There are stupid tattoos. And then there are offensively stupid tattoos.
A German man is facing five years in jail, after being charged with inciting racial hatred. The tattoo in question features a Nazi camp slogan under a picture of Auschwitz.
27 year old Marcel Zech is a local politician for far-right group, National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).
The tattoo was photographed when he took his shirt off at a public swimming pool in Oranienburg, which was the site of a concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
The NPD has been labelled by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as “an anti-democratic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-constitutional party”. In fact, the German upper house launched a push for the Constitutional Court to ban the party in 2013.
Why anyone would even WANT a tattoo like that, let alone actually get it, is beyond us.
Here are some REALLY bad (but definitely not racist) tattoos.
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If it wasn't so offensive and ignorant, he should be jailed for stupidity and bad taste.
Jawohl, let's jail people for views offensive to the people, just like the NAZIs did.
Well being offended because someone has an ugly dream catcher on their flabby bicep is a little different to celebrating the extermination of 8 million people, which legislated against in his country. People who are stupid enough to glorify the ugliest and most brutal stain on human history should be incarcerated. His action offends community values on an international level.
He's obviously a complete knob and I suspect has a room temperature IQ. That said, I struggle with the idea that simply expressing an idea no matter how offensive should land a jail term let alone one of five years. Germany, like most of Europe is pretty liberal on jail terms for actual violent crimes leading to the bizarre situation that actually going up and beating up a Jewish person could lead to less jail time than a tattoo that I assume virtually all Jews would find deeply offensive.
Slight correction, in Germany assaulting a Jew could be far more serious as they have special Laws there akin to the US Hate Crime statute. But if it's anyone else, then yes, you are correct.
The Germans are ultra sensitive on the issue of Jews still to this day. I was in Ulm a couple of years ago and the taxi driver pointed at a residential block whilst we were at the lights and told me that's a Jewish block where the Jews get free housing from the government. He said it as a matter of fact, I couldn't tell if he said it with pride or contempt. Maybe he was just throwing it out there and seeing where I went with it. On one hand it struck me as unfair and counterproductive to harmony on the other maybe it's justice for what the Germans did.