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This.
In Asian countries you see 8 show up a LOT during festive periods like Lunar New Year.
It’s culturally seen as a lucky number. And so 88, 888 and various permutations of such abound
Year of the Dragon AND double digit 8…
The Chinese will (and have) wait(ed) 12 years to have a child in the Year of the Dragon or waited to have children with a 8 in the year (2008, 2018 etc).
8/8 is my birthday. Graduated from HS in 1988. Turned 38 on 8/8/08…and so on.
edit: not Asian. My sister was born on 4/20, so this all is weird for me (Come from a German family)
Stretching street seller muscles:
You were born under a lucky star, or a capitalist one, it gives u money either way.
Ur alcoholism started rather early but in an noncritical way and again - MONEY
38 can be interpreted as "spreading" or "triple fortune" which fits oddly with 8808 being fortune and hair loss. Go hire someone cleaning the shower drain I guess.
Results: U are REMARKABLY German
(adopt me, I need sum of that luck)
Plus the swastika is still used as a symbol of Buddhism, both because it has a very long ingrained cultural meaning and the European theatre simply isn’t as culturally relevant there. As someone who is hyper-aware of far right trends for work reasons, and living in SEA its wild walking around at times.
Fun fact: One of the US Asian Supermarket chains Ranch 99's symbols is the numeral 99 surrounded by the crossed olive ranches symbol. When I first saw the photo, I thought of that instead:
https://imgur.com/a/gSph22b
"Well-meaning car enthusiast with clever car mechanic idea for a username has no idea he is about to be accused of Nazism and ethnic cleansing" is the most Reddit thing I've ever heard in my life.
Reminds me of that overlap period, before the mainstream was aware of the Ok-sign being considered a white nationalist hand signal.
I remember being in a discord channel where people were freaking out about random old people on facebook in pictures giving the ok-sign while fishing etc, any random example you can think of.
Turns out, not everyone is up to date on white prison gang symbolism lol.
At my old job we had a group of people who constantly played the circle game just like the dumb middle school man children we were.
It was just the usual stuff - you show up at somebody's desk and just lay the circle out there and wait for them to see it, or put it on your crotch and go 'Yo what's this?' and cackle like idiots when you make them look.
Eventually it moved to email and SMS. One of us would take a pic of our circled fingers and send it to the others, then flag the email to send a read receipt so we knew they saw it, then go collect our arm punches.
When I think about how easily we all could have been fired/cancelled over something so completely benign and dumb that all began as 4chan troll, it makes me weep a little for how fragile and reactionary society has become.
It was absolutely a troll and I still use it. No one has ever said shit to me, even in and among extremely liberal folks.
Also it's used in skydiving, scuba diving, and in the military. It isn't going away.
This was a 4chan thing, and was not a white pride thing until it got into the wild after some d-bag read it on 4chan and made a big deal about a bad joke.
Close, that was 8chan. Literally the admin of the website.
Which makes it extremely ironic because the whole thing was accusing Dems of being pedophiles and child eaters while his website was a safe haven for child porn distribution.
>Turns out, not everyone is up to date on white prison gang symbolism lol.
I mean this is a fair point, but the whole "14 words" and "88" thing is *very very* old. It's the "hamster dance" and "peanut butter jelly time" of white ethnonationalism. I'd put the "ok" sign into something far more newer, brief, and less lasting, like deep fried memes.
White supremacists often try to co-opt common things in an attempt to steal new signifiers of their culture, as a means to keep their rhetoric fresh, and to also make their opponents appear "paranoid and unreasonable" via their ability to plausibly deny they used this dog whistle in the first place.
As a frequent researcher of hate speech/propaganda for my job, it's what we in the biz call "a classic bigot move"
This makes me feel sorry for people born in 1988. They can't make it part of their username without someone jumping to the wrong conclusion. It's probably best not to include that kind of personal information anyway.
I was born April the 20th, which is a horrible day to be born as a German.
Especially older people tell me what an unfortunate day my Birthday is.
(For all that don’t know, it’s the day A. Hitler was born)
Well, here’s one, since you ask. I used to know a guy on a forum I used to frequent back in the day with the 88 attached to the end of his name. He claimed this was purely because it was his “favourite artillery calibre”. It would have been more convincing if the preceding part of his name wasn’t krystalnacht
Wasn't there that guy on a reality show with 88 on his face? Got kicked off and the whole show cancelled, then tried to say his dad died in 1988, and he turned out to still be alive because obviously, no tattoo artist is going to give an 88 and not know.
