A PR chaos quickly ensued. On Twitter, regular users and ‘sneakerheads’ alike shared photos and videos as they burned or tossed in the bin their pair of New Balance.⁶ Meanwhile, rival brand Reebok cynically seized the opportunity and offered to send replacement shoes to many outraged customers.⁷ Shortly thereafter, New Balance disassociated itself from far-right ideology with a statement that divorced its concern for local manufacturing from white supremacist agendas. Unfazed, Anglin followed up on his first post by saying that whether or not the company identified as Republican is irrelevant and suggesting that the brand make him an official spokesperson:

If I were in the marketing department of New Balance, I would take it a step further and offer me, Andrew Anglin, publisher of the America’s most-trusted Republican news outlet, a product endorsement deal. I’m in great shape, have ripped abs and would look fantastic on a billboard that reads ‘Official shoes of the Republican Party: New Balance stands with the White race.’⁸ 

The social media outrage caused by Anglin’s endorsement of New Balance, on the other hand, was an inadequate response inasmuch as it was mostly directed at the company rather than at Anglin and the political views he represents. Boycott may be appropriate in the case of companies who do business with certain political figures, as in the case of the Grab Your Wallet campaign,⁹ but it is misguided in the case of brand appropriation, which does not require direct affiliation on the part of the brand. Furthermore, by focusing on the PR scandal not only did most mainstream media outlets give free PR to Anglin and his site – neo-Nazi groups and public figures regularly use grandiose statements, racist hashtags and ‘trolling tactics’ to build their ‘brand’¹⁰ – but they also failed to address the dynamics of neo-Nazi’s appropriation of a mainstream footwear brand with a global distribution.

This instance of appropriation is not an isolated case. In a recently defunct blog, an American neo-Nazi sympathiser proposed that far-right groups appropriate Adidas with the aim of turning ‘something that the everyday person wears’ into ‘a symbol of our movement.’¹¹ And it is not just footwear brands that are being appropriated. Cartoonist Matt Furie’s character Pepe the Frog went from ‘inoffensive Internet meme’ to being ‘hijacked by hatemongers’ from the so-called alt-right.¹² Food is not safe either: fast food chain Wendy’s was celebrated on The Daily Stormer after Pepe the Frog accidentally made an appearance on the company’s social media account¹³ and even milk has been appropriated as a symbol of racial superiority.¹⁴ These instances show that white supremacists seek recognition by associating themselves with mainstream symbols and material goods. They seek visibility by appearing ordinary and, thus, paradoxically invisible.

As the case of New Balance shows, this desire to hack the mainstream manifests itself in sartorial terms too. If traditionally skinheads donned a specific subcultural uniform consisting of ‘tight trousers, T-shirt imprinted with neo-Nazi slogans and massive Doc Martens boots laced to the knees,’¹⁵ Anglin’s posts made it clear that this is no longer the case. While this may be a new phenomenon in the U.S. it is not the case in Europe. As early as 1993 it was observed that ‘German neo-Nazi skinheads are changing their style. They are growing their hair and increasingly swapping jackboots and bomber jackets for “normal clothes,” such as ‘jeans, running shoes and parkas.’¹⁶ A 2014 article in Rolling Stone even documented the rise of Nazi hipsters or ‘nipsters,’ who sport tote bags, Converse shoes, skinny jeans and beards, appropriate reggae and dance the Harlem Shake.¹⁷

In this sense, the appropriation of New Balance certainly overlaps with attempts by the far-right to look less threatening and appear more palatable to broader audiences, as the case of alt-right demagogue Richard Spencer’s suit-and-tie image attests.¹⁸ Like a suit, a uniform of jeans, T-shirt, New Balance trainers and sporty jacket relies on invisibility. The person (usually a white man) who wears it is virtually indistinguishable from a non-far-right guy in a casual everyday garb, just like a nipster may be impossible to distinguish from a regular hipster. Invisibility as a strategy also overlaps with three elements that have been to an extent addressed by the media but not necessarily linked with neo-Nazi ‘style’: whiteness, the discourse around technology and masculinity.

