“now is the time between birth and slaughter”

i grew up both in Central europe and the same part of Canada as Hudson Williams (we went to the same college, not quite at the same time, but we aren't very far apart in age) and casual antisemitism was very common growing up. people there are not connected to the history and I remember that it was all just a joke to them. I doubt he really thought much of it, based on how little everyone at the schools I attended thought of things like that. the amount of "how many Jews can you fit in an oven" jokes i was subjected to by peers at school because all the Canadian children were watching South Park and family guy was almost impressive in hindsight, and then when we got older that history continued to just be part of edgy jokes, because of how detached it was from most people's reality. Hitler was just a comedy figure to a lot of them at that time, and that continued probably to the end of secondary school at least. it was an immigrant community and it felt as if nobody really had context for anyone else's history, and even when they did might still have been detached. not a defence or a condemnation, I don't know or care about him and i don't care about hockey, but I thought this context might be useful

So the thing about other people having the swastika at that party isn't true - this was an annual party tradition for his school's whole graduating class and another photo of someone else with a swastika making the rounds was from a different, later year.

I went to a school that the similar tradition of drawing on people’s faces/shirts. I’m a POC and most of my classmates were white. The whole class went to the woods at night to party, like Hudson and his class. Someone wrote a slur on the back of my shirt without me knowing. No one pointed it out to me and I didn’t find it till I went home. Most people didn’t look at what was being written on them so I don’t totally blame my friends for not pointing it out to me and it was dark. This sort of thing is very common - I’ve seen other POC and queer people sharing their experiences about this exact type of thing on here. That’s the whole joke for these white people, they write or draw something offensive in a place you won’t notice.

Even if he was passed out and didn’t in that moment know what was being drawn on him there is zero way he didn’t know when he went to clean it off. Not to mention there is no way he didn’t see the photos in almost a decade since. Such a stupid excuse

Except people were drawing loads of things on his face right? Unless you regularly have a swastika drawn on your face I'm just not sure its unreasonable for someone not to be able to know what that feels like. Like obviously he knew his face was being drawn on lol, but by touch alone is it normal for someone to be able to tell a swastika versus the other things drawn on there? Genuine question, because I don't think I could tell, but maybe others do know what a swastika feels like by pen trace alone.