davemerrill

Yeah, I just...what.

Sadly, were I there and had money they may have got me for a jacket and a couple of hats, depending. Minus the SS detailing and such.

If memory serves that flag is for one of the SS tank groups. Not that it matters.

What boggles my mind more than anything, where the heck does the guy source this stuff from? I mean, I know there's an entire culture dedicated to this nonsense but geeze.

One was always able to buy 'Hitler Youth' daggers from surplus catalogs but I've never seen fully decked out uniforms, complete with specific battle awards correct for...never mind.

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That would be Man in a Dress, formerly Digital Discs LLC. I have been wondering when a convention would finally call him on this.

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Apparently plenty of other conventions have, and there were complaints about him last year that I didn't hear about. Well, I'm drawin' a line in the sand.

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I meant to say "apparently other conventions have called him on this", to mean, prohibited him from selling Nazi memorabilia. I know Digital Discs could be counted upon to be the dealer who always complained they weren't making enough money. Cry me a river.

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WTF?!?!?!?

I mean, Eldon seemed a pretty decent guy, at least when I first met him at A-Kon years back. I did get a whiff of 'entitlement' later on with the whole "show you a Japanese CD sell you a homeburn" deal that happened for a time and as Dave says, the whine about not making enough money is sad. I'm pretty sure he was making a better than average markup back when Dollar/Yen was 150 and better, I'm sure trying to sell Japanese CDs with his markup at today's rate is just a license to not sell a blessed thing.

So he moved from overpriced CDs (which, mind, I still bought more often than not) to Nazi gear? Wow. Simply insane.

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guyhatesyou.livejournal.com

"It's okay to not like Hetalia." - Dave Merrill

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hooverdam.livejournal.com

That's not even Nazi historical memorabilia. That's straight up Neo-Nazi, Stormfront, let's bring this back now gear. Not only should the contract forbid this explicitly, the dealer in question should be blackballed.

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daryl surat (from livejournal.com)

I snapped a picture on Friday morning of this dude's booth that had the jackets plus a SS flag and posted it on Twitter. I figured "this dude's at every convention selling this stuff, so it must be okay" and made a quip about how it's okay to be into incest, pedophilia, and also Nazis as long as you're a lady then moved on with my day.

What isn't shown in the picture I took is this particular flag, which I'm pretty sure was in fact there throughout the weekend. The photo Dave posted is from the angle walking towards the entrance. I took mine from the opposite angle. Maybe it was the crowds at the place, maybe they just didn't have it out, but I do want to also note that this dude, in addition to the uniforms and armbands and flags, was straight-up selling framed painted portraits of Adolf Hitler at AWA come Sunday morning.

The Internet's reaction to this thus far is "that's just allowed at that con because it's the South and people are more cool with it down there." I however will say this dude hits all the major East Coast cons and sells this stuff. If Anime Boston or Otakon or whomever gives him a talking to, that's got about as much weight as telling someone in the Artist's Alley who brought a ton of merchandise of licensed characters/images to knock it off. These people aren't actually going to stop selling something. They're going to maybe hide it behind the table or under something else since they already packed the stuff. The time to nail these people is before they even load their trucks to come down.

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And how sad is it that in this day and age this: " The Internet's reaction to this thus far is "that's just allowed at that con because it's the South and people are more cool with it down there." " is a reality?

Of course Daryl should have said "as a subset on the internet that is the insular world of anime fandom" altho...I take that back, I'm sure there would be the same feeling in much of the mainstream. Sadly. All I have to do is turn on the TV and see/hear the same kind of mentality, but that drifts into politics and all that crap and I stop now.

Of course I have a view that the more one tries to suppress something like this the more power is given to it which makes it more attractive to those of the mindset, education and reason being better weapons but sometimes, yeah, you gotta fumigate the house and not just swat a roach.

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The Internet thinks the South is the only place in America with racists and neo-Nazis? Think again, Internet. Hint: "famous potatoes".

Seriously, I am in the evidence-gathering stage right now, waiting for AWA admin to catch their breath from the show. I'm getting a lot of support on the AWA message board as well, and some private message action too.

When all my ducks are in a row, I will make a formal type complaint to the entire AWA administration.

This extends a lot further than AWA however. It might be time for, say, Anime News Network to have a front-page article asking "why are there Nazis at our anime conventions?"

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Daryl, you mind posting that pic to the AWA message board in the thread, or do you mind if I post it, with your quote about the Adolph Hitler portrait?

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I see DFS beat me to the Godwinizing of the thread, which is excellent.

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warpig1979.livejournal.com

The Internet thinks the South is the only place in America with racists and neo-Nazis?

The state with the most groups on the SPLC Hate Map: California, at 84. (Idaho has a mere 18. The Aryan Nations actually got sued out of town and moved to Florida about ten years ago...)

But yeah, good luck with the project here. This outfit seems to have kinda slipped through fandom's tendency to let acts of terrible crassness slide by unmentioned. Cheers for standing up to say something about it.

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footyfoot.livejournal.com

"Yeah, come on down to Dallas and eat at Horst Wessel's BlitzenChicken Shack, half-price off right wings and assholes if you give the Party Salute! Death's Heads n' Gizzards complimentary! We LOVE our Nazis down here!"

Bullshit. That's just a cop out by people who don't want to look too closely at what squiggles around under the rocks in their own garden. Neo-Nazi shitheads are everywhere in the US, if you care to open your eyes and look.

