How Neo-Nazis Turned Lonsdale into a Coded Uniform—and Forced the Brand into Anti-Racist Activism

Designer Scandals & Falls from Grace3/5 wildness

How Neo-Nazis Turned Lonsdale into a Coded Uniform—and Forced the Brand into Anti-Racist Activism

Lonsdale / 2000s

In the early 2000s, Lonsdale, the British boxing brand founded in London in 1960 by former professional welterweight boxer Bernard Hart, was appropriated by sections of the European far right. The attraction was a visual loophole rather than any connection between Lonsdale and Nazism: when an outer jacket was worn over a Lonsdale shirt, the visible lettering could be reduced to “NSDA,” one letter short of “NSDAP,” the abbreviation for Adolf Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. The clothing therefore became a coded way for neo-Nazi teenagers to signal allegiance while avoiding the more explicit Nazi symbols restricted by law in countries such as Germany. In the Netherlands, Belgium, northern France, Spain, and Germany, “Lonsdale youth” became a shorthand for young people associated with far-right tendencies, and some schools in the Netherlands and Germany banned the brand.