I've had a similar situation. I took an Oil Painting Course, hosted at a local art gallery.
At the end of the class, there was a showcase of everyone's work, and one of the non-classmate attendees had a leg-tattoo with the Iron Cross on it. While the symbol is used officially by some parts of the German military- this is the Midwest United States. That's a pretty good indicator of a person's affiliations or beliefs in this country.
I brought up my concern to the gallery owner and his words were "well, there're plenty of people being discriminated against by their tattoos in the news lately." This was about the time when Kilmar Albrego Garicia was having bad photoshop done on his knuckles and being claimed as a member of a serious streetgang (I don't know if I'll be flagged for naming them here."
It left a bad taste in my mouth, and so I don't go there anymore, and mention the situation whenever possible to people interested in the art there.
It's something worth making a "fuss" over. Tolerance for all doesn't mean tolerance for the intolerant.
Unfortunately Independent (MASSIVE, MASSIVE skateboard brand) use/used an iron cross as their logo for whatever reason. They’re not white suprematists or anything whatsoever, the designer purely did it for shock value (citing that ‘the pope wore it once so they should be able to as well’)
So there’s always a slim, slim chance that they were just a skater with a deep love of their truck company (I’d say there would be a lotttttt of old school skaters with independent tattoos, granted they’re usually surrounded by other skate company logos)
If you're committed to getting a permanent tattoo, you need to do your fucking research and make sure it won't be interpreted as a hate symbol. I highly doubt that anyone is stupid enough to accidentally get a Nazi tattoo.
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u/89ZERO Aug 07 '26
I've had a similar situation. I took an Oil Painting Course, hosted at a local art gallery.
At the end of the class, there was a showcase of everyone's work, and one of the non-classmate attendees had a leg-tattoo with the Iron Cross on it. While the symbol is used officially by some parts of the German military- this is the Midwest United States. That's a pretty good indicator of a person's affiliations or beliefs in this country.
I brought up my concern to the gallery owner and his words were "well, there're plenty of people being discriminated against by their tattoos in the news lately." This was about the time when Kilmar Albrego Garicia was having bad photoshop done on his knuckles and being claimed as a member of a serious streetgang (I don't know if I'll be flagged for naming them here."
It left a bad taste in my mouth, and so I don't go there anymore, and mention the situation whenever possible to people interested in the art there.
It's something worth making a "fuss" over. Tolerance for all doesn't mean tolerance for the intolerant.