Nazi Uniform Fetish and Role Playing:
A Subculture of Erotic Evil
The word “Nazi” typically evokes thoughts of Anti-Semitism, war crimes,
and the Holocaust. To be sure, war crimes and genocide were committed by some
Nazis and this research is not meant as a defense of, or being in support of, those
activities. Nor is this work an endorsement of the ideologies and activities of
supremacist groups. Rather, this study is an empirical work on Nazi fetish and roleplaying as an active and ongoing component within the bondage,
discipline/dominance, and sadomasochism (BDSM) subculture. An analysis of
BDSM subculture is consistent with the discipline of populär culture’s examination
of “subcultures” and “emergent cultures” (King, 2012, p. 687). In detailing the
history of populär culture as a discipline, Calweti (1976, p. 166) writes “populär
culture as a phrase symbolizes an attitude ranging between neutrality and enthusiasm
for the same kind of cultural products which would have been condemned as
garbage by many earlier intellectuals and artists.” Scholars (Weinberg, Colin, &
Moser, 1984; Weinberg, Williams, & Moser, 1984; Moser & Levitt, 1987;
Sandnabba, et al, 2002; Richters, et al, 2008; Stiles & Clark, 2011) have examined
this “cultural product” of BDSM and informed us of a vibrant and growing
subculture. Such work expands our knowledge of populär culture and the present
study accomplishes the same. We do so from a sociological perspective, one of the
disciplines used in the analysis of populär culture, a “growth industry in the
American academy” (Traube, 1996, p. 127).
In their comprehensive account of the analytic tools that have legitimized
populär culture as a scholarly interest, Mukeiji and Schudson (1986) note the
contribution of Erving Goffman’s work on performances in understanding it as a
“key form of cultural behavior.” They write, “performance is a kind of activity that
is formally staged or an aspect of everyday life in which a person is oriented to and
intends to have some effect on an audience” (Mukeiji & Schudson, 1986, p. 56). We
draw on the seminal work of Goffman to describe and explain how Nazi uniform
fetishists and role-players actively manipulate Symbols (i.e., to perform) in Order to
dramatize their own eroticism and thereby influence the perceptions of others (i.e.,
an audience). Role-playing is a performance and Calweti (1980) argues
performances ar R