History or Hate?

G

Grayfox

New member
Political correctness has reached a new low here today. The lead story on the 10pm edition of a local news show was about a dealer at the gun show held this weekend. The dealer in question specializes in WWII artifacts and memorabilia and in his display are a large number of items from Nazi Germany.
Well, it seems some guy came into the show and was offended by the Nazi flag with a large swastika on it that was hanging over the display. He then proceded to make a huge fuss about it. This not only made the local news, But was the lead story. I all fairness I must say the reporter did not express an opinion on the matter and did interview both the dealer and the offended man. However the gist of the story was to ask the question of wiether the dealer was selling historical items or pushing hate?
Now I have seen this dealer at our local gun shows for many years and have at times spoken to the man. I've found him to be intellegent, pleasent and very knowledgeable on the subject. The offended gentleman didn't seem to mind the Japanese Rising Sun flag hanging right next to the Nazi flag nor did he notice that this dealer had items from almost every nation involved with WWII.
Has political correctness grown to a point where we now must attack a legitimate bussiness man simply because this wares remind some people of the bad times in our history? I am reminded of the saying: "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."
The whole thing just makes me sick.
 
Well, Grayfox, I respectfully submit that when we, as individuals, are offended by something, we have the right to make a "huge fuss" over it. I can understand the dealer's point of view if the flag was part of a WWII display. However, if the flag was intended to show affinity with the ideals of Nazi Germany, I think that complaining is justified. One has the right to free speech, and one also has the right to complain about the speech of others.
 
Funny, we have reached an era where "perception" overrules reality. If you PERCEIVE something to be offensive, then it is. For instance, a University on the news (forgive my poor memory) has an ancient logo on it's floor of a BACKWARDS swastika (you may have all seen this story). It is a symbol of native American people for health and nature. It was put in the tiles to honor the locals. Now, many decades later, a big stink is being made by people that don't even attend the school, and the leader of the protest (the only person shown) is "African American". Now, where an "African American" can be offended by an ill-perceived "backwards swastika" is beyond me, but the fact is, some people are offended by it. It doesn't matter that they are wrong in it's interpretation, it only matters that they FEEL that it is offensive.

Very strange. Being mostly Irish, I am not offended by the comments about "drunk Irishmen" nor the Notre Dame logo etc. But then again, I guess I am not so thin-skinned and I am content with who I am...and what I am NOT (a drunk, for instance).

This thread will probably and justifiably be closed, as it probably cannot stay on the topic of guns.

thaddeus
 
Hmmm...being Jewish, I appreciate even the humor that is not "Jewish" but, rather about Jews when it is funny. I certainly want the Nazi stuff in the open to remind people (which brings me to my question, where can I find archives of digitized or, at least, scannable historic photos?) about the mess that they can expect again and again.

The whole mess with Ventura's Irish comment is beyond me. I wonder if any book about the Winter War would offend the PCmeisters, too? After all, Finns use the real swastika...not to mention East Indians using the same!

Oh, well. I wouldn't even draw the line at recruiting for NASDAP or (as seen locally) Trotskist Communist party. What I do mind is seeing DFL/GOP claim something else, while doing much of what NASDAP was infamous for on the sly. I guess the PC crowd just doesn't want people to know how similar they are to the 1KY Reich...
 
As for Nazi stuff...I'd love to own a gun that belonged to an SS or EG murderer. That would mean that he's dead and a Jew got his stuff, justice of sorts. Likewise, I'd love a TT33 and a PPSh42 accessory set, just to make a point that some people outlasted NKVD (although their successors are still at work in Russia). No, I would not get off on collecting their insignia, but I can see why some people would and still have no affinity for the bastards, merely a curiosity. As with Japanese "culture", the more they'd learn about the socio-political realities, the less they'd want to emulate them.

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If you believe in freedom and means of protecting it...you might be a gun nut.
http://ddb.com/RKBA
 
Isn't it all an issue of context? - A 'political correctness' fanatic could 'cut & paste' the word 'Nazi' from these pages and make a big fuss about 'Nazis and gun nuts'... or some such. Truth wouldn't be involved at all.

[This message has been edited by Elchimango (edited March 01, 1999).]
 
Political correctness is an agenda in itself.
It has spawned an entire group of people whose sole purpose is to become offended so that history can be rewritten and the outcome changed to one that they are more comfortable with.(Aint that profound for a country boy?) :)

Like it or not we see this with the American Indians and the team names and tomahawk chop.
We see it with African Americans and the Confederate Flag.Older forumites might remember that Italian Americans at one time protested TV's portrayal of members of the Mafia as being Italian.The head of New Jerseys State Police just got fired because he said that the heroin in his state was controlled by a minority.The Japanese government has decried the use of photos of the Nanking atrocites.
When Jesse Ventura said something about the Irish drinking it was no big deal. Certainly it did not compare with Ted Turner's Polish Mine Detector.