In his famous 1997 study of whiteness in Western cultures Richard Dyer argues that white people have historically represented themselves as ‘the norm.’ In doing so, whiteness and normativity become synonyms. This equation renders whiteness invisible, which means that all the variations of non-whiteness are constructed as visible others.¹⁹ The appropriation of mainstream brands, in this sense, uses sartorial invisibility – the fact that white supremacists could visually ‘pass’ as moderates or liberals – to paradoxically build what Spencer calls ‘white identity politics.’²⁰ To this end German Nazi-hipster Patrick Schroeder ‘conducts seminars showing neo-Nazis how they can dress less threateningly and argues that anybody from hip-hop fans to hipsters in skinny jeans should be able to join the scene without changing the way they look.’²¹ Style is then either thought of exclusively as a tool to assimilate or paradoxically discounted altogether as irrelevant to one’s political beliefs. For white supremacists ditching the skinhead image means leaving behind their status as subculture, which defines itself in opposition to the mainstream, to reaffirm whiteness as the mainstream. In the process whiteness would be rendered invisible and its dominance reiterated because in Western cultures invisibility, as Dyer points out, is indeed the privilege accorded only to those in power.

Invisibility as a mode of operating under the radar and not ‘outing’ oneself also resonates with the so-called Alt-Right’s fixation with technological discourses and imagery. That white supremacists are social media-savvy trolling experts who operate online to expand and reinforce their network is well-documented.²² But technology is also celebrated in Alt-Right aesthetics for its potential ‘to conquer and to reaffirm inegalitarianism,’²³ which goes hand in hand with the reaffirmation of white dominance. As merchandise from The Daily Stormer attests, neo-Nazi aesthetic taste includes eighties comics and sci-fi content [which] offer normative gender roles, hyper-masculine futurist heroes, hypersexualised women and a variety of visions of humans transcending their bodily limits via technological innovation.’²⁴ The transhumanism represented in popular films such as Blade Runner and The Matrix is also celebrated.²⁵ That the latter was directed by two transwomen is strategically ignored, but its hacking ethos finds an expression in practises such as ‘Operation Google,’ which is used to bypass the algorithms set up by search engines to identify and block content that is deemed discriminatory. This strategy entails replacing racist epithets with the names of the very same companies that implement anti-discriminatory policies – Google, Skype, Yahoo and Bing are some examples – on forums like 4chan and /pol/ so as to avoid flagging and deletion.²⁶ Operation Google thus hacks the very system it aims to bypass. It renders racism, homophobia, transphobia and white supremacism undetectable, that is invisible to algorithms, on the most used search engines in the world. In this sense, one could see the appropriation of New Balance trainers and the company logo as its sartorial equivalent: Operation New Balance is a way to hack the wardrobes of as many consumers as possible.

Last but not least, the popularity of eighties comics and sci-fi imagery in Alt-Right aesthetics and the choice of appropriating a brand of trainers have one more thing in common: both unabashedly celebrate masculinity. This is not to say that sneaker culture is inherently misogynist, but rather that it offers men the possibility to reclaim adornment and fashionability while retaining associations with a traditionally male-dominated cultural realm like sport.²⁷ In virtue of that sneaker culture becomes a preferential site for the projection of the idea of a dominant, physically strong and ready-for-action masculinity that perfectly embodies the fascist belief in ‘permanent warfare’ as well as its obsession with ‘sexual politics’ and gender symbolism.²⁸ But whereas ‘sneakerheads’ are likely to make bold statements with vibrant or limited edition trainers, sobriety is key to uphold standards of neo-Nazi masculinity. As one of the commenters on Anglin’s post writes, New Balance ‘are gorgeous, nothing extremely colourful and gay as hell, just plain grey.’²⁹ Once again, value is placed on avoiding visibility and distinction.

Invisibility as strategy thus brings together many of the key elements of neo-Nazi ideology and aesthetics. Social media outrage in the guise of brand boycotts and shoe burning will not prevent further attempts from the far-right to hack, infiltrate and colonise our political imaginary as well as our wardrobes. Rather, what we need to make visible and to examine are the invisible processes by which we can potentially become victims, allies and vehicles of such unacceptable ideologies.

Alex Esculapio is a writer and PhD student at the University of Brighton, UK.

