You would think that a band named Rage Against the Machine would be pretty radical in terms of their politics, and you would be right, but that hasn’t stopped right-wingers complaining about a tweet from guitarist Tom Morello taking aim at Nazis.
This is a controversial take for some conservatives, apparently.
On Thursday, Morello tweeted a graphic which reads: “German saying: If nine people sit down at a table with one Nazi without protest, there are 10 Nazis at the table.”
Pretty uncontroversial. As Uproxx notes, it’s not too far removed from the oft-cited quote from the late human rights activist Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
And yet, conservatives on Twitter – many of whom have paid the social media platform for a coveted blue tick – aren’t happy with the idea behind this thought experiment, with many getting angry over “communists” for some reason:
They’re even kicking off under Morello’s tweet in the form of Community Notes – Twitter’s tool used to provide context to a post if it’s inaccurate.
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One anonymous user wrote “there’s little evidence that this is actually a German saying”, before linking to a tweet citing the phrase from an actual German person named Jens Foell.
Oops.
And to be clear about whether or not it is actually a German saying, one Reddit thread from 2018 saw users discuss its validity, with all but one claiming they haven’t come across it.
However prominent the saying may be in Germany, we’d like to think many can get behind the sentiment no matter where it came from, but looking at the tweets above, we’d be wrong…
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