Goose Stepping: The Dance Craze of Tyrants

The Goose Step. Immortalized just as much by John Cleese as it was by Adolf Hitler. A patently absurd march that is nevertheless associated with some of the maddest, most evil dictators on earth. What's up with that?

"(The goose-stepping) says that here we can train all these men to do something that is completely unnatural," says author David Schimmelpenninck, who chairs Brock University's history department. "When you see men goose-stepping, that is much more ominous and much more impressive in a perverse sort of way than when you see men marching as they normally would in most NATO armies.

"In a militarized society, like Nazi Germany, like the Soviet army, like North Korea, the message is, `We are a society that will follow the dictator's whim.'"

Christian Cotroneo's article on the history of the goose step is fascinating. Go read about the silliest walk ever to be associated with genocide.

Military March Madness [The Star]