But would this offend you - and if so, what would you do?

I would just ignore and move on, but there is a feed on FB to report this type of posts.

I think you nailed it with the “Soup Nazi”, @janbb.
Inured.
Use of the flag was a little over the top, and I might have mentioned it, depending on how well you know the people involved.
Was this an image they went to the trouble of creating, or did they copy it from the internet. I bet they copied it, making it even more trivial.

I found the use of the flag a lot over the top personally but no, I don’t know the people well. If I did, I’d probably mention it in a post or private message. Whether they created or copied it, it still surprised me.

Everyone’s sensitivity has a different half-life.
I doubt that we would hear so many Obama/Hitler comparisons if the Republicans were more empathetic and more educated.

Not to be inflammatory, but….

Probably wasn’t original, just tactless.

I think it’s in poor taste but I have better things at which to direct my moral outrage. (I don’t even know if that’s grammatically correct but I’m too busy to care.)

@filmfann On the other hand, I’ve seen comparisons of Trump with Hitler too.

I try to avoid political stuff on facebook at all costs. It’s so passive. I focus my effort on real life situations where persuasion I easier. Facebook is not the environment for it. I mean, most people who post political bullshit anyways are the ones who turn arguments into drama. They do it for the vanity orgies.

I tend to agree with @LeavesNoTrace
While rather over the top, what’s wrong with plain, old, “grammar police”?
I would let it go, I don’t think the intent behind it is to injure or insult, more of a emphatic connotation to something this person finds offensive. I think the term “Nazi” being added to certain expressions is meant to denote extreme control and abuse of power.

@dxs

I need to take your advice vis a vis Facebook. Every post seems to be an invitation for unhinged drama these days.

Just yesterday me and a long-term “friend” got into it over a silly post I made. Considering taking a break from social media for a few days.

@LeavesNoTrace

I dropped FB back in 2011, too much drama, too many narcissists and their endless ” look at me!” crap. I have a good friend that is in, near daily, FB drama over her political and animal abuse passions. I don’t get why people choose to invite drama, gah!

No. It does not “offend” me. In fact it might even cheapen the Nazi image like Mel Brooks did in the Producers, “Springtime for Hitler”.

@LuckyGuy Just curious. How do you think you’d feel if you were a Holocaust survivor?

I would not be personally offended, but I would take the opportunity to educate them on the term grammarian.

@janbb I might be pissed. I probably wouldn’t buy a Mercedes either.

Although… I’m guessing quite a few survivors saw Mel Brooks’ show and liked it.
A thumb in Hitler’s eye.

You know I saw one of those postings on Facebook and never gave it a thought. Now, I think it was very insensitive and de-sensitizing to trivialize the term like that.

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.”
Mel Brooks

I’m sure Mel lost family members to the Holocaust, and still made “To Be or Not to Be” hilariously funny.
There’s a case to be made for trivializing monsters.

I see what Mel Brooks does as different from this. I’m not arguing against comedy or satire.

Grammar and soup Nazis are so far afield from actual Nazis that they can’t possibly be offensive to me.

We have actual creeping fascism in our politics to worry about.

As I said, I’ve gotten used to those but the image was hurtful to me. I take your point but it’s not an either/or.

Not in the least, it’s just a word being used as a form of slang. Inevitable when you think about it, language has always been “abused” or twisted. Similar to calling a MIL “Attila the Hun” or an over eager boss who fires employees at will, “Jack the Ripper” or “Genghis Khan”

Hyperbole appears to be human nature.

Any exaggeration lies at the feet of the offended.

I think it’s not okay, and people should know it’s not okay. What I would do if I saw this is to hide the post on my newsfeed, and send the person a message explaining why I had done so. The people I have on my Facebook are those I genuinely consider “friends”, so that would be appropriate. I wouldn’t bother to write if it were an acquaintance, or if this was a friend-of-a-friend post that had turned up in my newsfeed.

I don’t use Nazi lightly. I don’t want to desensitized anyone to it. I want to remember their horror with all the necessary emotions.

I don’t know what I would have done in your situation. I may have made a general post about my views of the use of Nazi. I doubt I would have sent a PM.

@Hawaii_Jake Thanks.

Personally, that doesn’t offend me. (I’ve been called Grammar Nazi, Comma Nazi, and cussed at for correcting people’s work as an editor.) There’s a wide range of types and levels of offensiveness, and an even wider range of individual sensitivities to different things. Facebook tends to bring these things together, and show them to semi-randomly-related people. You could voice your upset if you like, but I’m sure the poster didn’t mean it the way you take it, and might not be likely to hear what you’d say in the way you meant it, particularly coming from someone they don’t really know in a random FB comment they might not even read, etc.

Just to be clearer since I’ve only said this three times, I’ve heard the term before and have become inured to it. It was this image that shocked me as I hadn’t seen it before. I’m not stupid enough to think it was meant to offend: I’m sure many people who flew the Confederate flag didn’t mean to offend anyone. And as I also said, since it was not someone I know closely and someone posted it to them, I was not going to act.

I’ve used the term grammar nazi myself as a bit of a throwaway term and usually in reference to myself if I’m being pedantic about something. Obviously I know the historic context of the word, but it does seem to have become a fairly common phrase. I doubt the people concerned even thought about how it could affect others.

Personally, I would just let it slide, but if you know the people well, you could privately message them and explain how it affected you. Not as a ‘don’t do this’, but more of a ‘I thought you might be interested to know’. Whether you do this will depend on your knowledge of the people concerned. Some people would be miffed to get the message. Others would thank you for alerting them to their insensitivity.

It would not hurt me seeing it, but I would not use it myself, because I am aware there are people who are hurt by it.
@ibstubro , I was unaware of such a vast array of those being used. Gag!

Yeah, it’s sad, @Here2_4. Some of those are really offensive, IMO. There were a number of them that I just couldn’t give a pass, no matter how remote the connection to the person posting.

I wouldn’t be offended. Maybe it would seem a tad insensitive to others.

No, I don’t like the word “Nazi” being trivialized. I would forward a private message. Sometimes people don’t think or realize, and telling them gives them the chance to see another perspective. I am not a Facebook user, so not certain if you can reply privately, but if possible that is what I would do.

This question really made me pause for second. I am not offended by the use of the word Nazi in your example, but the altering of the symbol makes me uneasy. I’m not sure why the swastika tampering bothers me, but it’s just a little too much for me for some reason.

Not offended in any way. I have been guilty of using the word nazi myself without thinking about it.

It more bothers me that a perfectly good, ancient symbol is so inextricably tied to naziism.

Yeah, pre-WWll stuff that bears the swastika symbol sells at a premium @Seek. The rednecks can’t seem to draw the distinction.