Catalogue Number
NMLH.2001.8.1.25
Object Name
badge
Title
'SWP. Pogo on a Nazi'
People
Socialist Worker Party (SWP), Anti-Nazi League (ANL), Rock Against Racism (RAR)
Description
A yellow badge. There is a black drawing of a rat with a Nazi swastika etched in white on its body. Above the rat is the word 'Pogo'. The 'o' of the word is drawn to suggest it is bouncing on the rat. The slogan is 'Pogo on a Nazi'.
This badge was created by the Socialist Worker Party (SWP). It describes using a punk dance movement 'pogo-ing', or bouncing up and down, as a means of physically harming a Nazi or fascist. During the 1970s, high profile punk musicians like the Sex Pistols, and Siouxsie and the Banshees wore fascist and Nazi iconography like swastika arm bands on stage. They claimed they did not approve of Nazi politics but saw using their symbols as a way of upsetting and provoking older generations. Siouxsie Sioux later attempted to justify this by saying, "It was always very much an anti-mums-and-dads thing. We hated older people. Not across the board, but generally the suburban thing, always harping on about Hitler, and, 'We showed him,' and that smug pride. It was a way of saying, 'Well, I think Hitler was very good, actually'; a way of watching someone like that go completely red-faced."
The badge suggests that some punks opposed this co-opting of Nazi iconography, and refused to treat fascist symbols as divorced from the bigoted values of the people who created them. Concerned about the influence of musicians in the late positively invoking fascism, the SWP founded the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) and its project Rock Against Racism (RAR) which used popular culture as a way to try and positively influence young people away from fascist ideology, and to create spaces where people of different races could meet and bond over shared love of pop culture.
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