A Far-Right German Leader, Who Downplayed The Nazi Reign As "Bird Shit," Had His Clothes Stolen By A Protestor While Swimming In A Lake

NY Times- A prominent far-right leader who dismissed the Nazi era as mere bird poop on Germany’s 1,000-year history was swimming in a lake near his house one evening recently, when a man on the shore grabbed his clothes.

The thief’s parting words: “Nazis don’t need bathing fun!”

By the time the far-right politician, Alexander Gauland, a co-leader of the Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, made it out of the water, the man had made off with the bundle and someone had already called the police.

The episode unleashed plenty of schadenfreude, and some criticism, on social media. Images of a dripping Mr. Gauland being escorted back to his house while wearing only a colorful pair of patterned swimming shorts spread rapidly, and a hashtag was born: #bathingfun.

What a silly scene down by the lake in Germany! Ze fuhrer vas shwimming unt a ruffian stole his svim trunks! What a naughty, naughty protestor. You can’t take a man’s clothes while he’s splashing about, having a little “bathing fun!” And sure, Nazis may not NEED bathing fun, but it doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy it as much as the next genocidal regime.

Why, exactly, did Gauland say to make this rapscallion call him a Nazi?

“Hitler and the National Socialists are just bird shit in 1,000 years of successful German history.”

Oh dear. That seems unwise. Hey Alexander, just so you know, whenever anyone in the entire world hears “Germany,” our minds immediately think of Hitler and the Holocaust. That’s going to be the case for at least another 1,000 years. I understand that Germany has calmed down a lot since then, but there are still people alive who endured one of the darkest chapters of human history. And while those children were being torn from their homes, I guarantee they weren’t thinking… “this is bird shit!”

In general, Germany takes responsibility for its role in history. I know that German schools focus heavily on the Nazi era and do not gloss over the horrors of the Holocaust. So it makes sense that Alexander’s comments would have rubbed some people the wrong way. The walk home from the lake in wet trunks is a fitting punishment. You better believe his thighs were chafed like raw hamburger meat. Dude looks like someone to whose testicle sack gravity has not been kind. That loose ball bag was grinding against each thigh with the weight of the six million souls killed, asserting that they were hardly “just bird shit.”