Washington Post: Taylor Swift is not a white supremacist. She doesn’t identify as a neo-Nazi, and there is no evidence to suggest that, behind closed doors, she might.
That hasn’t stopped some white supremacists from the “alt-right,” a fringe group of the movement that often uses humor and message boards like 4chan to spread its ideology, from reportedly choosing her — ironically or not remains unclear — as an icon for their movement. In much the same way Cher or Barbra Streisand can be seen as “gay icons,” a series of Internet memes, articles and message board posts have dubbed Swift an “Aryan goddess.”
It appears to have begun in 2013 when a teenager named Emily Pattinson began overlaying quotes by Adolf Hitler on Pinterest photos of Taylor Swift as a joke, Buzzfeed reported. Swift’s lawyer J. Douglas Baldridge, sent Pinterest a stern letter, asking for the images to be removed. It said, in part:
The association of Ms. Swift with Adolf Hitler undisputedly is ‘harmful,’ ‘abusive,’ ‘ethnically offensive,’ ‘humiliating to other people,’ ‘libelous,’ and no doubt ‘otherwise objectionable.’ It is of no import that Ms. Swift may be a public figure or that Pinterest conveniently now argues that the Offending Material is mere satire or parody. Public figures have rights. And, there are certain historical figures, such as Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and the like, who are universally identified in the case law and popular culture as lightning rods for emotional and negative reaction.
Pinterest refused to take it down, citing parody laws. But those same images now appear on The Daily Stormer, which bills itself as “the world’s most visited alt-right website.”
The site was founded by self-proclaimed white supremacist Andrew Anglin after he realized Internet users were more interested in quick-hit, meme-type content than the long essays on white supremacy he would post on his previous site, “Total Fascism.”
“My ideology is very simple,” Anglin told the Los Angeles Times. “I believe white people deserve their own country.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center dubbed it a “neo-Nazi website” and one of the two most popular “hate sites” online. Dylann Roof, the alleged shooter in the Charleston church massacre, was active on the site, and the idea of “white student unions,” which popped up around the country last November, percolated there.
The idea of Swift as an alt-right pop icon seems to have percolated there as well.
Along with the memes, the Daily Stormer has become home to several pages of articles praising Swift that bear titles like “Taylor Swift, Avatar of European Imperialism,” “Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift: Nazi Avatar of the White European People” and “Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift Accused of Racism for Behaving Like an Ape in a Music Video.”
“Taylor Swift is a pure Aryan goddess, like something out of classical Greek poetry,” Anglin told Vice’s Broadly. “Athena reborn. That’s the most important thing.”
Columnist Milo Yiannopoulos explained in Breitbart the alt-right thinks “Swift is covertly ‘red-pilled,’ concealing her secret conservative values from the progressive music industry while issuing subtle nods to a reactionary fanbase.”
Yiannopoulos wrote that Swift presents a perfect storm: she’s white, blonde and doesn’t speak about her politics. Meanwhile, she’s drawn criticism regarding race in recent years.
In Pacific Standard, writer Aaron Bady accused Swift of being “nostalgic for a time when you could be nostalgic for white supremacy” after her Africa-set video for “Wildest Dreams” came out, which also prompted the NPR headline “Taylor Swift Is Dreaming Of A Very White Africa.” Writer Camille Paglia inexplicably referred to her both as a “Nazi Barbie” and a “fascist” in a December column for The Hollywood Reporter. And, in 2009, a photo circulated the Internet showing her dancing with a man in a white t-shirt bearing a sloppy red swastika.
These are isolated incidents, but white supremacist websites have taken them out of context. For example, in the photograph, Swift wears a shirt with the letters “JH,” which someone on the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront claimed means “Jew Hater.”
