This week Adolf Hitler Campbell, the three-year-old at the centre of Pennsylvania's Nazicakegate, was removed from his parents' home and taken into protective state custody, along with his two-year-old sister, Joyce Lynn Aryan Nation Campbell.
The controversy started when a local bakery refused to make a swastika-adorned cake reading "Happy birthday Adolf Hitler", suggesting perhaps that, even in rural Pennsylvania, calling your child Hitler is generally considered a bit iffy. It's just not a good name – not for a child, not for a dog, not for a home business selling hand-knitted, Tibetan-style hippy hats with stupid earflaps ("say hi to happy Hitler hippy hats"), and not even for a blind cave beetle (there actually is a blind cave beetle called Hitler – I kid you not).
And it's definitely not a suitable name for a band. Think about it: Adolf Hitler and the Pacemakers, Badly Drawn Hitler, Everything but the Hitler, Hitler Killed the Cat. No way, a total non-starter. But it does make you wonder: how would a musical act called Hitler fare? Fortunately, we'll never know, because no one would be stupid enough to … oh wait. I'm having a flashback.
Moscow, 1991. Communism has collapsed and the embittered youth of the former Soviet Union have turned to the aural dementia of Napalm Death, who are playing a series of sell-out gigs in the Russian capital. I'm backstage with the band. A young man approaches Napalm bassist Shane Embury with a tape.
"You called your band Hitler?" says Shane.
"Yes, we like Hitler because he was against communism," says the kid.
Shane drops the tape, stamps on it, flings it in the toilet and flushes. The kid freaks, screams abuse, runs from the room yelling – and minutes later falls to his death down a stairwell.
And then there was Jerry Hitler – a big noise in 1960s reggae. Had he been called Jerry Gandhi or Jerry Jesus, would we now be speaking of him in the hushed and reverential tones we reserve for Bob Marley? (And, as a slight aside, did the similarly awkwardly named Jah Wanks, ever really stand a chance, career-wise?)
Some bands have called themselves Hitler for sheer shock value, like Ramones-inspired comedy punk band Hitler Youth. And, one presumes, the Polish satanic band Lord Hitler.
Others acts have adopted the name either as a means of subverting the ideology of Nazism, or because they think it sounds really funny placed next to an utterly incongruous word. Thus we have: "hellbilly" band Elvis Hitler; anti-scientology band El Ron Hitler; the soon-to-be-legendary pro-plastic-surgery punk band Paris Hitler and the Tinkerbells; and legendary LA band Hitler's Gay Son.
There's also Anti-Hitler – a band whose output so far seems to consist entirely of a website with a picture of Hitler and an arrow reading "wanker". And the thankfully defunct proto-emo band Hitler Stole My Potato. Let's not forget, Ron Hitler-Barassi, singer for onanism-obsessed Aussie mock-rockers TISM. And, finally, there's Biff Hitler and the Violent Mood Swings – a presumably non-existent Irish showband who have nonetheless taken over half the internet.
