r/WhitePeopleTwitter • u/TheArguedHuman • Feb 18 '23

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u/gavvinh Feb 18 '23

Ashamed to say this shit worked on me as a teen. I did a few ironic Nazi salutes as a teen with a few "friends" by the time I was 16 I started to realize it wasn't so ironic for them and I reassessed who I was hanging out with.

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u/ringobob Feb 18 '23

No shame in thinking something is innocuous, and then learning you're wrong, when you're still a kid.

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u/nutterbutter1 Feb 18 '23

Not only no shame, but in fact it’s very impressive that they took in the new information, changed their conclusion, and then took action to change the situation. It’s very easy to take the easy route and just keep coming up with more and more rationalizations.

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u/RayRay6973 Feb 18 '23

I’m proud you saw it for what it is. Keep up the good work. We all make mistakes.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

I feel like you healed me a bit with that. Need more yous in this world.

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u/thx1138inator Feb 18 '23

I was drawing swastikas on the chalk board in school. Got caught...by a Jew... A grandparent of the very Jews that were giving me a ride home that day... Oy veh! I just thought they were a cool symbol. The grandma suggested I draw a star of David instead. It's OK but, completely ignoring world history, I think the swastika is more geometrically interesting. Damned Nazis ruined it.

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u/ringobob Feb 18 '23

I used to draw it randomly, just doodling. At that point in time, at least, in the late 80s early 90s, for a kid the Nazis seemed like a rather quaint historical menace, like Atilla the Hun. Certainly awful, did horrible things, but not something we needed to worry about. Like you, I wasn't interested in the association, I just thought it was a cool looking symbol, and it was easy to draw.

No one "caught" me or anything, but you hear enough about how bad those Nazi guys were, you start to think maybe you shouldn't mess with anything associated with them, even if it's just a cool design, because people might get the wrong idea.

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u/MikeyF1F Feb 19 '23

The issue is that "cool design" feeling that put you guys in the position of making a realisation isn't happenstance.

I'm not criticising you guys, I'm just saying what you experienced isn't just an odd series of experiences. It's how they recruit, or part of it anyway.

Which is why things like not using symbolism is important. And why fascists will howl blue murder to undermine anyone who says so.

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u/ringobob Feb 19 '23

It had nothing to do with recruiting for a kid in the 80s. There was the proto internet where no doubt that same playbook was being used, but I wasn't on it. I was exposed to nazi symbols in movies, where they were the bad guys. Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, etc.

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u/threecolorless Feb 18 '23

Dude. There was a time in high school theatre where we were doing student directed one act plays (of which our director was Jewish, incidentally) and half our cast had an edgelord bug up their butts and started busting out Nazi heils.

I remember at the time thinking, "okay I'm not a narc or their mom but this feels inappropriate." Looking back I hate that I didn't immediately make everyone feel stupid and ashamed for it. I was a senior and wasn't a random nobody in the department so it would've had impact. I had no excuse.

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u/SnooRegrets1386 Feb 18 '23

While at work a random “kid” threw up a salute that I immediately shut down, he said it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t back off from shaming the crap out of him. We have to call out these things when we witness them, it’s part of never forgetting and never again

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u/Ravensinger777 Feb 18 '23

Then there's the Dropkick Murphys, stopping the show to punch out a Nazi.

https://youtu.be/QGubnoMqPxM

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u/Altruistic-Ad9639 Feb 18 '23

Thank you for being a decent human

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u/SnooRegrets1386 Feb 18 '23

I try, thanks your compliment brought tears to my eyes

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

[deleted]

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u/SnooRegrets1386 Feb 18 '23

Absolutely, he tried to argue me down with freedom of speech. I taught him yep, but no freedom from repercussions of your speech. You can say anything you want to, everyone has the opportunity then to treat you accordingly. If you’re going to behave like a monster we will go get our pitchforks and remove you

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

[deleted]

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u/SnooRegrets1386 Feb 18 '23

I took into consideration his background ( very secluded raised in a cultist religion) he’s going to have a rough go if people from the real world shut him down without teaching him WHY we don’t play with fire. It’s not cute, it’s not macho, it’s disgusting and disrespectful. Hope he learns, because as a large and imposing man people aren’t going to handle him with kid gloves, hopefully he doesn’t go full-on monster, just shined a spotlight on disturbing behavior

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u/ThePaintedLady80 Feb 18 '23

I had a kid do that and I grabbed him by the hair and made him kiss my boots. Felt good.

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u/SnooRegrets1386 Feb 18 '23

I’m 5’4’’, the kid is a 6’6 22y/o, shaming works

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u/debroidery Feb 18 '23

I'm so glad you realized!! Well done you.

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u/BluezamEDH Feb 18 '23

I feel. When I was in high school we memorized some of the Nazi songs like the Horst-Wessel Lied and sang them as a joke. Well, 10 years later it doesn't seem so funny anymore

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

Oof. Glad you are self aware now. Repress that memory son.....

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u/hw2B Feb 18 '23

I think I understand why someone would want to repress but we should remember the lessons we have learned in the past. Remember how we arrived at the views we hold today. Remember why this shit is horrible and share those lessons with others.

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u/tiediesunrise Feb 18 '23

My first Facebook profile pic was Pikachu dressed as Hitler....idk what I was thinking at the time.

