Ever since the election, public acts of anti-Semitism and racism have been on the rise. CNN reported a notable rise in bigoted and racist crimes across the United States–which is absolutely horrifying how the underbelly of racism has been unleashed in just a week.
It’s extremely frightening to see store fronts and other buildings vandalized by swastikas–especially if you are Jewish. One Kansas-based Redditor, that_tim_guy, however, figured out how to modify the hate symbol back in 2013, and shared this photograph online.
It’s pretty simple: Just add a few lines and boxes and the Nazi symbol suddenly becomes Microsoft’s Windows 95 logo (which you and I still remember, though your young kids definitely won’t).
A friend and I took care of a graffitied swastika in our town the only way we knew how. from funny
At the time, he and a friend were so tired of seeing swastikas around their small town that they did something about it, telling the Huffington Post recently, as the image circulated over the weekend again in the face of recent hate crimes:
“We decided on the Windows 95 logo and got the only spray paint on hand and drove out to the swastika in the middle of the night. In the photo you can actually see another little swastika to the left and we did intend to take care of that one too, but unfortunately we ran out of spray paint.”
While I’m so glad someone shared their brilliantly hilarious way to turn an ugly and hateful sign into something innocuous, it breaks my heart that we live in a world where we have to think about this in the first place.
It’s easy to live in a privileged, inclusive bubble–but these recent hate crimes show us that we can’t afford to do that anymore. Thankfully, there are people out there who are willing to stand up for what’s right.
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