Photo Gallery Right-Wing Clothes for a New Generation
The Thor Steinar brand has become a badge of neo-Nazism in Germany -- and a legal one, after an earlier SS-like logo was banned in 2004.
A "Tönsberg" shop in Berlin, which sells Thor Steiner clothing, opened in February 2008. The store has been under pressure from its neighbors, ever since, to leave.
Anti-fascist demonstrators protested a similar store in Hamburg in April.
The label uses Norwegian as well as Nordic symbols -- to express white pride without running afoul of German law. But it's a German company. The Norwegian government has sued in German court to keep the Norwegian flag off of Thor Steinar's clothes.
Other clothing lines, like Lonsdale and New Balance, have been adopted by German neo-Nazis, leading at least one German online store to ban Lonsdale from its inventory. But these brands don't have the same resonance outside Germany.
Thor Steinar is different -- it's "demonstrably for the scene, by the scene," said Esther Lehnert at the Mobile Counseling Team Berlin.
