An important and rather terrifying story from Doubleblind – more fantastic reporting today from the US
Mindlessly doom-scrolling on X, my jaw plunged to the floor when I saw Dr. Zoë Dubus, a postdoctoral researcher specializing in psychedelic drugs, post an image of pills stamped with Nazi insignias on them.
“Are psychedelics going to ‘change the world’ as some people believe?” Dr. Dubus tweeted. “Yesterday, a member of the French Psychedelic Society, who works in a harm reduction association in western France, sent us this, which is starting to circulate in France and has also been spotted since early 2024 in Switzerland, Iceland, and Holland. We don’t yet know what it is, but the stamps have been sent for analysis…”
Was I surprised to see pills branded with disgusting far-right logos? Nope. Nazis have a long history of taking drugs, including psychedelics. Vice’s Simon Doherty reports that Nazi-stamped ecstasy and 2C-B pills are “sweeping” across Europe, a trend he suggests might correlate with the rise in far-right youth movements.
While correlation doesn’t equal causation, the political context here is impossible to ignore. Far-right political parties have recently made huge strides in Brussels, largely driven by a disturbing rise in youth support. In Germany, 16 percent of people under age 25 backed the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the recent EU elections, which marks a significant jump from the last election in 2019. France’s National Rally (RN) became the top choice for voters under 34, climbing 10 points to secure 32 percent of the vote in that age group. Similarly, Poland’s far-right Confederation party saw an 18.5 percent boost in support among voters under 30. This trend isn’t just isolated to these countries—similar patterns are emerging in Portugal, Spain, Austria, and the Netherlands, Vice reports.
These aren’t the first Nazi-branded drugs to recently emerge, either. Dr. Dubus tweeted that in 2019 she was made aware of purple ecstasy pills branded with “SS” insignias. SS is a reference to the elite guard of the Nazi regime, which included the most methed-out, fanatical Nazi soldiers. (If you didn’t know, Hitler ensured his soldiers were high on amphetamines.) In 2022, she came across swastika-stamped LSD tablets. Dr. Dubus also says that a guy in the Netherlands was recently arrested for possessing 1,000 pills in the shape of Parteiadlers, also known as the Imperial Eagle or Nazi Eagle. At the end of 2023, police in the Netherlands pulled over a driver for driving through a stop sign. Cops discovered that he didn’t have a valid license, was high at the time of the stop, and had a massive bag of Nazi-branded ecstasy pills in the passenger seat. The police also seized just over two pounds of cannabis and 100 grams of cocaine, according to the Irish tabloid Sunday World. Vice confirmed the details of the arrest with Dutch law enforcement.
“In early 2024, several tablets with the Nazi eagle and swastika were analysed, indicating an increase in production,” Dr. Dubus tells Vice. “What’s more, the pills are all different in quality and composition: 2C-B, MDMA, and a strange mixture which seems to indicate that one of the batches was made by a very amateur chemist.”
Read the full story at https://doubleblindmag.com/nazi-party-drugs/?utm_source=beehiivemail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=inside-the-underground-shroom-market
