$2 from every Proud Degenerate shirt is donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center to fight fascism, bigotry, and hate in all its forms.
“…Then they came for me..” – Martin Niemöller
This Proud Degenerate is a visual reclamation of the symbols once used to persecute and dehumanize. Designed by the artist Atri and inspired by the Nazi regime’s Degenerate Art campaign and concentration camp badge system, this piece turns past oppression into present-day protest, pride, and power.
Brightly colored triangles reference the identities once targeted for erasure—now transformed into symbols of resilience and defiance.
Each color carries a legacy:
Pink — Homosexual men
Black – “Asocial” and “work-shy”: Roma and Sinti people, people with disabilities, sex workers, alcoholics, drug users, unhoused people, lesbians, pacifists, and others deemed undesirable.
Red — Political prisoners: communists, socialists, liberals, resistance fighters, trade unionists, Freemasons, and non-Jewish people who helped Jews.
Blue — Stateless persons, refugees, or foreign forced laborers.
Green — Criminalized individuals.
Purple — Religious objectors: primarily Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of other pacifist religious groups.
Yellow — Jewish people (combined with other colors, it indicated multiple identities). Brown Triangle – Male Roma (as classification evolved; Roma women often kept black triangle with “Z” for Zigeuner).
PROUD DEGENERATE: RECLAIMING SYMBOLS, RESISTING HATE
In 1937, the Nazi regime launched the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich to publicly shame modernist artists whose work challenged authoritarian ideals. Artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Max Beckmann were ridiculed for expressing the unconventional, the abstract, the emotional. Their art was labeled “degenerate” because it defied conformity and dared to reflect truth, diversity, and humanity.
Simultaneously, inside Nazi concentration camps, prisoners were marked with color-coded fabric badges to classify, dehumanize, and control. These symbols were tools of fascist oppression—meant to isolate and erase entire communities.
Today, we reclaim these marks not as tools of shame, but as emblems of pride and defiance.
“Proud Degenerate” embraces the very term used to silence artists and marginalized people—turning it on its head. It’s a celebration of those who create, love, resist, and survive despite being told they don’t belong. It’s also a protest against the rising tides of hate, bigotry, censorship, and fascism taking root in our own time.
Wearing these designs says: I will not be erased. I will not conform. I remember—and I resist.
This collection is for anyone who’s been labeled, boxed in, or pushed aside for who they are, what they create, or who they love. And a portion of every purchase will go toward organizations that support LGBTQ+ rights, refugee protection, and free expression in art.
We wear these symbols not to glorify the past, but to honor those it tried to destroy—and to ensure history does not repeat itself.
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©2025 Patrick Caldwell. All rights reserved.
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