Hipster Hitlers in Germany Are No Comic Strip

History needs to be rewritten: Apparently, Hitler was quite the stud. I personally know at least four people who claim to be Der Führer’s grandson – or daughter. They may not be exactly LATFH-fodder, but they’re hipsters, no doubt.

When they’re not busy with some kind of ‘project,’ be it a fashion label or an art space, or running around in used wedding dresses, they twitter and tumbler and blog – mostly outrageous things about rape and racism and the Holocaust. Let’s call them the Hitlerifik Twitkidz. They’re no Nazis. They just pretend to be.

One of the breakout stars of the scene calls herself Ada Blitzkrieg, her real name is somewhat less urgent. She recently got name-checked on Indie rap-star Prinz Pi’s new album, twice. She mostly tweets very funny jokes about reality TV, yo’momma, trash culture and what she refers to as “’stereotypes’ – vandalizing “Jew cemeteries,” the weather being very “Schindler’s List” and setting Riefenstahl movies to Eurodance. She has a Menorah, visible in some YouTube-clips, though she’s not Jewish and doesn’t really know any Jews.

Blowing up cliches till they lose meaning – maybe. Is it funny? Dunno. Ada seems okay with it: “I just want to make a name for myself and make some money,” she states. And there is some humility to the whole thing as well (even if it is a bit ‘I was just following orders’). Really, it’s hard to be mad at someone who tweets “I give money to that bum cause his face reminds me of my pussy” to thousands of people.

Still: The flood gates are open. Marcel Wichmann aka uarrr is a young designer and illustrator from Hamburg. Some minor memes can be traced back to him, and he’s successful at selling T-shirts. He also seems to be a smug asshole who has made a habit of calling Black people “negroes.” He also came up with the term “HoLOLcaust” and the idea to call flowers “Gas-Me-Nots.” But, don’t feel uncomfortable fellow yids: He is a victim too – because, well you know, “He uses an iPhone and some people don’t like that.”

You can probably hear worse (and funnier) things any given night in the UCB Theater, I know. But without a real, visible Jewish or Black community in Berlin (or Germany, for that matter) to speak of, they mock those without a voice or a face. This ironic ‘conversation’ stops being a dialogue and just becomes bullying.

For me, one of the few Jews living in Berlin, I have to say screw this getting comfortable with history BS. Does ‘Satire spares no one’ really apply when the people that you satirize are either dead and buried or just trying to get the fuck by?

That’s what I wanna ask. And then I remember what country I live in, and just sigh. Anyway. I have some The Sarah Silverman Program episodes to catch up on.