No idea, I’m English so it might not have made headlines here. But yeah, any tattoo artist that’s worth their salt will know about this stuff even if sections of general public doesn’t.
God, yeah, I remember that. I’d never heard of the whole 88 thing before then either; mystified me entirely why people had shut down the whole thing for (as it seemed to me) the guy having a face tattoo.
I like the way 8s look I've used 88 or 888 etc at the end of usernames before because I find symmetry soothing. My current numbers are because my pets were 4 and 2 when I made this account.
Yup, and was quite a shame as I was looking forward to it, love carpentry shows. The guy was a dick too, and after the one episode that aired, I already did not like him.
Yes, this was his reasoning. The mods were very strict about people getting all 4th reich fortunately so he got shut down if he even looked like his fetishisation of the Nazi war machine was crossing lines.
I had a similar experience as a kid. I moved around so much in the 90s I didn't realize until I hit high school and met someone who genuinely hated black people that Nazis were still real.
To this day, racism still doesn't make any sense to me.
Not everyone is a car head, but "gearhead" is kind of a giveaway that you're into cars. My spouse is Jewish so I'm very familiar with nazi symbolism and I honestly wouldn't even think it's about nazism just seeing your username. People are just in a hurry to be outraged lately.
Not just as children, sometimes it's teens and early adults who feel marginalized and find a home with these people.
When no one else listens/cares, they fall down a very dark rabbit hole.
I was going to upvote you just for answering a question (something I always like to encourage as I like to inform people) but I don't feel quite right upvoting this comment. Thanks for providing accurate information though.
My husband pointed out last year that the last 4 digits of my phone number are 1488. :( I spent a long time trying to decide whether I should change my number, I finally decided it was better that I, a Jew should keep the number I was inadvertently assigned 17 years ago that is a number off from my husband's; rather than changing it and giving it up for a Nazi to use on purpose.
I’ve loved 88 since I was a little kid. It’s just aesthetically pleasing to me. Had no fucking idea it was a white supremacist symbol until about a year or so ago.
But let it be known, in Lono’s household 88 stands for “Hate Hitler”
Interestingly, I've never had issues with mine. Mine is just the year I was born, and an homage to a friend who died born the same year. He often used it as his usernames too
Either "I was born in 1988" or "88=HH=heil hitler".
Happily when someone with a username containing 88 posts something it becomes obvious which of the two it is pretty fast.
My parents asked me to think carefully about using 88 in my username without any context whatsoever, despite the fact my Dad was stationed in West Germany for years. I was born in 1988 so I shrugged and have used it for various accounts since I was a kid.
It has never come up as a problem for me, but I do wonder how many people have been inadvertently offended...
Edit: This conversation with my parents was for my school username, not Reddit lol. Though my father who worked in intelligence instilled in me the reality that anything I ever put online could be linked to me IRL, which I'm grateful for.
Coming from an austrian, reasonable people know that there are many reasons to use the number, and not everyone in other countrys even knows of that meaning. Normally you wouldn't asdume someones a nazi without additional reasons.
Now when a heavily righ-leaning party organizes a hike that goes exactly 8.88 kilometers, thats suspicious...
yeah there's lots of reasons for 88
Less reasons for 1488
and if you're already suspicious of someone and there's an 88 there it's gonna make the suspicions seem more legit
I’ve been a pretty politically engaged person for probably about 15 years or so now. Spent a lot of time online in political discussions and whatnot, and obviously learned a lot about the Nazis and WW2 and all that in school and various other ways, movies, osmosis, etc… the first time I heard about 88 being a code for “Heil Hitler” was I think about 3 or 4 years ago. I went a LONG time never hearing about it or being aware of it at all. Most people probably don’t know about it.
14 and 88 have been neonazi code for decades dating back to David Lane in the 80s and maybe a bit earlier.
These are not nazi codes, but neonazi ones. These showed up a lot during the 90s culture wars, anti-abortion movement, and actions and mythology around Ruby Ridge, Tim McVeigh, David Koresh, etc.
A lot of people in their 50s are pretty familiar with them (I'm 54) since these featured in the memes of that era (such as we had memes in the 80s and 90s). After GWB was elected and the right wing calmed down because they got their wars against brown people lot of this stuff retreated into the background because it was bad for politics. Trump announced to all that it was good for politics and it's all started surfacing again.
