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This t-shirt kerfuffle isn’t the first time Walmart has been accused of flirting with fascism, Adfreak points out.

In 2004: Walmart was smacked by Anti-Defamation League for selling the anti-Semitic text The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. And in 2005: Walmart funded a group that used a picture of a 1933 Nazi book burning to protest measures restricting big-box retailers.

And now one for ’06. Walmart’s yearly Nationalist-Socialist constitutional.

Speaking of dates, reader Daniel says:

“Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death’s Head Division, 1933-1945 by Charles W. Sydnor, Jr. has a publication date of 1977 – but I believe it was only available beginning in 1978″

While interesting to toss around conspiracy theories, we still stick with the hack designer trying to make an “authentic,” “retro,” t-shirt. He just may have no idea how authentically retro it ended up being.

A retailer as large as Walmart is bound to sell Nazi merchandise every so often. You know what they say, a million monkeys at a million sewing machines will eventually sew together a Mein Kampf quilt. — BEN POPKEN

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