Was wondering through a shop today and found Gulf of America hats…whatever, queue eye roll. Then I saw an Alligator Alcatraz hat, proceeded to knock it off the rack and stomp on it a bunch. Then knocked half the Gulf of America hats off the rack now that I realize this shop owner is a piece of shit. (Im in a vacationy souvenir shop)
I think nothing of it, figures the employees will pick up the hats and put them back on the rack…
About an hour later a police officer walks up to me in a nearby restaurant and says he needs to speak to me. Turns out the guy was went back and watched the security footage to ID me…the cop says the guy wants to prosecute me if I dont pay for the hat.
I get down to the shop (its a 14 dollar hat btws) and the guy acts like it was a Gulf of America hat I damaged (obviously trying to misrepresent the situation).
Im now not allowed in that shop for a year, as if I’d ever go shopping back there.
I explained to a friend what happened a while after it happened, after having a not great conversation about it with my inlaws who think “the guy is allowed to sell whatever he wants”
After I tell my friend what happened, he says its the coolest thing I’ve ever done. I really needed to hear that after having a shitty conversation with my in-laws about how they think what I did was stupid.
Anyway, made me feel much better because the shop owner is a piece of crap, and is trying to profit off other people’s misery, and I will never support that.
Holy hell you guys.
Do Not Split.
We fight fascism. We can’t quibble against who is or isn’t being destructive enough against fascism.
If you think it’s too soon, fine. But don’t turn on people who are there.
You know the people in other countries asking why we aren’t in the streets and actually fighting to save our country? The answer is that we can’t agree if destroying fascist hat is too far, amongst our own allies.
If all you can do today with your life and risk tolerance is do some property damage against a fascist hat then fucking THANK YOU for doing something more than most.
It’s a hat.
Do Not Split.
This is correct.
Thank you for reminding us.
Just another lesson that doing literally anything will get you targeted, so we might as well be doing big things that cause a great impact.
You achieved nothing except paying the shop owner 14 bucks for something you don’t even want and is damaged. I’d say you played yourself.
Hmm, you gave me an idea to stick chewing gum inside hats like that if I ever see them. Chances are low that the sabotage would be noticed until someone tries it on, and I won’t lose sleep over anyone who wears it and gets gum in their hair.
Oh screw that, I would’ve called his bluff. The lawyer fees to prosecute a 14$ loss would put him hundreds of dollars in the hole.
Nah, I was with my in-laws in a restaurant. I didnt feel like getting arrested for something dumb.
That makes sense; gotta do what you gotta do.
Yeah, but he can drop the case at anytime and the guy would still get booked for a misdemeanor. The US is a shithole country ruled by a dictator.
Name and shame the shop.
I can’t because I barely knew the shops name when I went in. Was just doing touristy stuff. And now I’ll get arrested for coming within like 50 feet of the shop. Might be in my Google maps history somewhere, but its not worth looking for. I just want to enjoy the rest of my vacation before I go back to my regular life where I doom scroll all day waiting for the trump admin to do some other stupid and/or evil shit to further push pur country toward a full fascist state.
Wow you people literally wait for Trump to something ? Your life and all the other Libs life are that boring ? LMFAO!!! PATHETIC!!!
Why are you here? This isnt about Trump, its about the fact that we have a concentration camp in Florida. Its only a matter of time before they start killing the people in those camps just like they did in Nazi Germany. If you cant see that, then you’re more lost than I thought, and you dont deserve to be treated like a human being, bcz obviously you dont have the common decency to treat others like human beings.
Dude, you ended up supporting the very thing that made you upset. You are kind of an idiot greenly
I mean you can’t walk into peoples’ houses and break things. This isn’t a surprise.
The shop owner is a piece of shit. You fucked up by buying merchandise from a piece of shit. Own your mistakes and do better next time. The correct move is to simply leave the store as soon as you see that shit. The store owner is a piece of shit and doesn’t care what you think. He has plenty more hats to sell to plenty more pieces of shit.
I bought a pair of shorts the day before after driving 5 and a half hours. The hats were hidden in the very back of the store. Excuse me for not scouring the store to make sure it was okay to buy from first.
No, I’m saying you bought it when you damaged it in a childish tantrum.
I’d do it again too. I don’t support profiting fascist merchandise…this is like selling Awschits t-shits and then tepling me to calm down about being upset that i saw one… Its a fucking concentration camp, and youre an idiot if you think its a childish tantrum to vandalize that stuff.
But you did support profiting fascist merchandise. You literally paid for the fascist merchandise you stomped on.
