's FSC recorded in their minutes a certain discussion, entitled:

"It was brought to the meeting under general conversation that the current rule with regards to uniforms being worn needs to be altered, potentially to be allowed with the main committees’ approval due to the number of living history / re-enactment groups we have visiting the societies various complexes, as the rue stands, we should be refusing entry to said groups / people which would, be very detrimental to the societies (sic) reputation as well as losing a fair amount of entrance fees"

Entrance fees! Of course! Who cares about neo-Nazis potentially latching onto this when there's money to be made?

You know, I'll say right here and now that this is just my two cents. I'm not involved with the Occupation Society or maintenance of these sites in general, so maybe there's something I'm not getting here. That said, I feel like it's going to be a lot more "detrimental to the societies (sic) reputation" to allow uniformed fascists to parade around our bunkers under the guise of re-enactment - as Jon Carter, head of Jersey Heritage once called the idea, it's "insensitive, tasteless and insulting to the victims of Nazi tyranny".

That's right, we've had this debate before, and the clowns in favour were pretty soundly rejected. Back in 2007, Insel Soldaten, a group of "re-enactors" led by infamous public twit and Moore Stevens trust officer Simon Dodkins, tried to convince us that letting people who enjoy dressing up as agents of ideological criminality and homicidal racism was A-OK. After a public consultation, in which a large amount of people came out violently against the idea, and the President of the Jersey Jewish Congregation said it would "give encouragement to those people who either deny the holocaust or perhaps more unfortunately tacitly support all or part of the aims thereof", this got followed up by a Special Branch investigation into potential links with off-island neo-Nazi groups. Sounds pretty sensitive, right? Not according to our Mr Dodkins, who, according to the local rag, claimed at the time that "he could not understand why opinion was divided within the Occupation Society as to whether dressing up as German soldiers was a good idea or not". 

Is Mr Dodkins thick, or simply deeply out of touch? I wouldn't dare presume exactly what sort of ideas in Mr Dodkins' head might've precipitated that sort of view, but suffice to say it feels a little worrying. 

I'm not sure why, after the previous pushers of this farce of an idea were investigated by national counter-terrorism police, the Occupation Society are working on this idea again. 

Who in the right mind thinks they're serving the public interest by pushing for this?