The rolling hills glowed as the sun sank behind them, transformed the fields into molten gold. The sky red as a furnace; like blood above the soil. He stood outside the plantation house and watched his towheaded children play. Smoke rose from the fieldhouses beyond as the cooks prepared dinner for the field slaves just setting aside their tools for the day. Inside, his slender, blonde wife was cooking their family’s dinner—it smelled incredible. He smiled as he looked beyond the hills, at the skeletal remains of the city. How quiet everything was, how clean, now that the nation had been cleansed, its blood purified—
The blast of Karl’s alarm wrenched him back into his own body and reality with a violence that left him breathless. For a moment, he fought to remain in dreams, in fantasy, but the foghorn assault was merciless and at last he forced his bleary eyes open, reached over, and fumbled for the snooze button.
The wan morning sun streamed through the broken venetian blinds of Karl’s studio apartment and slashed pale razorblades across the Waffen SS poster, the Kekistan banner, the Confederate flag. His bookcase, full of Evola and Gentile and Schmitt. His computer, where he did what he thought of as his real work, at night.
But Karl’s “real work” did not pay the bills, and so when the alarm blared again five minutes later he yawned, stretched, and stumbled towards the shower. He would not be late. The White race, he told himself, was never late. The White race was punctual, and professional, and polished. He slicked back his lusterless blonde hair, he Windsor knotted his tie. He would be at his desk at Corpco’s HR department at 9:00 AM sharp, just as he always was.
But when he grabbed his coat to leave, something atop his dresser caught his eye. A small swastika lapel pin, gifted to him by a fan two weekends ago at a meetup. It was subtle, even tasteful, he thought. And he remembered the thing he’d written the night before, the thing that was going mildly viral on the forums he frequented. We must not allow our enemies to intimidate and silence us, he’d said. Most Americans are sympathetic with our cause, but afraid to stand up for what they know to be right. Those of us who see clearly must give others courage. Be visible. Be brave. Show them we are legion. Stand up for what is right.
Karl hesitated. The thought of putting on the pin made him feel slightly sick. What if he lost his job? What if that blue-haired bitch two cubicles down made a fuss? It will be a great thing to post about, if she does, he thought suddenly. These hypocrites, with their “free speech” this and “tolerance” that: where was his tolerance? Where were his liberal freedoms?! He would expose them. He would boost his engagement. His sacrifice could help advance the cause.
With sudden resolution, he seized the swastika, pinned it to his lapel, and swept out his own door into the outside world — the world that, by rights, belonged to his kind.
Five seconds later, as his neighbor’s cheerful smile of greeting morphed into shocked disgust, Karl was already regretting his choice. But he held his head high as he exited the apartment building and walked to his subway. Karl had always hated how anonymous he felt in the big city, but suddenly he found himself longing to return to that anonymity as he felt the distant eyes of everyone he passed become laser-focused on his ideological statement. Whispers. Someone jostled him. “Fuck you!”
He would not be a coward. He would not let the White race down. He would climb down those subway steps and stand proud on the platform, while people shifted away from him, while they whispered and pointed and spat on the ground in disgust. He would hold his head high as he walked into the subway car to take one of the last remaining seats, in plenty of time for work.
As he sat, the women on either side of him stood up and very pointedly moved away. He felt his face burning as the whispering started up. The pointing.
“Hey buddy, is this your idea of a joke?” A large man in a suit, probably going to the financial district just like he was. Red-faced, knuckles white around the handle of his briefcase. Semitic features, Karl’s practiced eyes observed.
The Nazi swallowed. He was fairly physically fit, of average height and build, but this man was big, and radiating rage. All his rehearsed arguments — about Western culture and racial degradation and bell curves — seemed to drop out of his head, leaving only the fallback argument, the safe one: the one that always worked. “It’s my right to wear it,” he asserted, voice shaking only a little. “I have a right to my opinion.”
“Your opinion?!” A different voice this time, somewhere to the right, Karl could not bring himself to look. “Half my family died in the Holocaust, you sick fuck. Your opinion?!”