1. http://www.dailystormer.com/your-uniform-new-balance-just-became-the-shoes-of-white-people/ ↩

2. https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-balance-faces-social-media-backlash-after-welcoming-trump-1478823102 ↩

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/statement-on-trump-puts-new-balance-shoe-company-in-cross-hairs.html ↩

4. http://www.dailystormer.com/your-uniform-new-balance-just-became-the-shoes-of-white-people/ ↩

5. http://www.latimes.com/local/la-gibson1aug01-transripit-story.html ↩

6. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/statement-on-trump-puts-new-balance-shoe-company-in-cross-hairs.html ↩

7. http://www.esquire.com/style/news/a50877/reebok-replace-new-balance-trump-comments/ ↩

8. http://www.dailystormer.com/the-daily-stormer-fully-endorses-new-balance-whether-it-is-a-republican-company-or-not/ ↩

9. https://grabyourwallet.org/ ↩

10. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump ↩

11. https://jobewatson14.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/altright-brand-appropriation/ ↩

12. https://newrepublic.com/article/137545/perversion-pepe-frog ↩

13. http://forward.com/news/359129/did-wendys-become-the-accidental-neo-nazi-happy-meal/ ↩

14. http://www.avclub.com/article/milk-chugging-alt-right-trolls-shut-down-shia-labe-250242 ↩

15. S John, ‘Carnaby Street: A mixture of trendy shops and neo-nazis,’ Toronto Star, Aug 5, 1989. ↩

16. A Tomforde, ‘Neo-Nazis in Germany ditch ‘skinhead and boots’ image,’ The Guardian, Nov 18, 1993. ↩

17. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/heil-hipster-the-young-neo-nazis-trying-to-put-a-stylish-face-on-hate-20140623 ↩

18. See for instance http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/the_hatemonger_next_door/ and http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/how-the-alt-right-uses-style-as-a-propaganda-tool.html ↩

19. Richard, Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture, New York and London: Routledge, 1997. ↩

20. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/richard-spencer-trump-alt-right-white-nationalist ↩

21. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/heil-hipster-the-young-neo-nazis-trying-to-put-a-stylish-face-on-hate-20140623 ↩

22. See for instance http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump ↩

23. http://baltimore-art.com/2017/02/11/the-aesthetics-of-the-alt-right/ ↩

24. Ibid. ↩

25. Ibid. ↩

26. https://ageofshitlords.com/4chan-pol-launching-operation-google/ ↩

27. Y Kawamura, Sneakers: Fashion, Gender, and Subculture, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. ↩

28. http://baltimore-art.com/2017/02/11/the-aesthetics-of-the-alt-right/ ↩

29. http://www.dailystormer.com/your-uniform-new-balance-just-became-the-shoes-of-white-people/ ↩

‘The whiteness is inseparable from the violent action that separates it out.’

Anders Olsson, Century of Innocence: The History of the White Monochrome

THE WHITE SHIRT: A neutral surface and the basis of a man’s wardrobe – according to many-a-style manual. And thus, the white shirt is invariably presented as a garment that serves as the canvas against which the wearer’s individuality will emerge. According to this line of thought, the white shirt focuses and frames the body, while itself receding quietly into the background. Considered in purely aesthetic terms, this explanation of white is reasonable enough – but metaphysically, semiotically and ideologically it leaves something to be desired. The white shirt has throughout history often been a mark of power, luxury and wealth, and to relegate it to the background is, still today, to underestimate its potentially more aggressive participation in creating meaning for the wearer’s body.

In Brian O’Doherty’s 1976 art theory classic Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space the author finds that the white walls of the art gallery confers a particular value on art by providing a clinically neutral space that allows the art exhibited to be evaluated on its own terms, shielded from the intrusion of the outside world. A similar logic might arguably be applied to the socioeconomic distinction between the white and blue collar shirt, and this dichotomy is indeed an interesting social construct. The condition for the pristine quality of the white shirt is that the environment is kept at bay. This is in opposition to the blue collar work shirt which relies on the possibility of it being dirtied. On the work shirt the results of manual labour are directly visible, manifesting a concrete – indexical, if you will – and rigid bond to economic value. The white shirt, on the other hand, rejects environmental and corporeal messiness; it rejects the social and subsequently the body – the body of others, but even, in its Platonic Form,¹ that of its supposed wearer.

