I don’t usually do “nuance”—I find it usually it's a term for, “I refuse to take a principled stand”—but in this case, I can see a little bit on both sides of the issue. On the one hand, seeing “Nazis” casually dining at your local restaurant would be jarring; on the other, I would note that you would have to be shockingly stupid not to quickly conclude what was going on. The so-called Nazis were sitting near imagined U.S. service personnel dressed in period uniforms—it should have taken someone all of about five milliseconds to realize that there was some sort of reenactment afoot, especially since battle reenactments are common to the area.
Nevertheless, it’s created quite a kerfuffle, and the restaurant even had to close for a day after receiving threats from triggered snowflakes.
Kith and Kin, a Hudson restaurant, has reopened after shutting down for a day in response to "increased harassment and threats." https://t.co/0peWJrD7EM
— The Patriot Ledger (@PatriotLedger) October 17, 2024
The story:
A local restaurant reopened on Wednesday, a day after it shuttered in response to receiving "increased harassment and threats" when several news organizations reported on an incident over the weekend in which several patrons who were historical reenactors came to dine while still wearing World War II costumes — two of them as Nazi soldiers.
Meanwhile, the president of the Hudson organization that put on the reenactment called the reenactors' decision to wear their costumes off-site "repugnant."
The restaurant, of course, had to do what is now the obligatory "we're so sorry" dance, which has become so ubiquitous as to have become all but meaningless:
All right, to hell with “nuance.”
"Repugnant?" Really? I mean, what mentally challenged individual thought that actual Nazi supporters were sitting there sipping coffee with dudes dressed up in American WWII garb? A reader wrote me about the situation and said, “I did send them an email asking if they would melt down if Harvard students in kaffiyas walked in, but received no response yet.”
It’s an excellent point. Doubtless, in Progressiveachusetts, the pro-Hamas crowd would have been welcomed in with open arms.
“They were all World War II reenactors, part of a historical war reenactment at the nearby American Heritage Museum—a legitimate, actual museum of military history located about 21 miles west of Boston.” https://t.co/nQ65XYmaSZ
— Teddy Wilson 🏴☠️ (@reportbywilson) October 18, 2024
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The Hitler stuff has just plain gotten so stupid in recent years—everything progressives don’t like is now automatically “Hitlerian.” I am certainly not one to minimize the Nazi strongman’s depravity, and it’s clear he was an evil man. But just like the left’s endless trotting out of the “that’s racist” trope, what they’ve actually done by this endless rhetoric is to minimize the true evil that a man like Hitler represents. If everything is “racist,” then nothing is racist.
They've trivialized it.
Many years ago, I went to a Civil War enactment in Northern California, and let me just say, these guys were into it. They were committed. It was extremely compelling as they portrayed a battle that is now more than a century old. Are we to vilify the participants who played the Confederates? Should they be canceled, and not allowed to eat at a a local pub?
While I can understand that people at a restaurant dressed in Nazi garb may be jarring for a second to patrons, the reality is that this kind of episode shows just how weak so many people have become in this country. It was a reenactment, people—get over it; if you were too dumb to realize that the folks in the eatery were participants, that’s on you.
Well, I guess my attempt at nuance was evidently short-lived. The folks who were triggered by actors in costumes need to get a life.
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