Inside the Hateful World of White Supremacist Fashion

I had been monitoring white supremacist groups for a while when a message came in from one of the Telegram groups I follow. “Support only white-owned markets,” it read, providing a list of Telegram handles of white-only businesses for its viewers to patronize. The message was shared around a few times, and within a matter of hours, it had been seen by tens of thousands of people.

These groups are so secretive about their identities, yet here was a list of them — almost thirty storefronts sorted by country and Telegram handles. Several of the storefronts even reshared it, and soon commenters were looking for merch. “Where are the German shops?” inquired one user below the post.

The world of white supremacist storefronts has to paradoxically operate both secretly and quasi-openly. As businesses, they need to reach as wide a consumer base as possible, without being shut down by the sites and platforms that house them. This tension has created an underground network of online shops promoting their white supremacist merch while also demanding loyalty and secrecy from those who follow them.

White Supremacist storefronts often do not describe themselves directly as white supremacist brands. They have to rely on innuendo and symbolism to signal to potential consumers that they “get it.” A common tactic is to rely on the language of nationalism or “history” — something that they can pretend has nothing to do with white supremacy but certainly alludes to it.

The American clothing brand Will2Rise, for example, describes itself as being founded by “front-line nationalists,” telling viewers on its About page that they specialize in “top quality nationalist apparel.” The White Rhino Athletic Club claims to “foster a high energy, youth-focused cultural alternative that gives a nod to our ancestral past.” I found this nationalistic language used on over a dozen sites, and this is by no means an official accounting of all the sites with this kind of rhetoric out there.

This tactic of using the language of nationalism to couch white supremacist rhetoric translates to these storefronts’ products too. The brand Homeland and Family advertises several shirts with the slogan “Europe is Ours.” Another brand has a shirt with the phrase “Defend Your Tradition.” The people who wear and sell these shirts may undoubtedly have white supremacist intentions, but they can pretend to ignorantly just be interested in their “heritage” like “any other ethnicity or race.” However, the subtext chillingly reminds anyone “in the know” that they are referring to a white Europe and white traditions.

In this same vein, these brands will use obscure phrases that dog-whistle to their supporters while keeping everyone else oblivious. For example, the Italian expression Me Ne Frego (‘I don’t care’) pops up everywhere on these sites, and that’s because of its association with Italian fascism. It was first sung by special forces known as the Arditi during WWI to signify that they didn’t care if they lived or died. The blackshirts of Benito Mussolini’s regime later adopted this phrase, signifying how members would devalue their own lives to better help the project of fascism. When modern fascists use it, they are referring directly to this history.

Another common item we see on these storefronts is the symbolism and mythology of European Cultures associated indirectly with white supremacy. German and Italian imagery is quite rampant due to connations with Nazi Germany and Mussolini irrespectively. Symbols like the Iron Cross (a military decoration used during the Third Reich) remain a particular favorite in these circles. These storefronts rely on the history of these fascist regimes for cred while avoiding more well-known symbols like the swastika, which would garner more intense suspicion.

There is likewise a lot of emphasis on the imagined grandeur of past civilizations such as Sparta or Rome. Designs will often show masculine Mediterranean men crowned with olive branches and surrounded with phrases such as “Old ideas, New style” and “Imperium Aeternum.” It’s an appeal to legitimacy based on the perceived ancientness of these beliefs. They are using these fictitious men's strength to talk about how great things were back then and how great things could be again. If you dig a little deeper, it's clear how they want to achieve that greatness. “Rise above democracy,” instructs one product with obvious Nazi imagery.

Fascism often dovetails into the worst strains of hypermasculinity, with fascists going to great lengths to prove their physical superiority, both individually and “as a race.” “Lift Big. Eat Big. Get Big,” states one piece of merchandise. Norse symbolism is pretty widespread in the scene for this exact reason. Several popular brands are not only named after famous places in Norse mythology such as Asgard and Midgard, but often draw upon the imagery of godlike figures such as Thor. These brands want to sell the idea that their beliefs are strong and unshakeable, like the ancient Gods of yore.

One reference to Norse mythology repeatedly mentioned on these storefronts is the mythological apocalypse Ragnarök — an end time when the Gods fight to the death, and the world is reborn anew. “When the horn blows, Ragnarök comes true,” reads one shirt from the white supremacist brand Svastone. This upheaval ties in directly to the white supremacist belief that an impending race war is coming. Whether it's packaged as a boogaloo or simply an end, the idea of an impending apocalypse is a prevalent meme sold on these platforms. They either want one to occur to “prove” their race's superiority or believe that one is inevitable.

This belief in cataclysm means that the humor in this scene can get nihilistic very quickly. “La Misanthrope” describes a shirt on the storefront Walknvt. The woman wearing it in the promo picture smirks as she holds up two large machine guns. “No lives matter. You’re all c**ts. F**k you,” reads another sardonic shirt, parodying the black lives matter movement for social justice. A disturbing one shows a white Pacman ghost threatening to burn several black ghosts alive. These “jokes” indicate a user base violently angry with a society that has moved in a direction they disapprove of.