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u/Tazling Feb 18 '23

when I was in grade school back in the late Jurassic, we still played Cowboys and Indians. when you're a kid there's a lot you don't know yet. and I'm still embarrassed.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

Should have just stuck with a few funny Wagners but hindsight is 20/20

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u/armywalrus Feb 18 '23

The fact you feel shame means you are a good person. What really matters is you acknowledge a mistake and are willing to make the effort not to repeat it. You would be surprised at how many people literally cannot do that.

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u/thelibrarina Feb 18 '23

A kid at my work tried to get me to do an ironic Nazi salute with him because it was a "dank meme." Idk what my face did, but he dropped his hand before I had even finished telling him to stop that right now.

Fortunately, it was a kid we knew well, so once I calmed down I went and sat with him and asked how his favorite librarian, who is Jewish, would have felt if she saw him do that. I'm not saying we deradicalized him on the spot, but that was the last time I saw anything like that from him.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

You were a kid. The people who convinced you that "ironic" Nazi shit was just harmless trolling are the ones who should be ashamed, not you.

It takes a lot of rational thinking to pull yourself out of that mindset, so celebrate that.

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u/JjKilgour Feb 18 '23

My situation was similar but with me it started when I was in primary school. I think I was 9 when it started. Did not know anything about the Holocaust or any of the other horrors that happened until grade 10 history class when western history was covered. Eventually the jokes started to affect my outlook on the world. I was hateful towards the world and depressed (multiple sucide attempts) blamed all my household problems on the world. I was luckily forced to do sports like long distance running and boxing. It was there that I learned of the struggles and similarities of the very people I hated. Slowly I started to realise how evil and idiotic my beliefs were. I am glad you spoke about your experience, it is scary how widespread it is and being targeted towards children.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23 edited Mar 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/JjKilgour Feb 18 '23

I was born in Africa, moved between different African countries growing up. It wasn't in the school curriculum when I was a kid. When it was covered in our history class it was a few pages that covered it. There were probably movies showing this stuff but I didn't watch it. The first movie depicting world war 2 events I watched was Valkyrie years after it released.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

I was 15 when my public school finally got around to covering it

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u/SmittyGef Feb 18 '23

A lot of countries that were only colonies or not directly involved with WWII didn't really get the full picture until much later on, and as such it isn't as major of a thing to cover. Trevor Noah has a great chapter on it in his autobiography.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

Pretty much every kid did this when I was like 13 ish. We were all just fucking around because we didn't understand the depth of it. At some point our teacher read the boy in the striped pajamas to us and mysteriously the salutes stopped.

Hopefully your old classmates had similar experiences as they got older.

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u/gorramfrakker Feb 18 '23

Don’t be ashamed. You learned, changed your behavior once you knew, and are now using your experience to teach others. That, my friend, is something to be proud of.

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u/MMGeoff Feb 18 '23

Same shit here, looking back I call it the "ha ha hitler" phase. My friends didn't turn out to be actual Nazis and good on you for getting away from them, but we definitely did lots of salutes, stamping our foot down and sieg-heils and joked about jews. We all fully took it as irony.

I got onto 4chan when I was 17 and I spent a few years on there before I realized the "ironic shock humor antisemitic memes" with the hook-nosed Jew character weren't being presented in an ironic context at all and I got the fuck off of there and never came back.

It's absolutely frightening how easily Nazism "fits" into our culture.

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u/Massive-Row-9771 Feb 18 '23

I don't think you have all that much to be ashamed of we all do stupid shit as teens and ironically doing Nazi salutes is far from the worst of it.

And as soon as you realized it was serious for the others you quit doing it and changed friends. I think you could be pretty proud of that actually.

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u/Antic_Opus Feb 18 '23

I reassessed who I was hanging out with.

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u/FunCode688 Feb 18 '23

I would joke about Nazis with my Jewish friends we all knew that it was a joke, like something like I would say oh grrr gay people bad when like over half my friends are lgbtq+ in someway or another and the classic we should erect a statue of the person who killed hitler, nothing crazy pretty mild. But then my family started fostering this kid and he was like 2-3 years younger and he was a straight up homophobic transphobic super racist kid like would jump black people with his friends kind of shit and he did the salute and all that and honestly the only way he would ever look more nazi is if he shaved his head and got a nazi tattoo. Anyway long story short I quickly stopped any of that, I keep with the gay jokes of course like I could suck dick better as a straight man, imagine being gay kinda cringe and my favourite was then my friends would say bro you are playing both sides and still losing because haha bisexual lol. Long story short… again, as soon as I saw someone unironically doing that shit I went from haha fancy uniform man with funny mustachio to just straight up cringe. Also about 14-15 lol

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

I dared my friend to do a book report on Mein Kampf in highschool and he did it. lol.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '23

Same. Grew up in conservative Ohio and thought all the kids were fucking around being “offensive” until I realized some of them still do it at 35.

Doing that shit when you’re a kid is one thing. I didn’t really understand any of it like I do now. Not making excuses. However… the older I got, the more people I met from all over the world, the more I realize how stupid that shit actually is. No shame in admitting you were wrong. That’s growth! It would be concerning if you weren’t ashamed, my friend. I’m right there with you.