In early 1945, the 20th Armored Division of the US Army was on its way east, having landed at Le Havre, France and then advancing towards Nazi Germany. Their march would eventually make them liberators, the first Allied soldiers to arrive at the Dachau concentration camp just outside of Munich.
There were long miles of hostile territory to get through first, though. At one crossroads after crossing from France into Germany, one of the division sergeants told a young private to wait there and show the rest of the convoy which way to go. The private did his job, with just one issue: not knowing when the last of the convoy had come through, he eventually found himself alone, night falling on the Nazi-held land.
That private, as youāve likely guessed, was my grandfather, Bob Small. And like on all the rest of the days of the war, right through its end and his safe return back home to Florida, he got lucky: when the convoy stopped for the night, the sergeant looked around and asked, āWhereās Small?ā Realizing what must have happened, he sent a team back to that crossroads, where my grandfather had had the good sense to hole up and wait. They took him back to camp, the boys had a laugh, and the next day they kept moving.
Like many who came through that war, and most wars before and after, my grandfather didnāt talk much about what heād seen. Heād laugh about peeling bushels of potatoes when he was on KP (kitchen patrol), and on occasion he told the story of being left behind that day. He never talked about what he saw at Dachau, but the photos published in the 20th Armoredās official history show it well enough.
All of thatās a long way of saying that even now, 80 years almost to the day from when Bob Small spent some very uncomfortable hours lost in enemy territory, I donāt have much tolerance for Nazis. Throwing up fascist salutes as a provocation is, indeed, just that ā a provocation ā, and itās one that still deserves a punch in the face or, in the case of Sunslider, a swift ban.
Itās a clichĆ© because itās true: my forebears didnāt succeed in fighting off the last fascist menace for me to betray that effort today.
So if anyone wants to have a debate about it, Iām more than willing to do that. Given how easy that is compared to what my grandfather had to do, I count myself lucky. But the bottom line isnāt going to change: whether youāre Elon or just a white supremacist fanboy, if youāre putting yourself out there as a Nazi, Sunslider isnāt the place for you.
Honestly, though, I donāt think thatās a particularly large percentage of the population, nor a group that contributes much to our collective good. So if youāre in the vast majority for whom a āNo Nazisā policy makes sense, come on over, weāre very happy to have you join us.