Doing A Nazi Salute Doesn't Make You A Nazi, It Makes You An Asshole
June 3rd, 2020. On his drive home from a hard day’s work, Emmanuel Cafferty sticks his hand out of his truck window and accidentally ruins his life.
While innocently cracking his knuckles, Cafferty momentarily made a gesture that looked like an OK hand sign. But unfortunately for him, the OK sign looks vaguely similar to a recently designated white power sign. And even more unfortunately, a passing driver took a photo of it and posted it on social media.
Cafferty was fired a few days later.
April 27th, 2021. Kelly Donohue celebrates winning his third consecutive Jeopardy! championship and unintentionally ruins his life.
Donohue decided to mark his “three-peat” by placing three fingers on his lapel, but this, too, looked kinda-sorta like the OK symbol, so more than 560 former Jeopardy! winners sign an open letter denouncing him as a racist. Donohue spent the next several months being harassed and demonised as a white supremacist.
July 20th, 2023. Reade Whitney, a trainer for Major League Soccer team DC United, holds up an OK sign in a staff photo and inadvertently…well, you get the idea by now.
DC United terminated Whitney “effective immediately” for his “discriminatory gesture” and released a statement clarifying that “there is no place for racism, homophobia, misogyny, or discrimination of any kind in our sport and world and D.C. United do not tolerate any acts of this nature.”
In the insane political climate we’re living through, there’s a significant danger of becoming hypersensitive. Especially when so many people earn their living by inventing things to be sensitive about.
But still, you’d have thought there‘d be some limits.
You’d have thought the “be kind” crowd would want more than a blurred photo of a Mexican-American man cracking his knuckles before going after his job.
You’d have thought the OK sign’s long and universally recognised history as a symbol of good vibes would prevent every poor soul who touches their thumb and index finger together from being branded a white supremacist.
You’d have thought the fact that all three of these men apologised, affirmed that they had no links to white supremacy, and denounced racism and neo-Nazism, would settle any questions about their motivations.
But sadly, infuriatingly, it didn’t.
Call-out culture, “wokeness,” whatever you want to call it, went way too far. So now, a frustrating number of people have decided to defend anything that comes from the opposite side. Even if it’s an insurrection or a Nazi salute.
That’s why the “Back the Blue” crowd have consistently defended (and even formed part of) a mob that tried to overrule the Constitution while beating a police officer with the American flag.
It’s why, despite the Nazi salute’s long and universally recognised history as a symbol of hatred and fascism, they claim that Elon Musk could perform such a belligerent version without knowing exactly what he was doing.
It’s why some people were so eager to defend “their side,” that they manipulated their autistic children into performing Nazi salutes and posted the resulting videos to TikTok.
For millions of people, politics has long since stopped being about decency or values or principles, it’s no longer about making America or the world a better place, it’s about defending their side of the political aisle no matter how extreme or cruel they get, it’s about “sticking it” to the other side whenever possible, and it’s about refusing to let anything, not truth, not integrity, not the fact that the people they’re defending are terrible human beings, get in the way of some good old-fashioned trolling.
Because let’s be clear, performing a Nazi salute doesn’t make you a Nazi, it makes you an asshole.
It makes you the kind of person who doesn’t understand the need to learn from history, the kind of person who’ll flirt with Nazis but is too cowardly to admit it, the kind of person who hasn’t figured out that the solution to one terrible political ideology is not to mindlessly embrace another.
And once you’re that far gone, what’s to stop you going a little führer?
In the insane political climate we’re living through, there’s a significant danger of being oversensitive.
But there’s also a danger of forgetting that extremism or authoritarianism or whatever you want to call it doesn’t start with World Wars and concentration camps and the invasion of Green…excuse me, Poland.
It starts with leaders purging their government of anybody who might say “no” to their demands, and unelected oligarchs dismantling the oversight bodies that might keep them in check.
It starts with Trump’s “jokes” about holding on to power for a third term turning into draft constitutional amendments (complete with specific wording that would prevent Obama from running against him).
It starts with “detention camps” where the immigrants Trump has been demonising for close to a decade are rounded up and held without due process or the right of appeal or a release date.
Most of all, it starts with exhausted, disillusioned voters fighting amongst themselves while the safeguards and norms that protect democracy are dismantled.
