5603

Keroppi has a much more appealing design.

Also, the idea of Keroppi in, like, a gas mask is hilarious. And Sanrio would probably super hate it.

5604

I don’t know if this really fits in this thread, but I think things like this are the result of Donald Trump normalizing white supremacists and the alt-right.

The school’s excuse to the parents was that they thought he was Charlie Chapman. You know, with a swastika armband. And doing the Nazi salute.

I feel bad thinking what kind of parents this kid has.

5605

There’s a bit of a resurgence with Nazi symbolism in high schools these days, but I think it’s more driven by the taboo-ness of it. There’s a sub-set of kids who want to out-edgy their friends, maybe driven by social media, and they do shit like this because they’re kids and they’re stupid.

I’m not sure they’re really Nazis.

5606

If the parents let them do it, they are Nazis.

5607

Hey, he looked exactly like Charlie Chaplin.

5608

Directing it towards minority students isn’t “edgy,” that discrimination and harassment not to mention bullying and scary and a whole host of thing worse than what suggesting kids doing stupid thing implies.

5609

They were even born the same year. There’s a legend (unconfirmed as far as I know) that Hitler modeled his moustache after Chaplin’s. Although it’s also been said he cut it that way so a gas mask in WWI would fit better, so…

I assume if the kid was doing The Great Dictator he would have gone with the ++ icon instead of a swastika. Also what kid is going to go as Chaplin in this day and age…?

5610

I do wonder how old the child was in this case. the article says it was an “elementary” school, which around here means K through 6, but I guess elsewhere might go up through 8th or 9th grade.

5611

In Davis County it’s K-6.

5612

So the kid could be as old as 13, assuming he was in the 6th grade.

5613

Absent any context we only know that an elementary school kid marched around a school parade with a swastika armband and was Nazi saluting other kids. There’s not enough information there to cast aspersions on any specific person. Kids sometimes do inappropriate things, often because they’re testing limits or because their understanding of the cultural context of them often doesn’t extend much beyond “adults say this is bad.” I remember very clearly in 6th grade that I had a group of friends who thought Hitler playacting was funny precisely for this reason, and also that I had no idea of the scale or atrocity of the Holocaust at that age nor Hitler’s role in it. My sense at the time was that he and the Nazis were bad in the same way the WWII Japanese or the Russians were bad: for opposing America.

Certainly this child needs correction, and maybe his actions are indicative of a household that encourages that kind of thing, but I suspect not, and there’s not enough information provided in the article to form a comprehensive judgement of him, the school, or his parents.

5614

One parent said the boy was directing the salutes toward minority children at the school.

5615

I’ll re-iterate my position that every schoolchild should be mandated by law to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. It certainly cemented in my 11-year-old brain that the Nazis are the bad guys.

5616

Sure, and though that’s a 3rd party report, that’s probably accurate. But did he single out minority children? Or was he just throwing around Nazi salutes everywhere. We don’t know.

No more than Rocky and Bullwinkle and Red Dawn cemented in mine that the Russians were the bad guys. Raiders doesn’t bother to explain why the Nazis were bad except that they opposed America.

5617

I am not blaming the maybe less than 13 year old child for this. Children learn this kind of shit from somewhere… whether at home, Youtube… we don’t know. Here is what we do know: he was terrorizing minority children. The way you worded that glosses over that point. There are other children that are victims here, and it won’t matter to them what context it was. They very likely felt threatened and terrified over this.

Can only do so much in those kinds of movies, but it does cover book burning a bit.

5618

The kid can be taught. Every parent/teacher/adult that didn’t stop them is a fucking racist pile of shit.

5619

I gotta hear about this kid’s parents - a 13 year old (or younger) doesn’t just find a nazi costume. Someone had to make it for this kid. One or both of his parents had to see him with it on and be OK with it.

5620

Apparently it’s also K through K.

5621

The only thing that distinguishes what he’s wearing from Sunday dress is the red armband, which is made of a piece of torn cloth with a swastika drawn in sharpie on it. Trust me, kids are definitely creative enough to make something like that themselves. Maybe the parents helped out, but we don’t know.

Also worth noting that this was Halloween, when kids dress up as the devil or Freddy Kruger or any number of other evil characters and then try to scare each other. The line separating those from Hitler or a KKK costume is real, but harder for kids to see and understand.

5622

The book burning was in Last Crusade. /geek pedant

There is a very interesting undercurrent in Raiders, actually, but you sort of have to know the history to appreciate it. Mention is made of “The Hebrew God whose Ark this is” and later Dietrich tells Belloq he is uncomfortable with “this Jewish ritual.” Most haunting of all is the brief scene in the ship’s hold in which the Ark obliterates the swastika stamp on the box containing it. And then, it’s safe to say the Nazis at the climax get the Deluxe version of an angry Yahweh’s wrath.*

I think the Holocaust absolutely resonates within Raiders, but, to be sure, an 11 year old boy without context would probably not pick up on that.

*What is the cosmology of Indiana Jones? Shiva and Yahweh both seem to wield immense power. Is it some kind of polytheistic melange?

*On the other hand, all Shiva really does is make a rock super-hot, whereas Yahweh nukes an island full of Nazis.