The problem is one of ignorance and sensitivity:ignorance in not being able to distinguish between a particular and a general;sensitivity in not being able to distinguish between an itch and a pain.

Some things ARE offensive and should be seen as such,but lets try to know the difference.

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Better days to be,

Ed
 
Ed,
You have gotten my point exactly. If Nazi items were being used to promote hatred, Then I too would be very offended by them. But, in this case the dealer was showing and selling them for their historic value and collectability. One offended man took the whole thing out of context. Thousands of people saw the display for what it was and thought nothing of it. It's the media I blame. One man complained and they came running, camera in hand, to "Get the story on hate". One overly sensitive person doesn't bother me, media sensationalism does.
 
Regarding the backward swastika on the school floor, it is in an old high school that is now being used as a community ed building. It was normally covered by a rug as it is an inlay in a marble floor. The rug was up so the floor could be cleanded and the protester saw it and flipped his wig.
Of course he and the other protesters do not want to pay for the sign's removal or to have a plaque explaining the sign's meaning. They do not even want the any mention of the sign to remain.

There are several other historic buildings in the area that predate the Nazi era and they have the same signs in the walls or in the floors.

The protests are on the same level as that which got the Washington DC employee fired for using the word niggardly.

"We must never do anything that causes offense to anybody else, by word or deed."

MORONS

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Ne Conjuge Nobiscum



[This message has been edited by Jim V (edited March 01, 1999).]
 
I think the whole thing is ludicrous.

Mort,

In theory, I agree with you about the right to complain, but it is a problem when the "media" will only cover one side of the issue. If the media report was, as I suspect, biased against the businessman, well, I think that is wrong.

My grandfather was a practicing Jew and he had a gun with Nazi markings on it. He figured, much like CR, that if he had it, it meant the german didn't! I have a Ortgie that was taken off of a German Officer by my other Grandfather, it has german markings crudely etched into it.

For that matter, I think at least as much horror has been brought to humans under the Cross as was under the Swastika. Countless groups can claim offence at symbols of christianity.


Furthermore, if someone were to display a nazi flag, how could that be any different that someone flying the flag of Iraq at their place of business... say in a predominently muslim section of some city here in the US.

If you are offended by something, I suggest you ignore it... or deal with it directly, not by recruiting a PC media to help make you the offended minority of the day.

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-Essayons
 
It's the same thing w/ the Confederate flag.
with all the hate groups using it they have made it a bad thing. to me, it's part of my heritage. my people were southerners as far back as i've been able to trace. some fought in the "War for Southern Independence.
none had slaves, none fought for slavery. i could go on but this ain't the place. anyway the groups have made having a Confederate Flag a racist thing. to most it's a heritage thing. the pc thing is getting really ridiculous. better not say anything bad about lefthanders or big bellies or i might just have to bring a lawsuit on somebody! ;)

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fiat justitia

longhaircsa@netscape.net
 
SOAPBOX MODE = ON
Don't recall where 'political correctness' started - its really a meaningless string of drivel unless its meant to show conformity with the incumbent (hardly an ideal). Its time to make "politically correct" politically incorrect.
Same for 'gun culture' - a phrase for something presumably 'politically incorrect'? By association with 'drug culture'? - this belongs in another thread perhaps - but the same media (and where did 'press' go?) that would make a buck out of making a scandal over shifting the misery of millions onto an exhibitor of collectors items at a show are prime purveyors of this intellectual junk food. :(
SOAPBOX MODE = OFF
 
I agree - I would be disgusted with the guy if he's a Nazi, but who cares if he's just selling / displaying memorabilia.

cornered rat, I don't have the site, but do a search on the Holocaust Musuem in Washington D.C. They have a web site that has tons of photos from WWII, most, of course, regarding the Holocaust itself. Always reminds me that I need a new gun.
 
I, too, doubt the guy was a skinhead. Based on Grayfox's description of his visibility and intelligence, I tend to think he was a simple collector/trader.

Even if we assume the worst, so what? I should cause about as much concern as louis Farrikkan's daily pronouncements. Some people don't like other people in this country. It'll never stop. *Education* is the only preventive cure. If we spent the resources on properly enlightening our children, much of this would dissipate.

