Goose Step - Popular Awareness

Popular Awareness

In English-speaking countries World War II propaganda has indelibly associated the goose step with fascism. There, and sometimes elsewhere in the West, it is invoked as a reference to Nazism, fascism, communism, or militarism in general.

• George Orwell commented in Why I Write (1946) that the goose step was used only in countries where the population was too scared to laugh at their military.
• In the film and concert of Pink Floyd's The Wall, a famous scene includes animated goose-stepping hammers.
• In the British sitcom Fawlty Towers, the main character Basil Fawlty infamously imitates the goose step in front of some German guests.
• In Walt Disney film The Lion King during the musical sequence "Be Prepared", a rally of Scar's Hyena henchmen are shown goose-stepping to the song.
• Zim, in the show Invader Zim, walks with a goose step as his normal walking mechanism.
• José in the show Cybersix, regularly walks with a goose step in reference to his and his father's Nazi roots.
• On the back cover of the album Bear's Choice, the Dancing Bears are engaged in an exaggerated goose-step march.
• In a 1999 television adaptation of Orwell's Animal Farm, the goose step is appropriately performed by a flock of geese, singing the praises of their porcine leader Napoleon in a propaganda film.
• The militarised cockroaches in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers cartoons march in goose step.

The goose step does not carry this negative connotation elsewhere. This sometimes results in inaccurate conclusions being drawn by English-speaking observers.

• In Spartacus ballet by Khachaturian, the Roman soldiers goose-step in most of their scenes. English-speaking reviewers sometimes conclude erroneously that the choreography must be intending to link the Roman Empire with the tyranny of Nazi Germany. However, goose-stepping in Russia carries no such connotation, and reflects only military discipline. Goose-stepping can be found in a number of Russian ballets in which it is not associated with the villains.