Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Don't Worry, Be Happy … Well Maybe Worry A Little Bit

There was a movie made about them and there was a madman who tried to exterminate them. They were called: Swing Kids



Swing Kids were primarily composed of upper class teenagers who liked anything English and/or American, especially swing and jazz music. That was about it except they lived in Nazi Germany and made fun of the Hitler Youth and the Nazi regime. Also, much of the music they liked was Negro music. During the early years the Swing Kids seemed to be tolerated, but as the war began the government started to see these kids as a counterculture to the Nazi way of life. This culminated in a letter dated January 26, 1942 from Heinrich Himmler to his chief henchman Reinhard Heydrick:

My judgment is that the whole evil must be radically exterminated now. I cannot but see that we have taken only half measures. All ringleaders (...) are into a concentration camp to be re-educated (...) detention in concentration camp for these youths must be longer, 2-3 years (...) it is only through the utmost brutality that we will be able to avert the dangerous spread of anglophile tendencies, in these times where Germany fights for its survival.

And so it was that they were rounded up and shipped off to the camps.

In 2007, about 230 Iranian upper class youth and young adults were arrested for attending a 'satanic' concert. 

In 2014 Iranian authorities arrested Iranian youth for making a Happy Dance video.



Source:
Music and the Holocaust: Swing Kids Behind Barbed Wire
http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and-propaganda/third-reich/swing-kids-behind-barbed-wire/

Iranian morals police arrest 230 in raid on 'satanist' rave
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/aug/06/iran.roberttait

Arrests over the happy dance video in Iran reflect hardliners' frustration
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/aug/06/iran.roberttait

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