In other words, it’s considered far more moral to do heroin, kill your girlfriend, and wear a swastika than it is to merely wear a swastika (i.e. Sid Vicious).
If the death of Lemmy Kilmister from iconic heavy metal band Motörhead teaches us anything, it’s that society currently considers it far more respectable to be a drug addict than a Nazi.
The term “motorhead” is British slang for what in America would be known as a “tweaker” or a “meth addict” or a “speed freak.” Basically, Lemmy named his band “Speed Freak.” And probably to the degree that Lou Reed made heroin “cool” for generations of gullible kids who were hungry to transgress, Lemmy made crystal meth seem acceptably fun rather than something that causes heart failure and brain damage and turns pretty girls into hags. But meth is also something that kept Hitler’s heart beating and Nazi soldiers marching. It is the whitest of all drugs, and therefore I suppose the most “Nazi.”
Not that Lemmy self-identified as a Nazi—he merely had a lifelong affinity for wearing iron crosses publicly and collecting Nazi memorabilia privately. Sometimes it wasn’t even all that private—I remember living in LA in the late 1980s and reading about Lemmy causing a ruckus by flying a German flag outside his West Hollywood apartment. Lemmy also collected Confederate artifacts and relics of the Napoleonic era. When queried about his habit, Lemmy told a reporter:
Since the beginning of time, the bad guys always had the best uniforms. Napoleon, the Confederates, the Nazis. They all had killer uniforms. I mean, the uniform of the SS was great. They were the rock stars of the time.
Is it a mere accident that the bad guys always look better? Would the swastika and Rebel flag seem so visually compelling if they weren’t so forbidden? It seems almost objectively clear that from a graphic-design standpoint, the swastika looks better than the hammer and sickle, and the Rebel flag “pops” far better than the Stars and Stripes do. But would these symbols seem nearly so striking if not for the taint of evil that modern society projects onto them?
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