Yes, the ‘Miss Hitler Beauty Pageant’ apparently is a thing. Was news to me until just a few days ago, but I guess you really can’t underestimate just how shit 2020 is, right? On the plus side, this gives us an opportunity to laugh at a bunch of Nazis, so I guess I’m not complaining. If Nazis are going to do anything, it may as well be something ridiculous we can all make fun of.
So let’s get some context out of the way. You’re not going to see the ‘Miss Hitler’ beauty pageant on TV for many obvious reasons. Best I can understand is that the pageant was an online thing about five years ago, hosted on a Russian Facebook equivalent that has much laxer rules on policing Nazis on the platform. The central thing was the ‘Miss Ostland’ pageant, designed specifically for Eastern European neo-Nazis, in baffling contradiction of actual Nazi racial policy towards Slavic peoples. Evidently this model was copied by a UK neo-Nazi group known as National Action.
National Action is the first far-right group in the UK to be banned since the second world war, having been banned towards the end of 2016 for expressing support for the fascist murder of a Labour MP. The membership seems to have been overwhelmingly made up of youths who show great admiration for Hitler and modern white supremacist murderers like Anders Breivik, the man who gunned down dozens of innocent people on an island in Norway several years back. A great deal of the leadership has broken off from legal fascist group, the British National Party and its associated youth wing, seeing themselves as the more radical alternative who will turn their words into actions.
But really, does any of this surprise you? Neo-Nazi internet idiots exist, wow, great insight. What you want to know about is the ‘Miss Hitler’ contestant, right? Well here’s where it gets interesting. A few months back, four members of National Action were arrested. Two of which we have no reason to give a shit about, but the other two are Alice Cutter and Mark Jones, girlfriend and boyfriend Nazis with the former being a contestant for a ‘Miss Hitler’ pageant. Specifically, she was ‘Miss Buchenwald’, to use the name of one of the Nazi death camps. We can only guess at who the other contestants were.
As one might expect, Miss Buchenwald tried to weasel out of her sentencing by denying being a member of National Action, despite attending multiple rallies, making jokes about murdering Jews, being the girlfriend of National Action’s London regional organizer and indeed being fucking Miss Buchenwald in their ‘Miss Hitler’ beauty pageant. Needless to say, the court was not convinced and she got a three year prison sentence for her troubles. Her boyfriend, who took photos of himself waving his neo-Nazi flag in the execution room of Buchenwald, was given a five and a half year sentence.
While I would never suggest downplaying the inherent danger of Nazi ideology and movements like these, who are just as capable of getting a nutter with a gun to shoot up a Mosque or Synagogue, I think it’s safe to say that their intellectual and organizational capacity is practically nil. Every so often, it’s nice to be able to sit back and laugh at the sheer stupidity of it all.
