A College Student Was Told to Remove a ‘Fuck Nazis’ Sign Because It Wasn’t ‘Inclusive’

Leticia Miranda, reporting for BuzzFeed News:

Nicole Parsons said she was fed up with her university’s silence over a string of hate crimes on campus when she put up a sign in her dorm window that read “FUCK NAZIS YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.” […]

But a week after posting the sign in her dorm window, she received an email from a resident director asking her to remove the sign over “issues of inclusion.” […]

“While Residence Education cannot force you or your roommate to take the sign down, I am asking that you or your roommate take the sign down so that all students can be a part of an inclusive residential experience, as well as having a respectful environment to be a part of here on our campus,” Eddie Papazoni, a resident director at UMass Amherst, told Parsons in the email obtained by BuzzFeed News.

“I was in absolute shock,” said Parsons. “This email tells me the university cares more about the feelings of Nazis than the safety of their students.”

Essential reading in today’s world: Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance. In the mid-20th century there wasn’t any debate in the West over whether we should tolerate the intolerant, because they had to fight the Nazis in a bloody war. We don’t want to learn this lesson that way again.

When someone draws a goddamn swastika on a “Happy Hanukkah” sign, “Fuck Nazis” is the appropriate response.

★ Monday, 24 December 2018