David Bowie’s strange stash of Nazi memorabilia: “Out of my mind, totally”
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the little sodding donkey too, isn’t it just marvellous that this is such a pertinent headline in the year of our lord 2025? A year when one of the most influential and famous musicians of the century made a super bowl commercial to promote a line of T-shirts with swastikas on them, and that’s one of the less overt displays of his belief in Nazi ideology. Of course, if you ask the swarm of Twitter accounts that I hope to Christ are bots dedicated to licking his boots clean, there are loads of artists that have shown a similar fascination, with David Bowie being a prime example.
I’m fully aware that I’m giving these mouthbreathers more credit than they’re worth, but let’s see whether they have a point, shall we? To kick off, let’s get one thing straight. There is a large cemetery’s worth of skeletons in ol’ Ziggy’s closet. Much in the same way, there is for basically anyone who had a record contract in the 1970s. Arguably the nadir of the provable allegations is an alarming flirtation with Nazism he had in the mid-1970s.
In 1974, he told Playboy Magazine, “I believe very strongly in fascism. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars. Look at some of the films and see how he moved. I think he was quite as good as Jagger.” Fast forward two years, he had moved to West Berlin and was detained on the Polish border with a suitcase full of Nazi memorabilia. The smoking gun of it all was seen upon arriving back in London when he was photographed seemingly giving a Hitler salute from an open-top car at Victoria Station.
Let me be perfectly clear: this is abhorrent behaviour that darkens his legacy dramatically. If someone were to swear off his music for this, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with that and y’know who agreed with me, Bowie himself. His public flirtation with such pathetic beliefs came as a direct result of an addiction to drugs and alcohol that very nearly killed him. It led to a bout of psychosis that came a few years before when he became obsessed with the occult to the point where he became convinced that witches were conspiring to steal his sperm.
So far, all are very similar to He Who Must Not Be Named. Both celebrated musicians of their day, who experienced profound mental health crises connected with a dependency on drugs, became inflamed into a public interest in fascism. Although the world is with The Other Guy, he was a big fan of Hitler way before the drugs came into it, which is worrying. So, does the billionaire cheer squad on Twitter have a point? Should we allow this sort of behaviour from our musical heroes?
Fuck no. Y’know why? Cos Bowie didn’t double down on the whole thing like a petulant toddler being told not to throw his shit at the wall. By the time he was pictured at Victoria Station, he’d turned himself around to the point where he vehemently denied the allegations that he was saluting. He also condemned his previous behaviour and comments equally vehemently, calling his interest “ghastly” and saying at the time he was “out of my mind, totally, completely crazed”.
None of this is to say he should be forgiven for it. Far from it, it’s a black mark on his track record, and there are hundreds of thousands of mentally ill drug addicts who don’t become fascists. The way he talked about that period of his life, he’d be the first to agree with that. If anything, Bowie’s flirtation with the very worst of humanity is an even bigger condemnation of the man I’m not mentioning here. Bowie shows that you can get to that low point, then come to your senses and move on from it if you really want to. The Other Guy doesn’t
In short, the low point of Bowie’s life briefly put a mask on him that he regretted for the rest of it. The low point of Ye’s took his off.
