Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Hirohito and…Gandhi?

Looking for a way to needlessly pick political fights at a Halloween party tomorrow? How about an Evil Gandhi (or rather "Ghandi") mask from the 1940s? In fact, go with your friends and get the whole set:

If the masks don't turn your party into a beer, corn syrup, and hate fueled brawl, there's always the burnt cork listed at the bottom of the ad as "Ideal for negro and minstrel make up."

Happy Halloween!

Comments

[Pink Cosmotarian]

"Raaaaaacist!!"

[Suki]

Obama was not even mentioned, much less dissed, in that piece. Your racism cry is unfounded.

[OK]

OK, here's an Obama question. The guy who plays him on SNL is white. And yet he's doing blackface, or at least brownface, with little or no complaint from the public at large. So is it ok if the left does blackface (or brownface) but not ok if the right does it? If you're on Obama's side, do you get a pass?

[Ted Danson]

Uh, no. I was dating Whoopi and did a blackface bit and it blew up in mine.

[Tulpa]

Obama is as white as he is black, remember.

[Suki]

I think that is yes to both.

[MP]

"Fine for school plays."

Ah, the gold old days of WWII fascism re-enactments in High School.

[what]

Ghand means something waaaay different in hindi. think something testicular.

[sage]

Dude! A pirate eye patch for only 12 cents? I want two!

[Living Colour]

"I-I'm the cult of personality..."

[creech]

Today, nobody would know who you were with those masks. Maybe Leno should take them "jaywalking" and see what hilarious responses he'd get? Like the chick with a Eng. Lit degree from Harvard who had never heard of Tom Sawyer.

[Syd Henderson]

I think they could still figure our the Hitler mask.

[Jeff P]

That Hitler mask looks like the singer from Soft Cell.

[Art-P.O.G.]

Funny as it is, you're right.

[Ratko]

Hitler doing a little jig while singing Tainted Love, somehow I can picture this.

[Suki]

Sounds like a job for one of the resident CGI artists around here.

[Attorney]

Mussolini looks like Larry Summers.

[Colin]

He was probably included because of his opposition to World War II.

[Rice Bingham]

Even today, who the fuck would pay 25 cents for a burnt cork?

[Rice Bingham]

The nose putty is a far better deal.

[troy]

Where is my Warty mask? I'd enjoy watching SugarFree clench up his butt cheeks every time I walked by.

[Art-P.O.G.]

Man...I didn't know Sugarfree's pants were that tight...or his chaps so assless.

[Suki]

The Warty home video is here but not safe for work, or anyplace else.

[bigbigslacker]

Warty's wife is hot.

[Suki]

LOL, I don't think he can afford that companionship 24/7. Maybe his wife for half hour?

[Suki]

He still thinks I am John too.

[Mikey]

I've never had an Asian, and now I never will.

[Eric H]

The Hirohito looks like Chip Bok's Obama.

[Grim]

Was this during the height of the war or just after?

[Puck]

"Slip on one of these Hitler masks and then try looking into one of your friends' windows. Your friends will never get over seeing Hitler, in person, looking in on the party." Yeah, especially if they had recently escaped one of the death camps and this was their first Halloween in America.

[Sarah]

Nobody escapes the death camps.
Or the death panels.

[Suki]

The Hitler mask should be part of the uniform of the new government death panels.

[Brian Sorgatz]

So Eric Cartman's choice to be Hitler for Halloween would have been less controversial in the 1940s, I take it.

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[Jim Treacher]

I like the last one, the David Axelrod mask.

[Bob]

I don't see the Gandhi mask as being out of place:

In his 1949 "Reflections on Gandhi," George Orwell, regarding the late war, wrote that "one question every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: 'What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?'" Orwell recorded Gandhi's answer, which was: German Jews should commit collective suicide.

http://www.zimbio.com/Ghandi+q.....dhi+Gandhi

[Puck]

so, no difference between ordering people to the gas chambers and just thinking that people should just let themselves be killed, stand in front of tanks as protest, go on hunger strikes. The guy who stood in front of the tank in Tiannamen Square - not out of place among Hitler and Stalin as well?

[Ratko]

To compare Gandhi to Tank Guy is like saying Gandhi stood in opposition before himself. Like Hitler and Stalin he was a social engineer with a master plan whose efforts resulted in great suffering for millions. With luck India will finally outlive the damage he caused, time will tell.

[Puck]

There's a difference between persuasion and force. Gandhi participated and advocated a pacifist approach to violent thuggery. He didn't order anyone to take up pacifism. They guy who stood in front of the tank also did not order anyone else to do so. He also chose a pacifist approach to violent, state thuggery.

[Puck]

"..Gandhi stood in opposition to himself." I guess I'll have to bone up on my modern Indian history. I didn't realize Gandhi was in charge of India's armed forces, or that his philosophy involved violently attacking pacifist. I do recall that he went on a hunger strike in an effort to quell ethnic/religions violence.

I suspect the reason these masks are lumped together is simply because of the xenophobia of the times where a Gandhi could be easily thrown into the mix of other freaky foreigners.

[Suki]

Just like the portion of Israel haters who want the Jews to voluntarily march into the sea vs. the ones who want them incinerated away.

Gandhi is much more clear to me now.

[attack of the killer randroids]

There's society and then there's the state. One has an army and the other doesn't. Can you guess which one?

