From the swastika-emblazoned shirts of Sid Vicious half a century ago, to Kanye West’s lifelong admiration for Adolf Hitler, countless pop and rock stars have played in the Third Reich sandbox. Few suffered lasting career damage for fetishizing Nazism.

Published in February, “This Ain’t Rock ‘n’ Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich,” offers the first comprehensive history of the music industry’s obsession with Nazism. Alongside a parade of iconic goose-steppers, author Daniel Rachel interwove a “parallel narrative to explain the original meaning of Nazi symbolism, events and terminology,” he told The Times of Israel.

“The book doesn’t so much point the finger and accuse musicians of being antisemitic as lay out a history,” said Rachel. “The book says, here are the facts, this is what artists have said or done. The history is in plain sight,” said the award-winning British music historian.

Central to Rachel’s thesis is that rock and pop musicians get a “free pass” for appropriating the swastika and other fascist symbols. Whereas glorifying Nazism is typically punished in other art forms, said Rachel, “Rock ‘n’ roll has willingly reproduced the swastika and images of the Third Reich since its inception. Artists’ actions are sometimes challenged but mostly not,” he said.

Adopted by Adolf Hitler in 1919, the Hakenkreuz — or swastika — was explicitly intended to be antisemitic, according to the budding dictator in his memoir. Still, said Rachel, the swastika’s connection to antisemitism “is not widely associated with the symbol and helps to explain the ‘free pass,’” he said.

Fascination with the Third Reich’s design aesthetic was catalyzed by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will,” released in 1935. An........

© The Times of Israel