Monday, January 23, 2006

Hitler's Spiritual Heir Dons His Hat

From Canoe News

Commenter Wally Ballou sends a link to a picture of a Palestinian voter. As he says:
     Check out the fascist eagle P.A. logo on this guy's hat.
Ah, well, dreams of Hitler never die, they just transmogrify into images of Little Hitlers. At the moment it would seem his spiritual heirs seem to be in possession of the Palestinians.

Don't you wonder where he got the hat? An inheritance from Arafat, perhaps?

8 comments:

El Jefe Maximo said...

The Hitler thing comes thru, particularly with that mustache, but in all fairness, Judging from the so-called "Presidential" standard, I believe the PA authority eagle and arms on the hat are borrowed from those of the Arab Republic of Egypt (quite a close resemblance), which is an interesting comment on the independence of the former entity.

The eagle on the Egyptian flag is apparently the so-called "Eagle of Saladin." No clue what connection it actually has with Saladin.

http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/eg.html

http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ps^presi.html

xavier said...

El jefe maximo:
Interesting but it still resembles the pompous fascist eagle that Mussolini and the other southern/eastern Europan fascist/fascoid parties adopted in the 30s.
I'd give it an additional earthy description y but Dympha would get mad at me ;)

xavier

Chip said...

Hitler and the Village People?

/shudder

El Jefe Maximo said...

I suspect despite the advertised connection to Saladin, that the fascist resemblance is no coincidence. All the Arab nationalist movements borrowed pretty freely from Mussolini.

Wally Ballou said...

Thanks for the info, jefe. A little more Googling shows that the Eagle of Saladin in the Egyption coat of arms is supposedly based on a carving in the west wall of the Citadel of Cairo, built by Saladin. I couldn't find a picture of that eagle anywhere to confirm the resemblance. Of course, in the ancient world, what the eagle symbolized to most poeple was probably imperial Rome. It's a short jump from there to Mussolini's neo-Roman revivals (including the fasces themselves).

If you want to see a lot of fascist architecture, just come to Washington DC and check out some of those 30's building details. Eagles, musclemen (and women) and fasce-bundled axes everywhere.

Of course, what FDR gave us was "fascism lite".

airforcewife said...

Hubby brought home a pin that looked EXACTLY like that - it had been a part of an Iraqi uniform. He bought it off a street market for about 50 cents.

It's so cheaply made, I'm not too sure he got a good deal. Even historically speaking.

Throbert said...

There's a certain bar in D.C. called "The Eagle" where the gentleman in the photo would look right at home.

See also: Tom of Finland

El Jefe Maximo said...

Been doing some googling myself on the Eagle. Found the thing about the wall. And like Air Force Wife says, the Iraqis apparently used it too. Argues for the fascist connection -- the Baathists in both Iraq and Syria borrowed a lot from old Musso's bunch.