Did You Nazi That?

When two of the Axis Powers of premier po-mo not-so-Neo "Nazi" humor go head to head, only one fascist will be left standing!

Photo by Jamie Kahn

We were at some kind of fair thing. Not quite a carnival, but not an amusement park either. Small, dusty, open fields and tents. Two of my kids, younger then, were with me. Which is why it was even stranger that I had picked up what they called in police parlance, a tail.

I had shades on and as we moved between stalls of swap meet shit, wending between parked pickup trucks I, at first, only suspected, but when I saw at least two of my tail… let’s call them “repeat customers” … conferring while they watched me, I knew.

Different places have different languages even in the midst of dominate paradigms and on an otherwise bucolic Sunday in May me, with two kids under six years old in tow, had stumbled into the penitentiary one.

You could smell it and moreover I knew what was happening now and why: in a fit of pre-hipster tattooing circa the late ‘80’s I had decided to make manifest a Manichean interest in the interplay of both good and evil. Evidenced most readily by a swastika sporting demon on my left arm. Call me surprised that the symbol resonated more than the demon flying it but traditionalists had warned against painting pictures of the devil on the wall, but as the rest of the warning went: “because sometimes Satan answers back.”

And now I was fleeing the shadow with two kids in tow. Successfully, it seems.

Heinrich’s lip trembles when I read this quote to him.

“He is a Jew, no? Like Trump?”

Later, at another fair, on another day, I’m strolling across the parade grounds, sans kids now, and I get braced by a guy smirking at me from behind a table. It was in Lemoore, California and the man had wanted to speak to me. His pitch, the one he later made directly to Dave Chappelle was simple: he was in the midst of producing a TV show called Enter the Fourth Reich….sort of a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court story but starring a Nazi. In San Francisco. Called from Argentina by the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor. The year was 2000 and Heinrich was poised for…sorry: world domination.

Viewing some of his dailies, we watched Heinrich recreate the Robert De Niro “You Talking to Me?” scene from Taxi Driver. Or in a dust-up with a Vietnam vet who claims he “fought Nazis like you all over the jungle”. And finally in an edge move that will make you squirm in a visit to the Holocaust Museum that he re-brands the Museum of German Achievement.

Chappelle took all of 60 seconds to shoot it down. YouTube took about the same amount of time to pull it down. Does it help or hurt that Heinrich pitches Heinrich as Heinrich? In full SS regalia?

Depends.

If you’re an actor named Andrew Rakich, your 2020 YouTube sensation My N@zi Roommate that’s amassed 2.2 million views with a passel of films to his credit as a director, producer and actor, his bow as a Nazi? Definitely helping. Kind of like Ralph Fiennes. Because, fundamentally, maybe you understand that he’s joking.

“He sounds Croatian,” Heinrich sniffs from his Tenderloin redoubt. “They were very helpful back during…when I needed to move some…furniture.”

But what chafes Nazi Heinrich even more than that Rakich’s Nazi has been able to get his stuff greenlit is that, well, that’s really it.

“I pre-dated him by 20 years. He’s lifting scenes from me,” Heinrich, screaming now, says while punching the air. “So, number 1: I don’t believe he hasn’t seen my show. Number 2: was he instrumental in having my show removed so he could foist the ‘fun-loving’ Nazi on an unsuspecting American public? And finally, Drei: can he and I form an anschluss? A non-aggression pact of sorts?”

“I don’t think Nazis are fucking funny. Period.” A friend minced not even the smallest of words with me.

“Hogan’s Heroes? Mel Brooks?”

“No. Never.” She doesn’t drive German cars. She won’t wear Adidas. Can’t stomach flirters with national history like Rammstein even. A high school trip to Europe that saw her spending a day getting there, a day getting back, and five days visiting four different concentration camps put the period on each and every sentence for her having to do with German “achievement”.

Her last words to me were a not-so-veiled threat to report me if I ran this piece.

On what grounds?

“Because it seems you are heedless to the pain you might be causing.”

Given my world view it’s the word “heedless” that bothered me the most. I don’t mind causing pain. But to think I did so heedlessly and very possibly, thoughtlessly, bothered me.

“Look,” said Heinrich, his eyes narrowing and refusing to break character, “funny is usually an involuntary response to outside stimuli. You either find something funny or you don’t. And if you can’t show me at the end of the day that my show caused the death of 12 million people, what are we talking about?”

And now we’re in a philosophical morass that cuts to the heart of the conversation of today connected to comedy, it’s limits and boundaries, and how often those should be heeded (that word again) or ignored.

Rakich, for his part, hadn’t responded by press time but describes himself, simply, as “a filmmaker with an interest in history who dresses up and does silly voices in order to educate and entertain you.”

Heinrich’s lip trembles when I read this quote to him.

“He is a Jew, no? Like Trump?”

Dark. Darker. Darkest. It seems he understands you not finding it funny. But he cares not at all. Which is maybe the catch.

“I make films to re-educate and re-entertain,” Heinrich concludes. “That are then ripped off by Croats.”

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Total disclosure: in a brief non-union appearance under a fictitious name I appeared in Enter the Fourth Reich as a Nazi disguised as a popular hip hop artist.