[Suki]

Um, both societies and states can have armies. The ones in societies are sometimes called militias, like Hezbollah, but they are still armies.

Thanks for the condescending tone too!

[hairy]

But Gandhi didn't have a militia or an army, so the analogy is specious. He didn't and couldn't *order* his followers to attack anyone or to commit mass suicide. His idea was that even the worst people could be morally turned if you resisted non-violently while trying to see the best in them. Now, I don't think this would have worked against fascists either, but it's hardly equivalent to marching peoople to the gas chambers at the point of a gun.

[Suki]

I am sort of lost on where you two wandered off to. I was talking about the Gandhi quote in the Orwell interview and comparing that to what many want the Jews to do now.

[Syd Henderson]

Didn't Gandhi change his mind on that later?

[Suki]

I don't know, but I sure hope so. That was an awful thing for him to say. Bob's comment was the first I saw it.

[ajan]

Gandhi did actually contradict himself at one point on this later, saying that he thought there could be necessary times for self-defense or even defense of innocents, especially in regards to defense of women being attacked by potential rapists. Nevertheless, his point about his movement was not just to passively resist but to actually actively attempt to convert his enemy to his side, minimally for his enemy to recognize the human in the other side; he wanted to raise the moral awareness of his opponent by neither fighting or hating him but by embracing him, to the point where his opponent could be partially or wholly turned. Perhaps not workable in all contexts, but it more or less worked against the British.

[Ratko]

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[D-FENS]

You want to see some other inspired fun stuff, check out the 1930 DeMoulin catalog: http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/masonicmuseum/demoulin/

Crackers, electrical shocks... Today, this thing would have "lawsuit" written all over it. (Woulda put a real link in, but it sounds like the syntax has changed, and I don't have a preview button at this level.)

[D-FENS]

Wow, how do you like that... Automatic links!

[Suki]

I wonder what fetish gear prices were like back then?

[kiyo]

Gandhi was, believe it or not, somewhat of a controversial figure in days past.

[James Anderson Merritt]

Given that someone felt strongly enough to shoot him in public, I would say so.

[Shannon Love]

This add comes from 1940, presumably Oct 1940 after the Fall of France when England stood alone against the 3rd Reich and the Soviet Union.

Ghandi had tunnel vision in which viewed everything through the immediate short-term implications for his movement in India. Ghandi ignored the greater context of the struggle against Fascism and instead just saw it as an opportunity to undermine British rule in India and the other colonies. To this end he tried to use the war to advance his narrow goals. Although not as disruptive to the war effort as many Indian Nationalist, he was the face of the Indian Nationalist movement to most people in England and viewed as someone working for the benefit of England's enemies. Hence his mask inclusion with the rouges gallery.

Harry Turtledove wrote an alternate history short-story wherein the Nazi's defeat Britain and occupy India. Ghandi tries his non-violent resistance schtick and the Nazi just start killing people until the protest end. When Ghandi himself is captured, he tried to lecture the German commander who not only doesn't listen but just has him taken out back and shot. The story ends with the commander musing about what to have for lunch.

[Suki]

And Ghandi and his people should have just committed mass suicide once the Germans took power.

[dhex]

i forget sometimes that there's this memeplex on the right where colonialism is a kind of weird headcold or paper cut. except when it's done by commies, natch.

[Suki]

Go up to Bob's post of Orwell interviewing Ghandi fo better context.

[ajan]

some of these threads are raising some interesting questions for me. Is a statist one who believes in the usefulness of some to all collective action on any sphere of social activity or just one who believes that the state should make decisions over all aspects of life. Must one be a rugged individualist to be a libertarian? Someone who is completely self-reliant and competent to expert at whatever endeavor they undertake: "she made the best eggs he ever had." Or could a libertarian include those who reject rugged individualism, who more highly value social cooperation, or communal living, or gasp, passive collective resistance to force? And finally, would libertarism be fundamentally incompatible with the belief that while the smaller, individual self, is real moment to moment, ultimately, it is just a covering for a deeper Self, that includes all beings?

[Mikey]

Ponder all you like, but in my opinion, there is no "deeper Self that includes all beings." That is New Age bullshit that's bound to get you nowhere. Each man is an end unto himself. Libertarians don't have to be rugged individualists like Jeremiah Johnson. They just have to produce something of value to sell, so that they may buy things they value.

[ajan]

Actually, dear sir, it is Hinduism; it's been co-opted by the West. But whether you think it's bullshit or not is not my question. My question is whether it is fundamentally incompatible with libertarianism. And they must all be producers of things to sell? So, a garbage man could not be a libertarian? Or someone who works for a charity? Or a man who lives alone in the woods, ala Thoreau? Your definition seems to be much wider than a political philosophy, but perhaps you are in the mainstream in this belief among libertarians.

[dhex]

" Go up to Bob's post of Orwell interviewing Ghandi fo better context."

i know the context: it also existed at the time. plenty of folks within his own coalition criticized him on that point.

history seems to have proven him correct, however. it makes rather obvious sense that if you're under the thumb of one exploitative power, using their distraction to loosen their grip is simply good strategy.

[hmm]

I'm going ass Hope and Change this year.

[Jennifer]

Wanting exploitative occupiers to get the hell out of your country is tunnel vision.