If, in 2016, someone had told you that a mob of Trump’s supporters would storm the Capitol building in a bid to prevent the certification of an election and hang Mike Pence, if that same someone predicted that over a thousand of Trump’s supporters would be arrested for committing violence on Trump’s behalf, and if they said that the first act of Trump’s second term would be pardoning all of them while installing a hard-drinking Fox News anchor as Secretary of Defence and an anti-vax conspiracy theorist as Health Secretary, you’d have thought they were out of their mind.
But today, it’s just part of the Trump show.
The question is, how long can his supporters defend this insanity before they accidentally ruin their lives?
I will be frank, there are very few of Trump's EOs and actions that I don't agree with. Much to my own dismay, as I would have killed, in 2017, to have Trump removed from the highest job in the country. Not only did I considered him completely unqualified for the job, I was convinced he was a little hitler wannabe who would destroy our country and sign the death certificate of our democracy. Little did I know, I was one of those brainwashed democrats who only watched legacy media, who were moving in echo chambers, and were anything but democratic in their ideals and wills (what democrat didn't want, in the 4 years of Trump, to get rid of the "uninformed rednecks" who brought the crazy man to power?). And then, my "be nice" fellows started to show their true colors, and suddenly my America became eerily similar to the stifling society I had abandoned in a quest for freedom. You see, with very (but really insignificant) few exceptions, everybody on this earth will tell you that the far-right is dangerous. Especially after the nazis, people are acutely aware of the immense peril a group of unrestrained bigots (even a small group) pose to everybody else and to life as we know it. Because we know they are intolerant and vicious, and that will always be deadly and will always win against tolerance and kindness. Now, take the other end of the spectrum. How many people really think that the far-left is equally deadly? How many people would believe you if you told them that, despite their "good intentions" and the well-crafted and attractive discourses, many of the left ideologies have, in fact, made more victims than all the nazis put together, and are deadlier than anything else? How many people would lose their jobs if you accused them of being communists, and how many would do if you convinced everybody they were nazis? For people like me, who have lived under communist regimes, this imbalance is one of the most troubling realities we get to witness, as we know from personal experience a truth that nobody believes (although we have all the statistics and the receipts to prove it). I wrote this whole introduction, that is apparently irrelevant to the topic, to say that although you are right in being cautious about (and critical of) this administration, you are also wrong in many of your assessments, especially in believing that the "oppression" from the left came from regular people (your examples of citizens "amended" for their gestures), while the danger from the right comes from the administration (anti-vax health secretary, quasi nazi president, dictatorial government officials). Many (if not all) of the people who voted for Trump will tell you that what you see right now is exactly what they voted for. What did you think would happen to the structure of a government that people don't trust any longer? Did you count on having an administration that promised to completely change the face/ways/policies of the government, but keep the same actors in power? How would Trump work with an army of bureaucrats who hate him? It was interesting that you gave the example of Musk's commission locking two "officials" out of their computer system, but you forgot to mention that these "officials" actually, physically, stopped the people from the commission to do their job (auditing). Everything that Trump does now has been done before, by democrats, from "detention camps" for illegals, to purging the government of "people who might say no to their demands". And while I appreciate this scrutiny (we need to hold our elected accountable), I am mad that the same was (is) not applied to the left. Yes, RFK Jr. might have some unorthodox views, about vaccines, but people trust him about everything else, and he was even considered for the same job by Obama (where was the outrage then?). He is one of the most qualified people to ever have been nominated for this position (he took on DuPont and Monsanto, he fought for clean waters, in fact all his life has been dedicated to fighting for a healthier America), while his predecessor had absolutely no qualifications, other than being a foot soldier for the party, while Biden's HHS assistant was a man who pretended to be a woman. I know your position on this, and I agree with it. But, really, who do you think people trust more: a man who has dedicated his life to making America healthier and is also a bit susceptible of vaccines, or an overweight man who thinks people can change sex? You do the math! And the media didn't bat an eyelid about this abominal nomination, to the contrary ("what a brave woman"). Because, when they are coming from the left, even the most unreasonable acts can be wrapped in lies and presented as "progressive", thus acceptable. The right can become a physical danger, that you can identify and fight against, while the left can make you do the most abominable acts and you would think they were to save the humanity. We dodged that bullet this time around, but almost didn't. And for that alone, allow us to just hang in there and not get too worried (at least not yet) about Trump's shenanigans. we've seen worse. And we know you will keep an eye out for us, because that's what every opinion-maker does when it come to the right (not so much when it comes to the left, but I will stop repeating myself).
I appreciate your nuanced refinements on this difficult question.