Edited Date: 2012-10-06 11:31 pm (UTC)

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yeah, with the current exchange rate plus the fact that 0% of 15 year olds buy CDs anymore.

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sixstop.livejournal.com

The Internet thinks the South is the only place in America with racists and neo-Nazis?

yes. as near as I can tell, thats exactly what the rest of the english speaking north america are happy to believe.

Probably stems from cross association with the confederate battle flag.

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I dunno, when the Son May (and Evergreen and what-all) Taiwan CDs were plentiful the kiddies were snapping them up like candy. Which leads me to believe that indeed, it's not physical media is undesired, it's just that people have been lulled into not valuing it as much, as a cost/benefit thing.

Cheap Price = sales. Take a 2500 Yen CD (which is already $31 USD at straight exchange rate) and slap a $48 price on it, heck yeah that's gonna just sit there. Take a $4 Son May CD and price it at $10 you won't be able to keep any to sell at another con.

But what do I know? I just bought the soundtrack for The Omega Man and picked up the soundtrack for Is Paris Burning, which surprise, turned out to be one of the 'templates' for the music for the Giant Robo OAV. Go me!

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when was that? 10 years ago? when these kids were 5?

seriously, kids who are in college now have never even owned a CD. they grew up post-internet. napster got big in 2000. the first iPod came out in 2001.

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I honestly think teenagers and college kids today have more familiarity with vinyl than they do with CDs. Well, computer software still comes on CDs, sometimes. I guess.

These days you can get music by holding your smartphone next to another smartphone.

Obviously the solution for everyone, in this changing retail environment, is to sell portraits of Hitler. Only National Socialism can save us in these uncertain economic times.

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People need to watch 'The Blues Brothers' again. I hate Illinois Nazis.

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Hmmmmm.

Naaaaaa.

Altho, given the mentality of those in charge of marketing nowadays it would not shock me in the least if something close to that doesn't pop up in brainstorm sessions.

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daryl surat (from livejournal.com)

I went ahead and linked the post along with a slightly higher-resolution version of the photo I took over on the AWA board. My old camera phone isn't fancy enough for auto-focus, but it gets the idea across. Some of the eagle crosses and swastikas on the jackets and hats are a bit too fine detail to see in my picture, but if you full-size Neil's picture you can see this stuff.

Every year Dragon*Con does their big costume parade, and one section of the parade typically features World War II stuff. The first time I went to Dragon*Con was about 3-4 years ago with a friend who was set to march in the parade as an SS officer. At Dragon*Con you can just wear the full-on Nazi uniform with swastika armband and the like, and nobody bats an eye because that's not anywhere close to being the most terrifying sight there. Anyway, he got a lot of compliments on his outfit from people walking up to him, and they'd say things like "yeah I would've worn my stuff too, but I didn't want to risk it around all these porch monkeys." Then they'd walk off.

So yeah, I never went back to Dragon*Con.

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warpig1979.livejournal.com

At Dragon*Con you can just wear the full-on Nazi uniform with swastika armband and the like, and nobody bats an eye because that's not anywhere close to being the most terrifying sight there.

This is an excellent summation of the Dragoncon experience.

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even computer software is really changing that -- the last 2 releases of Mac OS were only available from the app store on the mac, for download. you can only get physical media version at the apple store if you need them (meaning you fried your mac) and that's a USB stick.

with certified app stores on mac os and windows 8, as well as one on amazon (i just bought microsoft office from amazon via download) i dunno if i'll ever encounter computer software on physical media again either.

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Overpriced and occasionally bootleg CDs, mind you. Which is why, I suspect, he changed his company name: he got kicked out of more than one convention, DURING con hours, for that.

As a vendor, I could sympathize with the whine about not making enough money. It's chronic: we want to do all sorts of things but have to pick and choose because we only sell so much at a con. But to whine about not making enough money on merchandise for which practically nothing was paid in the first place... no.

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Dallas, maybe not.

Madisonville? Vidor? More likely.

Racism and fascism find their strongest support in America in rural areas.

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It also stems from the fact that those ideas are stronger in rural areas, and the South is more generally rural in population distribution than most of the rest of the country.

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The only time I ever saw Nazis at an Atlanta Fantasy Fair was in conjunction with a stage play Donna Barr was doing for "Desert Peach", and as part of an Indiana Jones thing.

People use Dragoncon as an excuse to get their Nazi on? Glad I quit going.

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We even have 'em up here - not surprising, as Canada is mostly rural, largely white dealing with an influx of "other" immigrants, and can be just as racist as anybody.

We used to live down the street from this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Z%C3%BCndel

I'll tell ya, it's weird finding Klan memorabilia in an antique mall in Ontario. But it's there.

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Can't even get physical media for some Mac software. I wanted to upgrade to OS 10.6 (now that I have a Max with Intel processor) and was told "sorry, we don't have that in the store"

Can't find it online either, yet it USED to exist.

And of course it's not moved to the free software update side.

*sigh*

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well, i don't see any reason that it should be free just because it's digital-only. it's not as though we were primarily paying for cost of goods with prior updates, though distribution added a heavy tax. given that MS office was $90 on amazon, and i seem to remember it being a lot more expensive in the past, i also have trouble complaining too much given i use it pretty much on the daily!

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