The hammer and sickle vs The swastika

Maybe I'm weird but I find some of it hilarious.
- As was mentioned in a few statements E & D made nazi comments and gestures especially during bowling lessons. It's kind of funny in Dylan's case whom had Jewish roots. If he'd lived in Europe during II WW under german occupation than he would have gone straight to the gas chamber in one of the death camps. I don't think he ever thought about that.
- Randy Brown mentioned probably in "Columbine Killers" that she saw on the one of the BT tapes that during chatting between E&D the last confesses that he is a Jew and E looks at him with disdain and disbelief and D for a moment is confuse and frightened. Was he afraid that E would rise a shotgun a blow his head off? I wonder how Eric felt knowing that his best friend was a Jew and did he look at Dylan in different way after that?
- After the massacre a red star medallion containing a sickle and a hammer was found on his left boot. Anyone knows did he make any communistic remarks tough?
- Eric put on his site remarks that he hates racists I wonder what happened later that he changed his mind. As I know not many non-white students were at Columbine at that time.

MysteryMan wrote:

Maybe I'm weird but I find some of it hilarious.
- As was mentioned in a few statements E & D made nazi comments and gestures especially during bowling lessons. It's kind of funny in Dylan's case whom had Jewish roots. If he'd lived in Europe during II WW under german occupation than he would have gone straight to the gas chamber in one of the death camps. I don't think he ever thought about that.
- Randy Brown mentioned probably in "Columbine Killers" that she saw on the one of the BT tapes that during chatting between E&D the last confesses that he is a Jew and E looks at him with disdain and disbelief and D for a moment is confuse and frightened. Was he afraid that E would rise a shotgun a blow his head off? I wonder how Eric felt knowing that his best friend was a Jew and did he look at Dylan in different way after that?
- After the massacre a red star medallion containing a sickle and a hammer was found on his left boot. Anyone knows did he make any communistic remarks tough?
- Eric put on his site remarks that he hates racists I wonder what happened later that he changed his mind. As I know not many non-white students were at Columbine at that time.

I remember vaguely people who spoke about older TCM members would sometimes mention that they were leftists, some student in the 11k I think told they police that he thought TCM is a bunch of commies or pinkos or some such word.

Also, KMFDM and Rammstein are both left-leaning groups.

Dylan having a Sickle&hammer symbol on his boot would thus not be out of the ordinary as far as TCM outfits were concerned.

As for nazi symbols, I think the media hugely overplayed that part. I strongly believe E&D used the swastika and the pentagram for dramaic effect only as general signs of evil, violence and chaos. I donot think there was any realistic and significant political affiliation going there for either of them.

Something I have noticed is that a lot of people don't really understand that the symbols represent ideologies on the opposite ends of the political spectrum.

When we were in high school, my boyfriend went through a phase with one of his friends where they would wear ushankas with sickle and hammer pins on them. Then our peers would joke with/make fun of them and call them Nazis...

I think the two get conflated because they both bring to mind oppressive dictators and have the general connotation of radicalism, which young people sometimes cling to without really understanding the views themselves or the history behind it in their quest for a unique identity.

I'm not sure if this applies to E/D though. They both seemed smart enough to know what each symbol referred to, but I'm not sure what their actual political beliefs were, and I suppose I wouldn't be too surprised to find out that Eric leaned more right and Dylan more left. However, I don't think Eric put much thought into whether his views matched those of the Nazis. I think, like Sabratha said, he and Dylan used the symbols for dramatic effect to seem more evil and intimidating, because Swastikas are instantly taboo.

As for Eric's apparent antisemitism based on his reaction to Dylan, I think it has more to do with playing the part than any real beliefs he may have held.