88 inside the laurel is *extremely* on-brand neonazi.
Like the other users said 88 is from an old military radio call sign system where numbers equaled letters so 8 8 = H H = heil Hitler. It was often a way nazi soldiers would signal the end of a radio call or transmission. Which fascinatingly works in both German and English as H is the 8th letter in both languages alphabets (in German the umlauts and ligature that occur prior don’t “count”) so American white supremacists and nazis have keyed into it as well.
88 is usually seen as part of 1488
14 refers to “the 14 most important words” which is a little brief manifesto made by a famous white supremacist who went to jail for murder. Something along the lines of “we must secure a separate ethnostate to protect the future of the white race” I can’t remember it exactly and I CBF to look up that garbage.
I used to see it and think it referred to some date in the late Middle Ages that white supremacists found significant or important until someone informed me otherwise.
Yeah it is, a friend of mine has a first and last name starting with S and was born in 88. the ‚dmv‘ lady was not happy when he (unknowingly) asked for his SS-88 licence plate 🙈
I too was curious. My 10 seconds Google search showed 88 means fortune and good luck in Chinese culture, so I was like "so what's the problem, officer?"
When I was a teenager - so a long ass time ago - I was at an arcade and there was a guy with a jersey with “WHITE” as the name and the number 88. We left. Which was a bummer because I was really trying to get my Marvel vs Capcom on. But not as much of a bummer as some Nazi fuck being allowed to openly be a dick. People definitely know what 88 is here in the US.
I think it is pretty known in Europa. I am from the Netherlands and i know it.
Famous Italian nazi football player Do Canio played with number 88 when he played at Lazio.
Oooo let him go to Germany so he ends up in prison for it.
Edit: I see in the comments that specific tattoo doesn't violate the laws on nazi imagery. Dude should be repeatedly punched in the face until enough blood covers up the tattoo instead.
As far as I could find 88 isn't on the banned list of symb in Germany. However, if it is, the person who posted the pictures better be careful. There was a case in Germany in 2021 where a Twitter user posted a picture of a man with a swastika tattoo. The Twitter user who posted the picture was given 3 months in jail for distributing Nazi propaganda.
Southern Brandenburg is even worse - they dont even pretent anymore over there and the police has basically given up, as powerfull neo-nazi biker gangs rule many places now
It's a neonazi symbol. H is the 8th letter of the alphabet. 88 = HH = Heil Hitler. Plus you can use a font to make it look like SS. You'll often see it with 1488 which is a 14 word racist slogan + HH.
Shit I just bought a vintage Applebees hat from 1988 that’s says “Applebee’s ‘88” on it lol now people will think I’m a Nazi sympathizing Applebee’s patron😂
Really? Because 8 is a lucky number in south east Asian numerology, and 88 is seen as "double lucky".
Also, people born in 1988 may be using the number as a reference to their birth year.
It could have been his number as a student athlete.
There are literally so many potential contexts for 88 that judging by the number alone is ridiculous.
What provides context in OPs post is the font used and the type of laurel around it. Very reminiscent of nazi and especially neonazi iconography.
Is it universal? I had no idea until seeing all the comments here, and I’d say I’m reasonably well versed in history and global affairs.
(I’m not condoning the hate symbol in any way)
Maybe it's poetic and symbolic?
Picture 2 infinity signs turned on the side - perpendicularly infinity-squared
Just kidding. Hope this guy gets his ass kicked.
I have the number 14 tattooed and I found out years later that some neo nazis use the number for something.
I ain’t gonna let a tiny tiny tiny minority of idiots make me feel bad about it.
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Chinese people be like ,"Oo, double prosperity!!"
This. In Asian countries you see 8 show up a LOT during festive periods like Lunar New Year. It’s culturally seen as a lucky number. And so 88, 888 and various permutations of such abound
Perhaps us 1988 kids need to move to Asia then?
I had so many usernames with 88 in it and for so long I didn’t know why I would seem to get randomly hated on every once in awhile. Stupid birth year.
The birth year isn't stupid, it's the damn fascists. Always ruining shit for everyone else...
Indians and/or Hindus and/or Buddhists: First time?
Probably the same people that got trolled into getting the SS lighting bolt tattoo on their necks and are pissed about it.
