Neo-Nazis Are Trying To Spiff Up Their Image — By Ditching The Swastika

Over the past two years, Nazis and other white supremacists have been going through a series of dramatic makeovers. They’ve cast off the cloak of the Ku Klux Klan and emerged in the guise of the frat boy next door, in polo shirts and khakis. They dubbed themselves the “alt-right” and tried to join the cool kids of the internet, shrouding their hatred of blacks, Jews or any non-white group in layers of millennial-style irony.

Now, neo-Nazis are tweaking their image yet again, this time in a way that seems self-defeating. They’re shunning the swastika, trying to swap it out for the American flag — and hoping you won’t notice. Their theory is that the protests sweeping the NFL, in which players take a knee during the playing of the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” are a moment they should seize. If they can associate themselves strongly with the flag, they hope, they can fan the flames of hatred against black people and attract more followers at the same time.

“The moment has come,” reads a post by Andrew Anglin, publisher of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, “for white nationalists to take up the American flag, and pivot from the ‘alt-right’ to American Nationalism.”