Topic on Talk:Freedom Road Socialist Organization

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I've read the Fightback News article on this incident and I'm not sure there's much of a story there. Seems that FBN jumped a bit too fast on the story without having all the facts, because it's factually not a Nazi uniform.

On the other hand, if we decide to criticize FRSO for this -- and keep in mind what we write on pages is interpreted as prolewiki stance by readers like all of our articles -- I'm not sure what the angle would be. They thought it was a Nazi uniform, but it wasn't... and then there's nothing to criticize. The only criticism we could make is that they didn't do due diligence and investigated the case before writing their article and interviewing the students. Which to me isn't really a big issue and doesn't count as opportunism on their part.

Keep in mind the student in question definitely played up the ambiguity. He described his uniform as "a German soldier from the the 40s". He also performed a salute that wasn't the nazi salute, but also didn't seem to be the GDR salute. Hitler has also been photographed doing an extended arm salute at 45° (usual one is a bit higher), but with the fingers pointing straight out, and the student kept the angle but closed his fist. Again, super ambiguous and this doesn't happen by accident.

It's a whole lot of "yes that looked like a nazi thing, but actually if you look closely it wasn't!" to defend this student. If I'd been there and seeing this live, I would have first thought he was a fascist who didn't have enough courage to actually wear the right uniform.