One of the best / worst moves the nazis ever pulled was recruiting a skilled fashion designer to the cause. Hugo Boss towers over the history of the world as the unholy shithead that made nazis look cool. I’m not going to pretend he didn’t, as much as the aesthetic is extremely disgusting to me from when I stand. You can find stories about how this obsession with form over function resulted in bad clothing causing problems in combat, but that’s a quibble by now. Even if nonfunctional buttons or unnecessary straps cost a nazi his life once upon a time, the look continues to give the worst people in the world erections. So mission accomplished.
Aside from that one thing that one time tho? There is literally nothing cool about fascism. The ideology is ironically the mentality of the incredibly weak and foolish. I say ironically because it poses as the mentality of the inherently mas inteligente and musclebound. Fucking absurd. Who wants to kneel before some almighty lump of decaying flesh in an expensive suit? Who needs to be told their place like a good little submissive? Who believes that tyranny is better for society than distribution of authority to those who should reasonably hold it, like experts in their fields? Who thinks a con artist is better qualified to make decisions about medicine than a doctor, a bully is better qualified to make decisions about human rights than mental health professionals and ethicists and sociologists and the people whose rights are threatened?
That’s just the philosophy. This article is about the superficial. I’m talking about coolness. You know the ’80s cool guy with the sunglasses? The lady with all the bangles and the big hair and neon legwarmers? The deadpan standup comedian with self-effacing charm, cutting down the powerful with the scythe of wit? The hip kids on the corner always pushing the edge of what people think is acceptable to wear, making the world a more interesting looking place? The people who invented the zoot suit? Flappers? Bobbysoxers? Rock and rollers? None of these things can come of a fascist mindset.
There are some people who were legitimately cool, such as cool is, that had flirtations with fascism. David Bowie famously made that mistake while strung out on cocaine in the ’80s and I imagine got his shit right well before he died. The artist Romaine Brooks let classism lead her into sympathy for fascists, according to some sources. These were not shining moments in their lives that anybody looks to with affection, and of course, not moments that had anything to do with why they were ultimately regarded as cool, on the balance of their respective lives.
Fascists steal coolness from other people. An mp3 that did the rounds back in the file-sharing days was a nazi propagandist antisemitic cover of “Making Whoopee.” You ever want to hear a nazi jazz band? I can’t imagine their originals were worth a shit either. There was a pathetic moment in electronic music when neo-nazis tried to make “fashwave” a thing. They tried to claim artists who despise them as being part of their shit, and sometimes just literally stole somebody else’s song and spliced in naziness.
A lot of cool comes from black folks. And who is the most fascist black man making music today? Ye? That guy is about as cool as a rusty cybertruck. That guy is about as cool as a crumpled paper bag full of shit and dead animals. That guy hasn’t made a song worth a dime in a long-ass time. Record sales to college republicans don’t count.
I remember when one of the Penny Arcade dudes was being a transphobe and got called out by the Diesel Sweeties guy who said something to the effect of, “hating trans people doesn’t make him cool; it makes him Rush Limbaugh with tattoos.” Dressing hip while expressing the values of a megachurch is some youth pastor shit. It’s coolness drag.
And let’s check out the coolness of fascism’s big boys and monkey boys of the moment, shall we? Tfxnp. Mxyk. Ben Shapiro. Charlie Kirk. Marjorie Tailor Greene. Tucker Carlson. Candace Owens. Are you starting to notice a pattern? These are the people the ’80s cool guy would have been embarrassing with his hijinks and breezy charm. These are the people who would be tearing down the community center in Breakin’ III: Electric Boogalee, until those awesome kids raised a bunch of money with breakdancing powers and heart.
And yet they think they are cool. Look at the way they swan around in their piles of ill-gotten loot. It’s absurd on its face. I can’t even with that shit. I know I’m not the coolest bitch myself, and I definitely know coolness isn’t the most admirable quality a human can possess or any kind of basis for making important decisions in life, but I’m claiming rank as an arbiter of cool here. I deserve it more than they do. Hell, I could dress in garbage and shit myself on the bus and be cooler than any one of those clowns.
