What You Saw is What Happened

From the time I was very little, I knew that the Nazis were the worst of the worst. It was not something we were allowed to joke about, and it was spoken of with the gravity it deserved. I had an excellent early education at a public magnet school. We were learning about the Holocaust and Apartheid before I was in sixth grade. In seventh grade, we watched Escape from Sobibor and two of the survivors of Sobibor came to talk to us. I will never forget these two sweet old people who lived through the unthinkable. I remember the man’s face so clearly. There were moments he was jovial, but then, a haunted expression would cross his face for just a moment, like multiple ghosts had just entered the room.

Now when some people think of Nazis, or Hitler, they’re thinking about a Tarantino film. Or Eric Cartman. A real man who unleashed horrors onto the world that reverberate today, reduced to a cartoon for shitposting and memes. A shanda, as my Jewish friends would say.

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When the threat came to my door, it didn’t look the way I thought it would. It was in the form of a boy I’d known since I was small. I didn’t know him that well, but he always seemed pensive and quiet. By high school, he was different. He walked down the hall in black military style boots, red suspenders, and a long leather jacket. He gave the Heil Hitler salute and drew swastikas on people’s notebooks. This boy was also articulate, handsome, soft spoken, an honors student, polite to adults, and volunteered at the nursing home. The worst punishment this kid ever saw was a couple of detentions.

I reported his behavior to school authorities, more than once, along with a few others (mostly girls). School officials asked me to elaborate on why I was reporting his behavior. I gave them the Cliff’s Notes: He stood up at our health care assembly and asked if only f*gs got AIDS, he drew swastikas on his hands in class, He used the N-word frequently, he said bigoted things about Jews. I left out that it was an open secret that he was abusive to his girlfriend. I knew even then that was a step too far.

The responses I got were maddening. I was told that boys will be boys, that this was a “phase”, I had “misunderstood” (how do you misunderstand a swastika??), and I was being dramatic. Dramatic was a word I heard a lot. In fact, I was voted Most Dramatic in my high school yearbook. They said it was because I did theater. I know what it meant. It meant you are a lot and everyone thinks you’re crazy.

I don’t know how to tell the next part of the story without betraying confidences. I think I shied away from personal storytelling for a long time because I felt like it was wrong to talk about other people’s trauma without their consent. So forgive the vagueness, but it isn’t my story to tell.

It’s also not an uncommon story, but it was uncommon to me because I was sixteen. And it’s a story a lot of women share. Something happens to a girl, a friend, but the person in question is a well liked white boy, and you never hear a word about it ever again. And the truth is that I still don’t know exactly what happened that day, but I am absolutely certain of who was behind it. It’s a certainty that lives in my body, the feeling you walk around with when someone hurt someone you loved and there was jack shit you could do about it.

The well-behaved white boy’s racist activities continued without interruption. And the school administration - mostly white men - continued to ignore it. My school was diverse. We were fresh off the OJ Simpson trial, and there was a lot of racial tension, and also a lot of drugs. Spoiler alert: the black kids got in trouble for weed, but the white kids were all fucking with things like Ketamine and Vicodin. At least three people I knew died of drug overdoses before I turned twenty one.

Maybe the school officials were just trying to keep the peace, or just trying to save face, since he would graduate and they could be done with him.

I think its more sinister than that. I think on some level they agreed with him.

So, when that smart, well-behaved, quiet white kid went on to become the leader of one of the largest white supremacist organizations in my home state, I was not in the least bit shocked. I can’t say I didn’t see the threat coming from other places too: there was Columbine, Marilyn Manson, the unforunate misinterpretation of American History X. That merry brigade of losers went on to do a hell of a lot more. One of them gave a Nazi salute on the cover of the yearbook, which made national news.

He was eventually arrested, but was acquitted due to a technicality. From what I can glean, he is still active. The truth of the matter is that I am still afraid of him. When you are a person who searches for the good in everyone, you don’t forget what it feels like when you see pure, dark hatred in someone’s eyes.

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The point of my story is this:

DO NOT LET ANYONE GASLIGHT YOU INTO THINKING THAT SPACE KAREN WASN’T GIVING A NAZI SALUTE.

BECAUSE HE WAS.

Even if he was just doing it to be a shitlord, and that’s the best case scenario, this should scare EVERYONE. The violence of white supremacy doesn’t always make itself obvious. I don’t think Space Karen is going to lose it and curb stomp someone. But Space Karen doesn’t have to do that. Space Karen has enough money to metaphorically curb stomp anyone he pleases. And let’s not forget that Space Karen is as rich as he is because of Apartheid. Not only did he financially benefit, that ideology is deep rooted. It’s insidious. The person who successfully brought down Gawker also directly benefited from this system. They have both amassed a significant amount of power.

Nazis may have been militarily defeated, but their ideology survived. Because so long as white men continue to profit from it, it will not die. The more we deny it, the stronger it gets. And we’ve denied it for too long. And here we are. The racist billionaire oligarchs who are now in charge of our lives are giving Nazi salutes and the mainstream media and even the fucking ADL are acting like that didn’t happen¹.

It happened. You saw it. Believe what you see with your own eyes.

It is happening here. It is happening now. And if you think that people can’t turn, I am here to tell you that they can. As we speak, the KKK is actively trying to out immigrants so they can be rounded up. Sound familiar? And people we know willingly voted for this.

America is a deeply racist country, so it's no wonder that some white dudes are fixated on Nazis. The Nazis were successful as far as they are concerned. And that’s why we have Supreme Court justices hobnobbing with rich dudes who have entire collections of Nazi paraphernalia.

We may be living under fascism, but we don’t have to give into the gaslighting. If you stick your head in the sand, or pretend like it isn’t happening, it won’t help. It won’t save you or anyone else. As of now, they can’t arrest you for saying “doing the Nazi salute is bad”. If we get there, we’ll deal with that then. But for now, say what you can say, speak against it, while you still have the right to do so. Things are moving very fast. I might get in trouble of some kind for writing this, that’s where we are.

In closing, fuck Nazis.

1. And might I add, it is literally offensive that someone is trying to explain this as a function of his autism. The man was too autistic to know he’s giving a Nazi salute? SURE JAN. Kind of like how Neil Gaiman used his autism as an excuse to rape his nanny.