Nah, fuck that noise.
Destroying fascist propaganda is a win.
He didn’t destroy it. He bought it.
No, i destroyed it. I paid for it bcz the police officer told me the shop owner was going to press charges if I didnt pay for the hat. Aka, get arrested for trespassing on my vacation over a hat, or pay for it and leave with my family…I would do it again in a heartbeat. Ain’t selling that dirty ass white hat to anybody else. I count it as a win.
Right, you paid money for the hat. The shop owner doesn’t care if it is destroyed, because their goal is profiting from the hat, which they did. The hat served its purpose.
It’s like the people who buy books to burn them, and then the book ends up on the bestseller lists.
Its not like buying a book and burning it. Im sure you’d do the same thing if a police officer approached you in a restaurant and told you to pay fir the hat or get arrested.
I didnt literally buy the hat and go set it on fire.
The irony is that if you’d just stolen the hat and stomped it outside, they probably wouldn’t have noticed.
My general advice would be don’t fuel these people’s persecution complexes for petty shit.
Go big or join a militia. Vandalism just gets you on a list.
So you damaged property that didn’t belong to you and you’re mad that you almost got in trouble?
Just to be clear if you ran a peace and love shop would you be fine with someone pulling some rainbow flag merch off the shelves to stomp on it before leaving without paying?
If you only have an issue with it in my example situation then I fear you might just be a hypocrite.
If your grandchildren see this comment when they’re older they’ll think you’re a piece of shit
Hopefully my grand children have a better understanding of the English language that you do. You people use “nazi” to describe anyone that doesn’t think exactly like you. 99.96% of the time I see people calling someone a nazi these days it’s literally just someone that has different beliefs. Yall have used the word so incorrectly for so long that it has lost all of its original meaning to most people.
Did none of you read “boy who cried wolf” growing up? Come on now.
Some people who want one group to dominate another are nice people actually
-moron
It’s almost like humans are incredibly complex and blanket labeling anyone who thinks differently from yourself as x thing is stupid.
Your way of thinking is small minded and short sighted.
I know that your kind hates Chick-fil-A because they are a Christian company that “hate the gays” or whatever . What do you think when I tell you that all my gay friends fuckin LOVE Chick-fil-A? Far more than any of my straight friends. Do you believe they are nazis too? Or could they just be gay people that love that sauce and that chicken? Are you capable of nuance whatsoever or is the entire world sorted completely into “right” and “wrong” in your mind?
The world truly is complex
-allied soldier arriving at Auschwitz
Are you purposely interpreting everything I say in the most bad faith way humanly possible or are you just retarded?
I dunno are you suddenly feeling kinship?
People who claim “you just use Nazi to describe people you don’t agree with” while there’s literal neo-nazis and white supremacists in the government are Nazi-appolgists. Supporting Nazis and Nazi actions makes you a Nazi too.
It’s hard to trust people claiming so and so is a nazi when they can’t even properly define what a nazi is or how they know that person is one.
I’ll give you a tip though. Making a dark humor or offensive shirt/hat around a current event doesn’t make someone a nazi. Perhaps an asshole. Prick. Or some other colorful word you like, but it does not make that person automatically a nazi.
Making a dark humor or offensive shirt/hat around a current event doesn’t make someone a nazi.
No, but it normalizes Nazi behavior, i.e. supports it. The intent doesn’t matter when life and death is on the line.
No it fucking doesn’t. You’re jumping to several conclusions and then making up reasons why you’re morally correct so you dont have to actually think about the nuances of human existence.
“just because the hat in question was advertising a concentration camp doesn’t mean that Nazis are involved. reeee!”
-You, a dipshit
The only dipshits im seeing around here are people like you that cannot distinguish the difference between someone selling something they may or may not agree with from running a business. I am positive there are atheists who sell bibles. There are racists who will happily take money from people they hate. Unless you know the shop keeper very personally you have no idea what they think about it.
At best they don’t even understand what’s on the hat. At worst (given the context given from OP) they don’t care what the hats or shirts say on them as long as someone is buying them. To make the massive leap straight to “they must fully support this thing and hate minorities” is absolutely wild.
Is it possible they are actually Nazis? Absolutely. I am not saying that it’s impossible by any stretch of the imagination. I am simply saying that there is no way to know what that shop keeper thinks about anything. All we have to go off is the inherently biased retelling from OP.
They don’t seem mad about almost getting in trouble, only about in-laws disagreeing with them, and of course the shop owner selling those hats.
