Retards make a list and some thoughts on disparate groups coopting the eagle as a symbol

(started 6/1/05; posted 9/25/07)

Pandagon pointed me to this list on HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Amanadagon does a fine job busting their chops for being transparently dumb and I have already called them 'retards' in the title of this post, so I don't think their idiocy really warrents a whole lot more attention. They included John Stuart Mill and Rachel Carson. mr. bush, this is your constituency, your nation of retards.

But I was looking through the list of folks who contributed and noticed this:

"Phyllis Schlafly
President
Eagle Forum"

Now, I am vaguely familiar with phyllis schlafly, enough to know that I generally end up annoyed and wanting to bite someone when I read something she has said or someone starts quoting her, but I don't really pay much attention to her. Not worth the time. But the name of her organization struck me: "Eagle Forum."

Yes, the bald eagle is a national symbol, but that aside, I find it interesting the groups which commonly use the eagle (not necessarily the bald eagle) as their symbol. Two groups stand out in my mind: nazi/fascists/white supremicists and masculine fetish oriented gay men. A few quick qualifications about this:

1) I am not trying to equate these two groups.

2) I am using the unwieldy term 'masculine fetish oriented gay men' intentionally, because if you see a gay club called the Eagle, anywhere in the world, if you are at all familiar with gay culture, you will instantly have an idea of the main clientel. Not necessarily bears, not necessarily leather daddies, not necessarily boot-and-levi types but the word 'eagle' in a gay context instantly brings to mind some amalgum of masculinity fetishizing identity.

That said, perhaps there is some mutual appeal in the symbol of the eagle, or at least a certain stylized version, to both disparate groups. Nazism and facism are in ways also a sort of fetishizing on a grand scale. There is a hyper-masculine, power/order worship that characterizes these groups which maybe accounts for the similarity. Maybe it is just favored by people who like playing dress-up with butch uniforms.

Maybe not.

I know that modern white supremacy groups most likely get their affection for this symbol straight from nazi germany: the big art deco eagles on flags and banners; hitler's mountain hide-away, 'the Eagle's Nest.' Is their some historical significance for the nazi's adoption of the eagle? Is it as simple as just picking the big strong predator bird or is there something else?

Maybe the same for the 'mo fetish boys. Big, strong, menacing bird for those big, strong, menacing men? Maybe simply its military connotations. Maybe some historical context which I don't have at my finger tips.

What makes an eagle more appealing than another top predator? The ability to fly? It just looks good when art-decoized? That it targets much smaller prey and acts independently?

Oh well. This isn't terribly coherent so I'll end it.