On Thursday, Oct. 23, a man dressed in a black uniform with a swastika armband, was arrested for breaking a University of Georgia student’s nose with a glass beer mug.
In a statement to The Red & Black, Grace Lang, the student who confronted the man and was subsequently assaulted, recounted the experience saying the man was allegedly “grinning ear to ear the entire time, including while assaulting me.”
Several major news media outlets have picked up the story, including NBC, CBS, USA Today and the New York Post, leading to an outpouring of both disgust and support online. On The Red & Black’s Instagram post reporting the story, one user commented “Total hoax” while another under a separate post regarding Cutters’ statement said, “They shot Charlie Kirk, I don’t care about a costume tbh.”
These comments aim to detract from the larger issue at hand. The assault in downtown Athens is not an isolated eruption of hatred, but something generated from years of subtle bigotry.
Similarly, the New York Post reported the assault with the headline: “Bozo clad in Nazi attire breaks woman’s nose outside bar and gets busted.” What is striking about this headline is its framing of the act as stupidity instead of moral wrongdoing. Dressing as a Nazi is not just dumb or in bad taste; it invokes symbols of hatred, genocide and fascism.
This incident is particularly reminiscent of the Young Republicans’ group chat leak. Young Republican leaders across several states were exposed for making flippant jokes about gas chambers and sexual assault, and saying slurs in more than 28,000 posts obtained by POLITICO. Vice President JD Vance minimized the actions labeling the offenders as “kids.”
Whether it is a news media outlet or the vice president, it has become clear that American institutions and leaders have become inefficient in condemning abhorrent behavior. When the White House posts ASMR videos of undocumented people being deported, when an elected representative has an American flag deformed into a swastika and when supporters make light of and make merchandise of inhumane immigrant detention facilities like “Alligator Alcatraz,” it signals not only desensitization, but moral decay.
The man in the Nazi uniform dressed in that way to get a reaction: he wanted a fight. And when our institutions at the top become smug and unrepentant in their actions, it trickles into our cultural zeitgeist. It teaches people that dehumanization can be funny, that fascist imagery can be a costume and that moral outrage is just a “woke” overreaction.
