How to Handle a Nazi on the Beach

Nothing ruins a beautiful day at the beach like seeing a man with a swastika tattoo.

Usually, the only thing to break the tranquil spell is a seagull swiping my food. But on this day, on a beach in Maine, the peace was disrupted when my friend Susan hissed, “Look!” and nodded her head to the left. There, just several yards away, was a man with his back to us, no shirt on, and his left shoulder blade emblazoned with a large swastika.

My heart started pounding, and I had that sense of unreality that occurs when you hear terrible news you just don’t want to believe is true — can’t be true — but is true.

The man had settled with a woman near the water’s edge, and a male friend was sitting directly behind them and next to us. All acted as if nothing were out of the ordinary. They were just talking, laughing, drinking beer. The man with the swastika was saying something about hoping to spot a baby seal. It reminded me how even Hitler loved his dog.

I’m Jewish and therefore no stranger to anti-Semitism. A boy in my elementary school called a kid a “kike” on the playground. A girl I was friendly with told me the Pope said Catholics no longer blamed the Jews for killing Jesus. (I wondered, was she expecting me to thank her?) I’ve heard people use the expression “jewed me down,” meaning bargained for a lower price. I teach at one of the most liberal colleges in the galaxy, but two former students who were both half-Jewish told me they kept this aspect of their identity hidden because they’d heard students making anti-Semitic remarks.

I’ve heard and witnessed all this and more, but I’d never before seen someone with a swastika tattoo.

Believe me, it’s different than seeing it on television or online or in a movie. It’s absolutely chilling. It sent Susan and me into a tailspin of indecision. Should we stay or move to another spot on the beach? Should we say anything? Was there even a purpose in speaking up? After all, if someone’s so committed to fascism that he’ll have its symbol permanently inked on his skin, he doesn’t exactly seem like the open-minded type. And there was also the real possibility that he and his friends could physically harm us.

And so we did what we felt we could. We stood (or sat) our ground and refused to move. I muttered passive-aggressive comments that were just out of his earshot. And then, pretending to take pictures of the ocean, I photographed the man with his tattoo gleaming in the sun and posted the pics on Facebook. I received comments expressing horror and also commending me for my presence of mind to record the incident.

But I wondered — and still wonder — was that really the best I could do? The words, “this is how it starts” keep playing through my mind. I think about how not speaking up helped enable the Nazis to rise to power in 1930s Germany. And yet I now have a deeper empathy for people who feared for their lives or the lives of their children if they risked speaking up. I understand, to some small degree, what it must have felt like for them to feel so helpless and to be ashamed of their helplessness. Because that’s how I feel.

I don’t know when this man got his tattoo or what prompted him to get it. I find it telling that he chose to have it inked on his back, hidden from employers, coworkers, certain friends, maybe even his parents. When he got it, he obviously wasn’t willing to be fully out-and-proud about it.

But he made no attempt to hide it that day on the beach. That’s yet one more piece of evidence that hate against certain groups is even more widespread than many Americans have acknowledged or wanted to believe. And that after years of being “forced” underground, those with repellant beliefs now feel emboldened to express them.

Hate speech is not just contained to Twitter or rallies or the voting booth. It’s not just spray painted on school walls under the cover of night. It’s being aired in public, nonchalantly, by people who are just out and about like the rest of us.

It seems to me that we’re each going to have to figure out how to respond to hate speech and symbols in the moments when we least expect to confront them: while shopping at the supermarket, going to a concert, or even spending a beautiful day at the beach. Otherwise, the abnormal will become the norm.