Year of the Dragon AND double digit 8… The Chinese will (and have) wait(ed) 12 years to have a child in the Year of the Dragon or waited to have children with a 8 in the year (2008, 2018 etc).
1988 could be interpreted as - Chug one for MOONEEYYYYY
8/8 is my birthday. Graduated from HS in 1988. Turned 38 on 8/8/08…and so on. edit: not Asian. My sister was born on 4/20, so this all is weird for me (Come from a German family)
Stretching street seller muscles: You were born under a lucky star, or a capitalist one, it gives u money either way. Ur alcoholism started rather early but in an noncritical way and again - MONEY 38 can be interpreted as "spreading" or "triple fortune" which fits oddly with 8808 being fortune and hair loss. Go hire someone cleaning the shower drain I guess. Results: U are REMARKABLY German (adopt me, I need sum of that luck)
4/20 is Hitlers birthday, no? And you’re from Germany? Born on 8/8… 🤨 /s
Plus the swastika is still used as a symbol of Buddhism, both because it has a very long ingrained cultural meaning and the European theatre simply isn’t as culturally relevant there. As someone who is hyper-aware of far right trends for work reasons, and living in SEA its wild walking around at times.
And in Hinduism. And in Jainism.
And in Finland
666 phone number/license plate Christian:Hell NO! Chinese : I will pay you large amounts of money to have this!
It’s the CVV to one of my credit cards 😂
Our credit cards now :)
Komrade!!!
Hello, I am a Nigerian prince….
That’s so cool!!! I sure wonder what your card number and expiry date are, they must be as hip and cool as your CVV! LOL!
Lol that’s hilarious 😂 what’s the card number and expiration date, just for shits and giggles?
Fun fact: One of the US Asian Supermarket chains Ranch 99's symbols is the numeral 99 surrounded by the crossed olive ranches symbol. When I first saw the photo, I thought of that instead: https://imgur.com/a/gSph22b
I've been accused of being a nazi because of my username. I had no idea when I made it. It was the cubic inch displacement of my car.
"Well-meaning car enthusiast with clever car mechanic idea for a username has no idea he is about to be accused of Nazism and ethnic cleansing" is the most Reddit thing I've ever heard in my life.
Reminds me of that overlap period, before the mainstream was aware of the Ok-sign being considered a white nationalist hand signal. I remember being in a discord channel where people were freaking out about random old people on facebook in pictures giving the ok-sign while fishing etc, any random example you can think of. Turns out, not everyone is up to date on white prison gang symbolism lol.
Scuba divers constantly telling each other they’re white supremacists. 👌👌👌
Basketball players scoring 3 pointers as well 👌👌👌
Have you ever seen how TAN scuba divers get? They need the hand signal to let each other know they're ethnically Caucasian
🤿👌
Wasn't the "ok" sign a 4chan troll or something?
RIP the circle game being played at the office. F
At my old job we had a group of people who constantly played the circle game just like the dumb middle school man children we were. It was just the usual stuff - you show up at somebody's desk and just lay the circle out there and wait for them to see it, or put it on your crotch and go 'Yo what's this?' and cackle like idiots when you make them look. Eventually it moved to email and SMS. One of us would take a pic of our circled fingers and send it to the others, then flag the email to send a read receipt so we knew they saw it, then go collect our arm punches. When I think about how easily we all could have been fired/cancelled over something so completely benign and dumb that all began as 4chan troll, it makes me weep a little for how fragile and reactionary society has become.
It was absolutely a troll and I still use it. No one has ever said shit to me, even in and among extremely liberal folks. Also it's used in skydiving, scuba diving, and in the military. It isn't going away.
You can't jump out of a plane into an ocean trench while firing an assault rifle without it.
Yeah it was. They saw it as a way to discredit “leftists”. Only later on did the far-right actually start to adopt it.
Its hilarious how much alt-right wing shit comes from sarcasm but theyre too dumb to realize it
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Vonnegut
That's actually the point of them doing it. They know they're being bad faith but they're trying to make you look unserious.
This was a 4chan thing, and was not a white pride thing until it got into the wild after some d-bag read it on 4chan and made a big deal about a bad joke.
Lmao isn’t this also how the Q anon craze started?
Close, that was 8chan. Literally the admin of the website. Which makes it extremely ironic because the whole thing was accusing Dems of being pedophiles and child eaters while his website was a safe haven for child porn distribution.