Of course, not all of these sites work simply in allusion, codewords, and edgy humor. If you know where to look, brands can sell you some of the most heinous imagery on the web.

Mainstream social media platforms have cracked down on many of these storefronts. You will not be able to find Third Reich merchandise by scrolling through your Instagram stories or Twitter feed. Instead, the white supremacist brands that remain on the major platforms rely on the coding and innuendo we mentioned earlier.

Designers such as Savstone or Thor Steinar may have a small presence on these sites, but they do it by posting seemingly inoffensive candids of men in hoodies and tees. They signal to white supremacist and fascist users by posting indirect symbols such as runic imagery, references to mythological events such as Ragnarök, or ironic tees telling users that “it’s okay to be white.” Their catalogs are mostly like this as well. They are lifestyle brands with a white supremacist subtext. They may be indirectly advocating for white supremacy, but you cannot get banned from the Internet for an implication.

Now several small sites are actively selling more hateful content. Walknvt and Midgard openly promote everything from the confederate flag to products celebrating hunting down nonwhite people. These sites, however, do not have a presence on the major social media platforms for this exact same reason. They occupy small niches where users have to find them through either word-of-mouth or on the few corners of the Internet that still allow their existence.

They are understandably disliked by the vast majority of the online public, and as a result, the more vocal storefronts have to be very careful with their security. When we look at whose hosting them, many of these sites rely on firms like Cloudflare, Inc. that specialize in security (though Walknvt is hosted by the rather basic Go Daddy Netherlands B.V). It’s apparent from their guardedness that several of them have been the targets of cybersecurity attacks and doxing campaigns. Anti-fascist groups have been very good at organizing online to expose the activities of fascists (see Unicorn Riot and AntiFash Gordon).

Fascist vendors also report being the targets of in-person harassment from anti-fascist groups. For example, the white supremacist and fascist website Midgard notes defensively that “our shop was smashed a few nights after we opened. Not a single person was arrested or even investigated for doing it…The nightly attacks against us — both from so-called patriots and reds — [were] numerous, the demonstrations as well.” It’s important to note that fascists often self-victimize to gain sympathy from moderates and people on the right. I could not verify this particular story, but similar instances of Anti-fascist activists infiltrating and harassing fascist actors are well documented.

I am not bringing up this history to decry the actions of any Antifa group engaged in that type of organizing (that discussion is beyond the scope of this article), but rather mentioning it as an active cost fascist and white supremacist groups have to consider. They are not like any other business. White supremacist storefronts have to constantly worry about not only retaining customers and bringing in new ones, but gaining the attention of the people who hate them (i.e., most people). The wrong type of growth can very quickly spiral into articles in the press and demonstrations.

This constrains a lot of organizing and promotion to sites such as Telegram, where white supremacist brands have set up informal storefronts. Many of the groups I found there don’t even have a corresponding website. They advertise their merchandise on their Telegram group, selling everything from swastika mugs to busts of Adolf Hitler. These brands list their email (usually a Gmail or proton mail) to take orders. Paypal seems to be the preferred payment method, but that was just my experience.

I contacted four brands this way (Radical Sh8p, No Compromise Clothing, Last Round Records, and Pur Sang Clothing), and all responded to me in less than an hour. Last Round Records gave me their entire music catalog, which sold albums from bands such as the neo-nazi group Bound for Glory. One brand called the Serbon Shop organized directly from the app, using the chat feature as an informal customer service hotline. The contact person there, who went by the name Serbon Srbija, was willing to sell me an anti-Antifa shirt (by far their tamest merchandise) for $20 plus shipping via Paypal.

Clearly, de-platforming has not stopped this market from existing. It has simply pushed it to the electronic margins of the web.

This quasi-Blackmarket of hateable merch is probably here to stay. Many of these sites are working within the confines of the law, and the ones who are not have retreated to online platforms with little oversight. As long as you can pay for the cost of shipping, it’s not hard to get some hateful content sent to you.

When we talk about de-platforming, it's important to recognize that markets like this will probably still exist in the shadows, even with our best efforts. People are pretty resourceful, including bigots who want to find hateful merchandise they can wear and jam to. We would have to systemically change the way the web operates to stop this kind of behavior, and that would bring with it a host of other ethical questions.

This doesn’t make de-platforming efforts valueless — far from it. It’s good that neo-nazis and fascists have to work so hard to keep their storefronts afloat. We just need to realize that this is an ongoing struggle. White supremacist and fascist ideology will not die overnight, assuming it ever dies at all.

The mitigation of that harm will require ongoing monitoring to ensure that these men (and a few women) stay inside the electronic cages we have built for them.

Inside the Hateful World of White Supremacist Fashion

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