Moral Clarity on the Nazi Salute
Finally, someone was able to say the true things and impose consequences.
We did TNL live last night. That maybe wasn’t the best idea. The sprawling, shambling cavalcade of darkness is here.
Look, there are more important things going on in the world than what we’re talking about today. But I ask you to bear with me. Because little things matter, too.
1. Consequences
Saturday was the National Pro-Life Summit. It was filled with serious, committed intellectuals who are devoted to the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life.1
One of the speakers was a man of the cloth, a gentleman who bills himself as Fr. Calvin Robinson.2 At the end of his remarks, Fr. Robinson did this.
Things to note:
Despite doing Catholic cosplay, Robinson is not a Roman Catholic priest. He is a member of the Anglican Catholic Church. (More on this in a second.)
Clearly, Fr. Robinson knew exactly what he was doing.
Make sure you clock his Pepe grin to the left after he throws out his don’t-call-it-a-sieg-heil.
Listen to the reaction of the crowd. They loved it.
No reasonable person could doubt Robinson’s intention. He was doing a Hitler salute, but cloaked under the veil of irony, as a way of signaling to the audience that people who object to Hitler salutes are bad.
Or, to put it another way: He’s trying to use mainstream objections about Hitler salutes to launder the Hitler salute and make it an acceptable in-group identity marker.
This would be morally reprehensible for anyone. But from a Christian minister? Lord have mercy.
Yadda yadda yadda, there was more sieg-heil discourse. But then, last night, Fr. Robinson’s denomination decided to just say the true stuff, out loud.
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