Karl’s shaking hands reached for his phone and pressed “record” as the subway began to slow. “You’d better get off this car, fuckface” someone else said. “Unless you wanna taste your own pure Aryan blood.”
“I have every right to be here!” Karl shouted, suddenly more confident. He imagined himself as a guest on his favorite podcasts. Split lip all over social media. It would be worth it. yes…
“Get off!” He felt a hand descend on his shoulder—
“No,” the large man in the suit said suddenly. “We aren’t foisting him off on some other car or making him into a martyr.” The doors closed and the car began to move. “You disgusting little freak. You shitstain. We’ll keep an eye on you right here.”
“This is why people don’t feel comfortable debating these ideas!” Karl shrieked, voice tinged with hysteria. “This is why—”
“Because your ideas are disgusting, and they’re not up for debate,” a woman said. “This is America! This is a country for freedom, not fascism!” And she began to sing. O Beautiful, for Spacious Skies…
Another voice joined in. Then another. Before he knew it, the entire car was singing. He screamed, but no one could hear him. He beseeched his fellow travelers to help him, lend their voices to his, but he did not find a single friendly face on that train car, just stone-faced rage. When his stop finally arrived, he stood, and grasped his briefcase, and left, to the cheers and jeers of the rest of the car. The doors closed and Karl stood, shaking, on the platform as the whispers started once again, as new eyes skewered him, new mouths scowled. He stopped recording and deleted the footage. Better to never think about that subway ride again.
“No,” the security guard said as Karl smiled and swiped his badge.
“Excuse me?”
The guard motioned to the lapel pin. “You can’t come in.”
“Mike, I’m going to be late. You know me!”
“Oh I know who you are, all right. Never much liked you either. Now I see why. You aren’t coming into Corpco with that thing on.”
“What?! I have a right to wear whatever I like! Call your supervisor!”
“Oh, don’t worry. I called her.”
Five minutes later, Karl stood on the street, flabbergasted, as his coworkers streamed around him. Mike stood on the opposite side of the door, arms crossed, glaring at him between pleasantly greeting the other people who worked in the building. Your kind shouldn’t even be here, Karl thought as he stared daggers through the window, face burning with rage and humiliation. He thought about screaming it, maybe throwing in an n-word or two for good measure, but, remembering the train car, thought better of it. “Where’s MY free speech?” he mumbled as he turned and walked away.
It was only 9:00 — too early to drink, especially for a White man — but he could get a coffee, and sit quietly, and get himself together. Try to absorb what had just happened. Maybe call a lawyer, see if it was even legal to fire someone for expressing themselves at work. Maybe reach out to some of his favorite podcasts. That stupid bitch with the purple hair was allowed to wear her — yes, her, to hell with this degenerate they/them pronoun nonsense — Pride pin every damn day. He’d ground his teeth through the company’s Juneteenth celebration, stood silent and fuming while they sent their Trans Day of Visibility emails, but God forbid an upstanding member of the community express a little pride in his own race, that was apparently a fireable offense…
Karl walked into his favorite restaurant and grabbed a seat at the bar. He pulled his jacket close, covering the pin. Again, he sank into anonymity. It felt good. Just for a moment, to decompress.
“No police, universal healthcare, boys who think they’re girls—this country is going straight to hell!” A sonorous voice of reason to Karl’s right: a man reading the New York Post, sitting at the bar, coffee steaming next to him. “Immigrants flooding our country’s borders…”
“This has always been a nation of immigrants,” the woman next to him said. “Crime’s going down, life expectancy is going up. And why is your side of the aisle so obsessed with trans people?”
The Post reader scoffed. “Sure, things are better now, because of the last administration’s austerity. You libs can’t deny reality forever. Your regulations are ruining this country! And this climate change nonsense—”
“No. Get out.”
Karl’s face fell. He’d relaxed his hands while listening; his coat had fallen open. The woman behind the bar scowled. “Black coffee, white coffee: you can get coffee in your face or you can leave the shop. I don’t care which.”
“Hey, what’s the problem?” the Post reader asked.