What this person did was childish and immature. The in-laws were absolutely correct. OP is lucky they allowed them to pay for the damaged goods. Sounds like it was a small town situation. I’ve seen people arrested and given a record for the same behavior.
Counterpoint: punch Nazis in the face
Why does this post have so many Nazi apologists?
If you’re not ok with nazis hating messages of inclusion, justice, and equality how can you do the exact literal same exact literal thing against their messages of oppression and hate?
I’m a brain-dead liberal btw
Paradox of tolerance, for one thing.
“Two of things may share one property, but that does not mean they share all properties” for another. Like a surgeon and a serial killer both cut people open, but they are not the same.
Poe’s law is strong, here.
A person capitalizing on current events to sell slop to idiots is not necessarily a nazi.
Without more information all that can be assumed is that they like people giving them money more than they care about optics with the public. Most shop keepers would prefer money over being viewed as “moral” by some random person.
Supporting Nazis and their policies makes you a Nazi though. Selling Nazi merch supports the Nazis.
See my other comment responding to your flawed way of thinking.
What do you get when you sit down to dinner with ten Nazis?
Eleven Nazis.
Something something only siths deal in absolutes.
That sounds like an absolute, Mr. Jedi.
#notallfascists
To clarify, I’m not defending or supporting OP’s behavior, but I believe the initial comment was misrepresenting things.
Just to be clear if you ran a peace and love shop would you be fine with someone pulling some rainbow flag merch off the shelves to stomp on it before leaving without paying?
Nazi stuff is in no way comparable to rainbow flags. We all have a moral duty to fight Nazis and their collaborators.
I wasnt comparing rainbow stuff to nazi stuff. I was using a vaguely “opposite” thing to make my point about hypocrisy. Come on now.
You compared the OP’s damaging of a contemporary concentration camp hat to destroying a rainbow flag, weren’t you? The alligator Alcatraz thing isn’t literally a 1930s Nazi, but it’s extremely similar.
we really should start calling them by their real name. groups like the kkk and white suprimists were the inspiration for Hitler and he used the same rhetoric to form the nazis. the same rhetoric Trump used in the election, i think i counted 3 times he used language directly coming from Hitler speeches?
i think people are too slow to understand nuance, don’t know their history or take everything literally. when people say Nazis they’re talking about our countries bigots and nationalists which want to take away our liberty and freedom. so maybe we call them Maga, that’s what the history books will call them and i don’t think history has every looked favorable on those constructing concentration camps. Maga should be a revolting word.
I get your point although it does seem like you’re comparing 1:1 😅
That’s because the whole notion that it’s hypocritical is founded on the idea of equating those things, why are you backing down?
Destroying hateful shit isn’t analogous to destroying egalitarian shit.
Guy is an “enlightened centrist” i.e. useful idiot at best and actual fascist at worst
why are you backing down?
Many reasons:
- I’m willing to overlook the blunder to understand someone’s point.
- I don’t have much to go on to label them a diehard centrist or a fascist because the chances of that happening in the Fediverse are lower than in other forums.
- Skimming their comment history doesn’t give me much to go on.
- I don’t need to assume that everyone who uses a questionable example as part of a larger point invalidates what they’ve said entirely.
- I’ve been in that position before, where an entire thread gets stupidly derailed because a handful of people start assuming shit, arguing in bad faith, and blowing it up for no good reason other than to get their drama fix.
And so on.
I can only hope this is a troll and you didn’t actually go full Karen.
This is a space to vent, so let’s remain civil and avoid namecalling.
Maybe you’re cool with people profiting off others misery, but im not. Selling alligator Alcatraz hats is about the most vile thing you can do right now that isnt actually participating in that shit. Go fuck yourself, juat in case my view wasn’t clear on the matter.
I mean… You quite literally paid for an Alligator Alcatraz hat. This means you provided profit to the shopkeeper for selling an Alligator Alcatraz hat. If you had impulse control, and just left, you wouldn’t have financially supported the shopkeeper.
My options were pay for the hat, or get arrested. There were two cops standing there telling me the dipshit wanted to press charges on me.
Those were your options… after you started making a big scene and damaged their shitty fascist hats while having already purchased stuff from the store on camera. I 100% understand and support your anger with their making money off of the fact that we have a literal concentration camp in FL, but you absolutely set yourself up for that.
I didnt make a big scene, I knocked a few hats off a rack and stepped on the Alligator Alcatraz one…nobody even noticed until like an hour later.
Best $14 spent this year.
Right!? The police honestly looked like theyd rather be anywhere else and they were annoyed this dipshit shop owner was even contacting them. The hat wasn’t even ruined.