What scares me is the growing tendency to insist that all such thinking be legislatively stamped out. Before you know it, your own politcally incorrect thoughts are on the chopping block....like criticizing the president. (small "p" intentional)
Rich
 
Rich,
You are correct. The dealer was no skinhead, no tatoos, no armbands or anything else. He was just an ordinary guy who collects WWII artifacts. The flag was on display because it was for sale.

Longhair,
I considered getting into the situation we southeners have with the Confederate flag. I decided not to because it didn't really belong here and the fact that my personal rant on that subject might get me thrown out of here. I have VERY strong feelings about it. The "Stars and Bars"= Heritage, not hate.

[This message has been edited by Grayfox (edited March 01, 1999).]
 
I have a hard time figuring out how a society purporting to be free, can chill certain language, and ideas out of polite discussion by branding it "politically incorrect, offensive to some, or (my favorite) inappropriate".

The same left leaners who are offended by the mere mention of the Socialist Democratic Party of Germany, will insist that Joe McCarthy abused his office to ruin good men and women on inuendo and suspicion.

I find racism, socialism and communism, all deeply offensive to me, for disparate reasons. Does that mean that in order to avoid offending some of us (me) we must never discuss the ideas of these? How will we learn to discern what is appropriate if we can not exmaine in open discussion these ideas?

I will stand for the right to sell the paraphernalia of the losers of the Second World War, I will not support the curtailment of their freedom to trade in these artifacts, nor to advocate their morally bankrupt policies. The more that we know about the holocaust, the more that we understand man's capacity for cruelty, the better we may guard against it.

Prohibition of groups merely serves to drive their adherents underground. There they might take up residence in some remote area to come out at their whim and strike fear into the hearts of a people ignorant of their
purposes. An open society is less subject to such, IMHO and this society is still capable of surviving the "unrest of political discussion".

Isn't freedom worth the incovenience of being offended sometimes? Isn't it? Or is the goal to avoid life in interesting times, as challenging?



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Ni ellegimit carborundum esse!

Yours In Marksmanship
http://www.1bigred.com/distinguished

michael
 
Some "ancient history":

1. I have a Soviet flag and an East German (DDR) flag that another drunk, er, "young soldier" and I tore down from flagpoles in East Berlin in the spring of 1961. I consider them war trophies. (Until now, only a couple people knew I had them.) Nobody who knows me would think these items make this American a Soviet, Communist, or Socialist. Selling Nazi memorabilia does not make the fellow at the gun show a Nazi or a racist - and I'll bet the "offended" person knows that as well as we do.

2. I was twice thrown out 9th grade history:
-- I was told the South had no right to secede. When nobody could explain why, I disagreed. I was ordered to say I was wrong, refused to do so, and was sent to the Principal's office...
-- I was told the Southerners all (ALL!) owned slaves, I said there must have been at least a few Southerners who were too poor to own slaves. I was ordered to say I was wrong.... Principal's office.

Whether I was right or wrong in history class is not the point. Note that I was ridiculed, reprimanded, punished, excluded from the group, etc. merely because they could not defend their argument. "Political Correctness" and "Educational Integrity" at work in the 1950s.

Although I was born, raised, and schooled in the "North", I was cantankerous enough even then to know the "Victors write the history".

If we let the anti-self-defense people write OUR history, the story of Coffin Rock will be our destiny. I stand with Patrick Henry, "... Forbid it, Almighty God!"

((Yes, I know - this should be in the Legal and Political forum.))

[This message has been edited by Dennis (edited March 01, 1999).]
 
On the subject of loser trophies:

The Prez signed a law that said we couldn't collect human parts (at least Jeffery Dahmer style), so does this mean I have to sell my shrunken head collection? I was really hoping to add to it, 'cause it seems that PC Central is just across the river in Maryland. As best I can ascertain, the heads over there are all pre-shrunken... and probably only stuck on with string for the 4-second sound bytes on the Six O-clock news. Unfortunately, a lot of the those "little thoughts" get loose and float loose just to get stuck in other locales. It would seem some folks over there have too much leisure time and not enough of their own business to tend.
 
Another point, has anyone else noticed that catalogs with WWII German military replicas all have disclaimers stating, "We ain't Nazis, never have been, never will be." but the same catalogs selling relics from the USSR/East Germany don't have discaimers stating, "We ain't Commies, never have been, never will be."?

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Ne Conjuge Nobiscum
 
What I find so interesting is that the group that told us to "Have an Open Mind" back in the 60's and 70's are the same group (with exceptions of course) that are defining what is and what is not Politically Correct.

What used to be Politically Correct was free speach and the Free exchange of Ideas. Sheeple don't want that, and neither do their shepards. Because the free exchange of Ideas can't be contained nor controled.

Hate speach is okay with the PC crowd as long as it is against the people who love Freedom.
 
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