The bartender said nothing, just gestured to Karl’s lapel pin. The Post reader took off his reading glasses, stared…and then his face grew dark. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“Of course not. You’ve said it yourself—immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country, and—”
The man slammed his newspaper down with such violence that Karl jumped despite himself. “Look here, you little shit, don’t you DARE compare me to you! I’m a good conservative. You’re — do you know how many people fascism has killed?”
The woman next to him chuckled. “You do share a lot of ideas with him, you know.”
The Post reader whirled on her. “Excuse me?!”
“Now don’t you two start,” the bartender said sharply, then turned back to Karl. “You need to leave. Right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere! My money is as good as anyone else’s, and you have to serve me.”
“She doesn’t have to do a goddamn thing!” the woman said as she pulled her phone out and pointed it at him. “No one wants to talk to you, no one wants to hear your shitty ideas. Go away!”
“This is a private establishment,” the conservative echoed as he fumbled for his own phone. “Her restaurant, her rules.”
Something inside of Karl snapped. “HOW DARE YOU! I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE HERE! I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THIS WORLD TELLING ME WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT SAY! YOU WILL SERVE ME COFFEE!! YOU HAVE TO!!”
“Sir, if you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to call ProtServ.”
“PROTSERV!?” Karl sputtered with rage. The crowd around him bristled with cell phones. He was going to be on the internet all right, but not in the way he’d hoped. “GO AHEAD. CALL YOUR F*GGY PROTSERV!”
“I’m not a Nazi,” the Post reader snarled at the woman beside him, still incensed.
“I know you’re not,” she sighed. “But your ideas are pretty damn compatible. Like this immigration thing…look, if you want to talk about it, I’ve got about fifteen minutes before I need to get back to the office.”
“Hello, Protective Services? I’ve got an unruly customer, some Nazi demanding service…no, he’s not armed and doesn’t seem physically dangerous, just screaming…yes, a mediator sounds perfect, no need for enforcers. Thank you.”
“What is this country coming to?”
The Protective Services officer said nothing, simply walked beside him. The stares and whispers and shouts had not diminished, though now a few of them were directed at the officer
instead.
“I have every right to express my opinion, don’t I?”
“Of course,” the officer said. “And everyone else has a right to express their opinion too.”
“But they don’t let me! They—”
The officer turned to him. “Who has violated your rights today?”
“I got fired from my job!”
“Your employer has every right to fire you, for the same reason you have every right to wear that pin.”
“But they allow pride pins and—”
“They have every right to allow pride pins, for the same reason you have every right to wear that pin.”
“I can’t even ride the train in peace—”
“Sounds like people were just expressing their opinion.”
“They’re banning me from the public square! They’re silencing me!”
The officer sighed. “You are suffering the predictable consequences of your own actions. Our laws grant you the freedom of expression. They do not grant you a right to comfort, or to a platform, or to be heard.”
“But if no one grants me a platform or allows me to be heard, that tramples on my rights. Don’t you see?”
The officer chuckled. “Typical fascist. You want to prevent others from expressing their opinion in the name of expressing yours. It doesn’t work that way anymore.”
Karl stared at the ground. Then, suddenly, he turned towards her. “Look, come on. Between you and me. You see all the problems in this country, you see them up close. Thugs and gangbangers, shoplifters, broken families, carjackings. We weren’t meant to live in a heterogenous society! People need heirarchies! Some people are natural lead—”
“I’m not interested in debating you,” the officer said. “And even if I was, I’m on the clock. I’m an agent of the government, and I’m not here to tell you what to think. I’m here to escort you to wherever you’d like to go , since you say that you feel physically threatened, and then I will leave you to your meditations on the master race. You’re welcome to think whatever you’d like to, Mr. Meyer, and to say whatever you’d like to.” She smiled, cold and contemptuous. “But if you want to go about your business without a fuss, you might reconsider the swastika.”
Suit image by Thorsten Frenzel from Pixabay. This original image does NOT include the Nazi lapel pin, which was added by Yours Truly
Excellent! And fun to read.
Substack doesn’t seem to understand that if Nazis weren’t allowed here, they would still find other places to post online. But the substack exodus is something I fully support. Wherever you end up I’ll be following you there.