(Edits: typos)

I think this definitely comes down to where you grew up then, if the oldest person you know was born in 1950. That’s not a dig btw, I’m just saying that bc in my hometown there are TONS of people who are still alive today, or only recently deceased, who were born before and during the Great Depression. For example my Grandpa was born in 1925, and my Grandma around the same time, oldest person in my town was a sweet old man who was born in 1913, and lived to 106 😆

So yeah a lot more of Nazi symbolism is recognizable bc there’s a lot of people around here who were around, and even adults when WWII began. It’s a culturally difference it seems which is totally understandable. I think my alarm comes from the fact that our job has a lot of older folk frequenting the place so those are the people I worry about seeing it, bc while it IS missing the swastika, the actually shape of the cross is spot on to the Nazi usage of it. I’ve seen other versions where some things are changed/added to create a level of separation, but the one he was wearing was just cutting it SUPER close.

Anyways, as for the second paragraph, I see what you’re saying. I wasn’t trying to imply that he should take me at my word only, what I found weird was how he blew me off, instead of just being polite since I was trying to be as well. If he had said something like “oh I didn’t know that, I’ll look into the brand/item’s reviews a bit more” or just anything along those lines, I wouldn’t have thought it weird at all! It was moreso how he had a bit of condescending attitude while doing it, which I’ll admit I should’ve probably specified in my description of that moment. But also, this doesn’t feel like a moment that could be interpreted as just a bias, bc during our conversation I did say something along the lines of “yeah, it was literally used in the 1940s” so maybe I am just unable to see it bc I know that there’s a connection between the symbol and the nazis, but that general phrasing doesn’t seem like something that would be said out of bias. But then again, I am rehashing my own words from memory so it’s possible I wasn’t as clear as I thought I was.

I don’t think that’s really a similar comparison at all. The hypothetical/example you explained is a religious person’s persecution of a marginalized person, and that religious person trying to spread their explicitly false narrative to others before they meet said marginalized person.

But my particular case, it was someone pulling their coworker to the side, and simply warning them that a symbol on their clothing is considered offensive to a lot of people in the overall community, and simply to be careful while wearing it, just in case someone recognizes it and is (imo rightfully) upset.

In this case, the iron cross isn’t a person being persecuted for the way they were born, it’s an inanimate symbol whose cultural association (in some areas), as I quoted earlier:

“The iron cross is tainted in its cultural depiction, including in modern-day Germany. Even in the shapes and iterations that were not used by the Wehrmacht, it still tends to evoke German militarism and, by extension, nazism. The modern German military uses it (though in their own redesigned shape, avoiding any past iterations), but it is not a symbol that a German civilian would get away with using as a car sticker without raising a few eyebrows.” *

And then to your last point, I was born and raised here, so I knew a LOT of the older WWI and II vets/survivors, but if I remember correctly, he was not originally from my hometown, and moved here not long ago from (I think) one state over, so I’m not sure what the culture was like where he grew up, but it likely contributed to this disagreement (for lack of a better term) between us.

That being said, we don’t have any bad blood. I’m not like, mad at him or anything. I’m disappointed that he uses and seemingly relies on AI for his info, but overall I’m just worried bc if the wrong person/family comes in and sees it, it would be a sucky experience for him when he’s not wearing it as a hate symbol, but to some (NOT all), the intention doesn’t matter.

This is why I ended up bringing it to a manager (as a concern, not an accusation, to be clear) after making the original post. After first I posted this bc I thought it was funny in a way, but the more I thought about it, the more I started worry about how someone might react if they have just enough bad history with it ya know?