While reading up on the history and art of the Soviet Union (don’t ask how I got there, but it was very interesting anyway) I stumbled upon cccpfashion.com. I know that basically any symbol, meme, idea or quote is a free target for commercial exploitation (as long as they don’t have lawyers), and actually I agree with that on principle, but this one got me thinking.

Here’s a regime that for nigh on 80 years dominated the lives of billions of people, was considered the greatest threat to the free world for most of that time (or so we were told), committed loads of heinous crimes against individuals and peoples and generally perverted a pretty neat idea (let’s share what we have amongst all our people equally) into a dogma of hate, distrust and corruption.
And now you can buy the T-shirt.

Yes, you can say the same for basically any symbol: any commercial outing of an ideology, good or bad, could be called a perversion or at least mistasteful. But hey, this is the free market, right?
I guess I shouldn’t whine. I normally find the skewing of established symbols funny (like the Viva the relativity T-shirt from my friends at Thinkgeek), but this one kind of erks me. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading up on the Soviet Union and what really went on in there (which means that this feeling will pass over time) or maybe it really is kinda wrong.

Yipes. Brain hurts…must decide…funny versus morality…no…answer…

Let me get back to you on this one