Support Your Local Einsatz-Kommando

“Support Your Local Einsatz-Kommando” was the slogan printed across the back of a Burzum T-shirt designed to Varg Vikernes’s specifications in early 1997. Its significance lay in the gap between how it was first received—as an offensive provocation—and what the book presents it as revealing about Vikernes’s political commitment.

The Shirt and Its Message

The shirt combined a Burzum logo and an SS death’s-head on the front with the slogan across the back. It was sold by Misanthropy Records in England and advertised with a photograph of an unidentified skinhead modeling it. The design drew criticism and negative publicity, but sales were brisk. Its commercial circulation carried the slogan beyond a private or local context, even as many observers treated the imagery as calculated offensiveness rather than evidence of a real political affiliation.

Provocation and Recognition

The book stresses that most people did not understand the slogan as a serious indication of Vikernes’s connection to the group later known as the Einsatzgruppe. In retrospect, the T-shirt made that commitment visible before the group became a major news story. The message therefore works on two levels in the account: as provocative merchandise that attracted attention, and as an early sign whose political meaning was largely missed at the time.

Scene, Image, and Political Meaning

The slogan appeared within a Norwegian Black Metal scene where belief and outlook mattered alongside music, but where ideological boundaries were not governed by a fixed rulebook. The scene’s outward styles could also serve as deliberate signals: Emperor vocalist Ihsahn later recalled that, when younger, he dressed more extremely to distinguish himself and provoke a reaction that would affirm his identity. Against that broader context, the T-shirt’s shock imagery might readily be mistaken for another performance of extremity. The book’s account makes the distinction consequential: in Vikernes’s case, it says, the slogan was not merely an attempt to offend, but an overlooked disclosure of political allegiance.