KangAnon wrote on Jan 23
rd, 2025 at 10:05am:
Here’s a challenge for those falling over themselves to defend him: if you truly believe it wasn’t a Nazi salute, start using that gesture yourself.
At your child’s next parent-teacher night, introduce yourself with the same motion.
When giving a work presentation, begin by mimicking the gesture.
If you or I did it in, say, Bejing, Chongqing, New Dehli, Mumbai, Colcotta, Islamabad, Karachi, Hanoi, Abuja... you'd likely be met with laughter or bemusement.
Doing it in any culturally Western city, where you intended to promote Nazi ideology, would attract fury...
But on that, Germans are not as sensitive as other European peoples, notwithstanding its illegal status...
John Lennon (in)famously taunted Germans with it during the Beatles' Hamburg tours to the howls of delight and laughter from the German crowds, yelling their approval and encouraging him with 'Macht schau!'... and it was Lennon who was bemused by how breezy the Germans were about it.