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Somehow, Nazi Beauty Pageants Still Exist

This month, a British Neo-Nazi group named a young Scottish women "Miss Hitler 2016."
national-action.info

A young Scottish woman has been crowned "Miss Hitler 2016" by a white supremacist youth group in the UK known as National Action. The contest, conducted over social media, aimed to showcase the female members of the neo-Nazi group that predominantly consists of young men "typically in their late teens or twenties," according to the group's website. Though it had several entries, the group settled on a women from Scotland who goes by the pseudonym "A-Bus-Full-Of-Retards."

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National Action had initially announced its contest on Facebook, but the social media site removed the group's page. Similarly, in 2014, a Russian page advertising an online beauty pageant for anti-Semitic women had its page removed by a Russian version of Facebook called VKontakte.

Read More: We Found Some Actual Feminazis—as in Feminist Nazis

After its expulsion from Facebook, though, National Action continued its contest on Twitter and received several submissions from women going by names such as "Lady of the Lolocaust," "BuchenwaldPrincess," and "Eva Bin Gassin."

The winners of "Miss Hitler" were interviewed and had photos featured on the National Action blog. In her interview, "A-Bus-Full-Of-Retards" explained that she enjoys "reading, browsing esoteric memes, and watching the reds lose their shit over our publicity stunts."

Alongside photos of herself in neo-Nazi swag, with her face half-covered by a handkerchief while raising her arm in a "Sieg Heil" gesture, the woman told readers that she didn't always hate Jewish people, but eventually came around to the disturbing ideology.

Miss Hitler 2016 — National Action (@national_action)June 24, 2016

"I didn't want to believe that the Jews are the enemy, as I was brought up to believe that they are very similar to Christians. Eventually the Jewish propaganda became too obvious to ignore and so I became involved with NA," she said.

When asked, "If you could kill one person and get away with it who would you kill and why?" "Miss Hitler 2016" chose German Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying she would put her "in one of her camps and let her pet refugees do the rest."

However, National Action claims that it does not condone illegal violence; instead, it says, it supports "legal violence." The group claims to believe that "a white Britain can only ever be achieved through state power and the complicity of state institutions, such as Police, Army, Intelligence Services, etc."

In recent years, anti-Semitic feelings have risen the United Kingdom. Simon Round, a communications officer for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, tells Broadly that anti-Semitism in the UK peaked in 2014, during Israel's military campaign in Gaza. "There was a lot of anger and disquiet on various sites, and the Jewish community did feel that there was a spike in incidents of anti-semitic activity. It's since dropped off, but last year was still the third or fourth highest year on record [for anti-Semitic activity] so it's clearly not going anywhere."

Round says that he doesn't see the country's anti-Semitism as tied to Brexit. "We certainly have seen racist incidents, but they haven't been part aimed at the Jewish community and have been more towards European migrants."

Such incidents, though, as well as the activities of National Action and groups like them, are a disturbing reminder of the often ugly side of nationalism.