In his book, Rachel traces how artists from the 1960s onward used fascist imagery to shock or seduce audiences – often with little awareness of its true weight. Bowie’s 1970s incarnation, the Thin White Duke, was described by the singer himself as “a very Aryan, fascist type.”
In 1975, he called for “an extreme right front (to) sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up,” later telling Playboy, “Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.”
“Bowie, Mick Jagger, and Bryan Ferry have talked about the impact of Leni Riefenstahl’s film of the Nuremberg rallies,” Rachel said. “When you watch Triumph of the Will, it’s easy to see a parallel between Hitler doing a Sieg Heil before thousands of people and a rock star on the lip of a stadium stage, controlling an audience. But in rock’n’roll there has been an attempt to divorce the spectacle from the reality, which was an attempt to exterminate the Jewish people.”
Rachel points out Bowie’s statements – later dismissed by the musician as the product of cocaine addiction and confusion – were not isolated. John Lennon once drew himself as Hitler, while The Who’s Keith Moon once dressed in an SS uniform and marched through north London’s Golders Green, a largely Jewish area.
More recently, Kanye West has praised Hitler and sold swastika-themed T-shirts online.