In a photo shoot by Maurice Scheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes, for the magazine Fantastic Man published in 2007, this rejection of the body is brought to the point of its obliteration. Here, exclusive white shirts are folded and pressed to form a two-dimensional surface that emphatically bars the garment from bodily inhabitation. Scheltens and Abbenes hereby effectively draw out the connections between the mainstay of the white monochrome in modernist art and the white shirt. The purpose of the white monochrome is often to deliberately evade figuration. It might be seen as the ultimate rejection of the representational objectives of figurative painting and hence as a completely self-referential surface, and so its meaning comes only from its rejection of meaning as such. Scheltens and Abbenes play on this paradox by presenting the white shirt as a refined, self-sufficient surface; an ideal state, preserved only through total disembodiment. While artists of the white monochrome rejected figuration,² they were nevertheless not blind to the possibility that their blank surfaces could be filled by a meaning that arises in the projections of the beholder. The white shirt could be said to trade on a similar rejection of the meaning that comes from explicit marks (which is to say that it rejects direct contact and the ‘staining’ that might come from it) and in so doing it invites a more fluid and projective meaning to play out on its surface.

While the white shirt excludes, it is also an acutely receptive and highly charged surface, readily available for perversion. As such the white shirt is a space full of potential. Fashion designer Tom Ford has made much use of the white shirt as a surface for projection. Ford himself appears almost always in a dazzlingly white shirt with an impeccable, perfect fit. When not sealed shut by a tie, the shirt is unbuttoned – just a tad too much. Flesh pushes its way forward, intruding on the pristine surface. The effect is, of course, highly calculated. Through that one-button-too-much cleavage, the exclusivity of the white shirt is turned from something pristine and untouchable, into something highly tangible: sex, desire and glamour.

Like Lucio Fontana’s white slash paintings might be said to oscillate between presentation and disruption (Is the slash a framed sign? Or a violation of the pristine surface? Is it vagina or wound?), Ford´s chest gash results in a similar ambiguity.³ Does the aperture pose a vulgar display of flesh – a tarnish upon the pristine surface of the shirt? Or is the shirt conversely the mere background for the presentation of the splendour that is Ford’s body? This ambiguity is the very point. Ford weighs the poles of vulgar and exclusive against each other and comes up with an irresistible balance. In his white shirt, Ford’s body is both rarified, and a source of desire. Ford, fully aware of this tension, engineers it into a paradoxical lure of exclusion and invitation.

A scene in the film ‘The Comfort of Strangers’ (dir. Paul Schrader, 1990) perfectly captures this logic of the white shirt as a paradoxical surface that excludes yet elicits projective desires. Rupert Everett’s character is drunkenly inquiring into his on-screen girlfriend’s perception of herself as a sexual object. She replies by turning the tables of objectification on him: ‘People aren’t talking about my thighs or my bottom…The whole damn restaurant is talking about your thighs and your bottom’. The film then cuts to a wider framing of the restaurant; Everett’s character obliviously at the centre of the frame in his brilliant white shirt. At the same time, people around him – men and women alike – strain their necks to look at him. Isolated and unselfconscious, he is the hub of projected sexual desires. The colour white is an underlying but consistent motif in the film, a symbol of both suppression and projection.

This brief trajectory through the theory and practice of the white shirt gives evidence of the tensions and procedures of this garment. In its pure, idealised form it arguably represents the epitome of exclusivity, yet it is through wear inevitably tarnished by the body. The white monochrome in art, as literary historian Anders Olsson pointed out at the beginning of this text, performs ‘a violent action that separates it out’ and in fashion the white shirt debatably fulfills the same function. The power of the white shirt is as strong as it is evocative – through it we claim authority over the discursive meaning of our own bodies.

1. See Plato’s theory of Forms. The ‘Platonic Form’ of an object is an impartial ‘blueprint’ of perfection and here refers to the white shirt in its ideal state, which, in order to maintain its pristine cleanliness, must ultimately exclude the body. ↩

2. Monochrome painting is a significant component of avant-garde art in the twentieth century. As we understand it today monochrome painting is said to have begun in Moscow with Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: White on White in 1918. ↩

3. Tom Ford is himself a confirmed fan of Lucio Fontana. The visitor to his Madison Avenue store was once met by an eight-foot tall aluminum slash piece by Fontana. Ford thought the idea appropriate that a men’s store would, in his own words, “be designed around a vagina”. See Vanessa Grigoriadis, ‘Tom Ford After Sex’, in New York Magazine, May 29, 2007, http://nymag.com/nymag/features/32120/index2.html ↩