This book is a performance relic and incantation which reclaims all the forms of the swastika from Nazis and neo-Nazis and returns them to their global origins in numerous indigenous and spiritual cultures such as the Navajo, Buddhist, and Hindi. Marshall Weber is a Jewish-American artist who grew more and more distressed and disturbed by the overt use of Nazi icons in the alt-Right movement of the Trump presidency. Weber desired to build built a cultural intervention that would show the intersectionality of current right-wing, Anti-Semitic, White Supremacist, and Republican organizational and militia culture with that of the Nazi regime of the 20th Century while also draining that movement’s ability to exploit the power of symbols that had been appropriated by Nazism in the past and the contemporary neo-Nazism of Trump and DeSantis supporters.

In February of 2019, during the Codex Foundation Bookfair, Marshall Weber had a long-time collaborator, San Francisco urban/folk artist Fred Rinne, cut a swastika in his back at a performance event memorializing acclaimed San Francisco Chicano, curator, artist, and activist Rene Yanez, and printed from his bleeding back onto Hosho paper thus producing abstracted prints of swastikas. Over the next year, these prints then had rubbings from historical markers throughout the United States and Germany collaged onto the prints, including rubbings from Gunther Denmig’s Stolpersteine Holocaust plaques and other WWII memorials (in Hamburg, Wolfenbüttel, and Offenbach), the plaque for the Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in Gettysburg, Virginia, and the plaque across from the African Memorial Burial Grounds in New York City. Weber then did charcoal drawings, ink painting, and finally blackletter calligraphy of the incantation in both English and German on the book’s pages. Weber’s English text was translated into German by Kaia Fischer (musician with the Rainer Maria band, and Buddhist scholar and translator, NY, N.Y.) and Lilian Landes (Director of Special Collections at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Germany).

A unique unbound codex in a custom viewing and storage box covered with original related artwork designed by Weber and fabricated by Sophia Kramer at White Iris Books, N.Y., NY. The media is (the artist’s) blood mono-printing, charcoal, ink: black walnut, Sumi, and Diamine Matador; inkjet photography, turmeric pigment, wax rubbing (frottage) on 14 sheets of Hosho paper made at Aragami paper mill in Japan. The box’s dimensions are 21 inches by 17.5 inches by 1.5 inches.

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We are the invisible army of love
we are everywhere
we are undefeatable

Wir sind die unsichtbare Armee der Liebe
wir sind überall
wir sind unbesiegbar

We take back all our symbols from those of you who hate
we take back the Swastika,
we take back the Sauvastika
and we take back the Hackenkrauss from all you lesser evils

Wir nehmen wir alle unsere Symbole zurück von der von euch, die hassen,
wir nehmen zurück das Hakenkreuz
wir nehmen zurück die Sauvastika
den Hakenkreuz nehmen wir zurück von euch allen,
die geringere Bösen sind

You Nazi’s, you neo-Nazi’s
you anti-Semites
you fascists, racists, sexists
and you trans/queer/homophobes
you are all hereby given notice
We take back our signs from all of you
you cannot use our icons anymore for all eternity

Ihr, die Nazi’s seid, ihr, die neo-Nazi’s seid,
ihr, die anti-Semiten seid,
Fascisten, Rassisten, Sexisten seid
und Transphoben, Queerphoben, Homophoben seid
euch alle wird hiermit mitgeteilt
Zurück nehmen wir unsere Zeichen von euch allen
nie wieder dürft ihr unsere Ikonen verwenden, für alle Ewigkeit nicht

From now on our symbols
the signs of the four corners
the four winds, the four seasons, the four matters
the wheel of life, the wheel of Karma
will have no power for you or your evil uses
these symbols will no longer serve you or your ignorant intentions

Von jetzt an, unsere Symbole—
das Zeichen der vier Ecken
der vier Winden, der vier Jahreszeiten, der vier Materien,
das Zeichen von dem Rad des Lebens, das Zeichen von dem Rad von Karma—
die alle werden für euch und euere bösen Verwendungen gar keine
Macht erzeugen,
nicht weiter werden diese Symbolen euch und euere ignorante Absichten dienen

You cannot use these Swastikas in your secret rituals Michael Pence
we take this evil power from you
and we replace it with love

Michael Pence, Sie dürfen nicht mehr den Hagenkreuz in Ihren heimlichen
Ritualen verwenden,
und wir nehmen von Ihnen diese böse Macht
und ersetzen sie mit Liebe

So be it
The Invisible Army of Love

So sei us
Die Unsichtbare Armee der Liebe