My husband reminds me that a few years ago there was a book claiming that conservative was the new punk, that they were taking cool back from the radical left or whatever. Now it’s cool to own property and go to church, they said. I couldn’t find it on a cursory google search, which is more effort than that crackpot idea deserved.
I don’t have a point. Shit’s just got me a little cranky. That makes me a “hater” and therefore inherently less cool than a “player,” right? There are more criteria than that. On the balance, any cool points they get for being players are utterly hosed by anything else about their entire lives.
Get ’em off the stage.
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I totally get you.The fascholes aren’t cool, they aren’t smart, they never do anything amazing or good for anybody but themselves and strut around like they expect everybody to worship their unwashed asses – and a shitload of people do.
Can we even define cool?
Terry Pratchett tried with,
Of course the attribute of “cool” isn’t found in what a person wears or who designed it, it comes from how they wear it. “Cool” comes from within. It’s the confidence of knowing who you are, and not caring all that much about how other people see you. A cool person is happy to get respect from others, but it doesn’t really bother them if they don’t. It’s not the same as self-reliance, it’s self-sufficient. It’s an inner locus of control which does not need approval from others. A person who is cool can be happy spending a day with their thoughts, working on their projects, and never needing or wanting praise. They create their own pleasure, and do not demand more than they can create. If someone cool operates outside of the boundaries of society, they will accept their punishment if caught. But they are often not caught because they have no need to advertise what they are doing.
Being terribly uncool is, of course, is one of the (many) problems of fascists. Fascists want attention. They demand praise. They want to break social boundaries in order to show their power to avoid punishment. Or, when they are punished, like a child they look to get even more attention by whining about how cruelly they were treated. Trump, Musk, MTG, Carlson, they all want your attention; your respect, your acknowledgment of their superiority, or your hatred. As long as they have your attention. Even if they have to kill you to get it. As far as sartorial splendor, they will never be able to look cool. At best they will look like a storefront mannikin advertising the latest fashion, they will draw attention to their costume rather than wear it.
Cool is the antitheses of fascist.
This was written by a white-bearded, late-middle-aged, cis, white man, who is well known for dogmatically stating his own opinions to others, but is perfectly willing for people to disagree with him.
im glad y’all and late terry get where i’m coming from. this is certainly a topic that can catch reasonable disagreement but of course i prefer shades of agreement. and hang loose
or sunglasses 
emojis.
Yeah, people have been talking for years about ‘the paradox of cool’… which is to say, that actively trying to be cool is never cool, because it misses the point. It is always about the self-assurance and casual self-confidence.
(Anecdote I heard once: when Henry Winkler was first trying out for the role as ‘The Fonz’ on Happy Days, part of the tryout script involved walking past a mirror, and whipping out a comb to make sure his hair was in place. Winkler said that this didn’t strike him as actually being cool, it struck him as being desperate and vain; the result when he stepped up to do his tryout was the classic bit that ended up in the opening credits, of him walking by a mirror, whipping out his comb… and then going ‘eyy’ because his hair was already perfect and putting the comb back in his pocket without using it. Thus demonstrating that Winkler understood ‘cool’ better than the people writing the show.)
By definition, then, the particular form of ‘macho’ culture that fascism holds as its ideal cannot truly be cool, because it is all about the posturing and the attempts to look big and important, usually to cover up fundamental insecurities underneath. Whether or not the people involved are sufficiently self-aware to realize that they have those insecurities is a different question.
In many ways, I’d say that part of the problem is that we’ve had entire generations of people who have been taught to not understand what ‘cool’ really is, as part of the attempt at spreading that sort of surface-level macho posturing by teaching children from day one that that is what cool means.
thanks again for the understanding. i am pretty surprised i didn’t get anyone who argued against coolness as a good thing, somebody pulling a devo “we’re through being cool.” i’m sure i wouldn’t have been as entertained by it if they did.