German city bans ‘silent fox’ gesture in schools over similarity to far-right sign
German city bans ‘silent fox’ gesture in schools over similarity to far-right sign
Bremen says symbol, used to call for silence in class, ‘in danger of being mistaken’ for Turkish extremist ‘wolf salute’
A city in northern Germany has become the first to issue an all-out ban on the use of a hand gesture used to encourage silence in the classroom because of its close resemblance to a far-right Turkish gesture.
The “silent fox” gesture – where the hand is posed to resemble an animal with upright ears (the little and forefinger) and a closed mouth (the middle fingers pressed against the thumb) – has long been seen as a useful teaching tool by educators in Germany and elsewhere. It signals to children that they should stop talking and listen to their teacher.
But authorities in the port city of Bremen say the symbol is “in danger of being mistaken” for the right-wing extremist “wolf salute”, from which it is indistinguishable.
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So, they're just gonna let some far-right idiots ruin a much deeper and longstanding culture?
Well, done.
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I mean it's not the first time they've done so.
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I mean that was always the risk with banning speech. Lots of shit gets co-opted out of it's original usage. Swastika being the prime example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika. Now those with other cultures that use the symbol in completely different ways gets shafted out of their culture/religion/whatever. Now it's going to be metal heads... Which you don't really want to fuck with. We're generally a crazy bunch.
Anyway this is just fuel for them to co-opt a bunch more shit and censor/ruin cultures that they don't like. It's just like the "okay" hand gesture... Next will be "thumbs up" for some insane reasoning/logic.
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Yeah. I'm even salty that a beautiful rainbow is no longer just a happy childhood thing but has been turned into sex and gender shit.
Invent your own damn signs and leave these alone!
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Terrible take. Rainbow =/= gay
Though odds are if you "liked" the rainbow after 3rd or 4th grade, you're probably kinda gay.
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This is also just a cutesy hand sign for "fox" in Japan, with zero alt-right symbolism. Foxes are a significant part of the mythology there, and there are all sorts of tales about leaving food for fox spirits to bring good fortune. There's even a prominent vTuber who's regularly depicted making the sign.
I wish these alt-right fuckwads would stop trying to wreck shit for the rest of the world.
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I feels like, the far right will not stop ruining thing to begin with, and with everything banned due to associated with far right movement, they will continue to evolve and adopt their gesture and symbol to further ruining everything just to trigger everyone else. That's how they empowering themselves, and people took their bait, hook, line, and sinker.
It's time to considering another way to tackle extremism than to ban symbol and hand sign.
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It's time to considering another way to tackle extremism than to ban symbol and hand sign.
There's no other way and it's important to ban extremism. The importance to not give room to Nazi like ideologies is bigger than people no longer doing fox hand gestures in public. Sucks but so it is with a lot of laws, a lot of people aren't the problem it's the few that are.
Also, so far we've been very successful banning these symbols. The US, not so much and look how well this works out.
If the issue of misuse appears more prominent in Asia, I'm sure they'll act the same way and ban it.
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Just use the silent unicorn
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What about the baby metal fox god?
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Baby Metal fans in shambles.
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Imagine losing all symbols to far right because as soon as they start using it you do not fight...
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How do you fight it? Go around using it at every opportunity and have people think you're a far right sympathiser? They'll believe that before they believe you're simply passionate about symbols.
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In this particular case it could be to just keep it as its silence meaning. And more generally it could be associating it with more positive symbols like the lgbtq flag, or a socialist rose in France (this is a poor example because the fren socialist party always betray but it is the spirit). If each time they start to use a symbol we stop using it, they the only possibility left for the symbol is to be for the far right. But if you keep using it for the original meaning, it should be good. It happens with the triskell (beton symbol). It was used by a SS section from britain but now it is still used to represent Bretagne (like the gwen Ha-Du)
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I recommend replacing it with the silent middle finger.
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"I told them it means
peace between worldstime to be quiet." -Rick
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Metal fans are outraged.
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Here the sign is similar, but without the raised "ears", so all four fingers touching the thumb.
Though it's far less "official" as such, it's far more common to use the sign language "quiet" or "silent".
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Pssht!
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How will they summon the fox devil?
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The sign means “Llama” in the sign language I’m currently learning… Guess we don’t talk about those far-right llamas.
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Oh no the quiet coyote :(
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The “silent fox” gesture – where the hand is posed to resemble an animal with upright ears (the little and forefinger) and a closed mouth (the middle fingers pressed against the thumb) – has long been seen as a useful teaching tool by educators in Germany and elsewhere.
The salute was recently the focus of a diplomatic and sporting row, when the Turkish national football player Merih Demiral used it to celebrate scoring a goal in Turkey’s round of 16 match against Austria at the Euros earlier this month.
While the symbol not banned in Germany as it is in neighbouring Austria and France, its use was condemned by interior minister Nancy Faeser, who said “to use the football championships as a platform for racism” was “completely unacceptable.”
Patricia Brandt, a spokesperson for Bremen’s education authority, said the topic of the silent fox gesture and whether to ban it had long been under discussion but the city felt it now had no choice.
The wolf salute is the symbol and identifying logo of the Grey Wolves, which is classified as a rightwing extremist group and has an estimated 20,000 members in Germany and many more outside the country.
The group, which has a long history of terrorism dating back to the 1970s, has been blamed for bomb attacks in Paris and Bangkok, and the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981.
The original article contains 622 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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Zot zot zot!