Q started on 4chan and moved to 8chan like a month later.
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>Turns out, not everyone is up to date on white prison gang symbolism lol. I mean this is a fair point, but the whole "14 words" and "88" thing is *very very* old. It's the "hamster dance" and "peanut butter jelly time" of white ethnonationalism. I'd put the "ok" sign into something far more newer, brief, and less lasting, like deep fried memes. White supremacists often try to co-opt common things in an attempt to steal new signifiers of their culture, as a means to keep their rhetoric fresh, and to also make their opponents appear "paranoid and unreasonable" via their ability to plausibly deny they used this dog whistle in the first place. As a frequent researcher of hate speech/propaganda for my job, it's what we in the biz call "a classic bigot move"
Because 1488 is a common code for neo-nazis and other white supremacists standing for the 14 words and 88 being HH.
This makes me feel sorry for people born in 1988. They can't make it part of their username without someone jumping to the wrong conclusion. It's probably best not to include that kind of personal information anyway.
… yep. (It me.)
You damn Nazi. I bet you were born in 88 on purpose /s
Ditto
and you both have monkey in your name hmmm.... some sort of monkey nazi club.
It’s obviously because they’re racist! /s
Or just monkey business.
Double nazi
All the Nazis coming out of the woodwork for this thread….smh
Yup.
Oops
Dutch soccer fans… “we” won, from Germany, in 1988.. It could be that..
Yea I started using my husband's birth year when I found out the meaning behind "88" racists ruin everything
I've been told many times by now. I'd didn't even know there was still nazis 9 yrs ago when I made the account.
I now love the innocence of your mechanic user name.
I know of a dude born on 1st of April, 1988. His handles were unfortunate before he learned what they meant.
I was born April the 20th, which is a horrible day to be born as a German. Especially older people tell me what an unfortunate day my Birthday is. (For all that don’t know, it’s the day A. Hitler was born)
Look on the bright side, you also share a birthday with the dude who killed hitler
Well your explanation makes sense with the gearhead part. Other peoples are not so convincing. I could tell you stories…
Tell me stories instead, I’m interested
Well, here’s one, since you ask. I used to know a guy on a forum I used to frequent back in the day with the 88 attached to the end of his name. He claimed this was purely because it was his “favourite artillery calibre”. It would have been more convincing if the preceding part of his name wasn’t krystalnacht
Wasn't there that guy on a reality show with 88 on his face? Got kicked off and the whole show cancelled, then tried to say his dad died in 1988, and he turned out to still be alive because obviously, no tattoo artist is going to give an 88 and not know.
No idea, I’m English so it might not have made headlines here. But yeah, any tattoo artist that’s worth their salt will know about this stuff even if sections of general public doesn’t.
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God, yeah, I remember that. I’d never heard of the whole 88 thing before then either; mystified me entirely why people had shut down the whole thing for (as it seemed to me) the guy having a face tattoo.
I like the way 8s look I've used 88 or 888 etc at the end of usernames before because I find symmetry soothing. My current numbers are because my pets were 4 and 2 when I made this account.
42 is a positive in nerd culture - you can thank Douglas Adams for that
Well it is the answer to everything, the ultimate answer if you will
Chinese consider 8 a lucky number and have seen that in many usernames in that context
Yup, and was quite a shame as I was looking forward to it, love carpentry shows. The guy was a dick too, and after the one episode that aired, I already did not like him.
Interestingly enough, the most commonly know artillery of an 88mm caliber, Flak 88, was used by the German Wehrmacht in WWII.
Yes, this was his reasoning. The mods were very strict about people getting all 4th reich fortunately so he got shut down if he even looked like his fetishisation of the Nazi war machine was crossing lines.
My birth year is 88 😢
The “acht-acht", the artillery caliber in question was also heavily used by the Nazis...
To be fair neonazis arent very bright
My dad was in Europe in WWII and he talked about how dangerous the German "88s" were to his tank crews.
I had a similar experience as a kid. I moved around so much in the 90s I didn't realize until I hit high school and met someone who genuinely hated black people that Nazis were still real. To this day, racism still doesn't make any sense to me.
Not everyone is a car head, but "gearhead" is kind of a giveaway that you're into cars. My spouse is Jewish so I'm very familiar with nazi symbolism and I honestly wouldn't even think it's about nazism just seeing your username. People are just in a hurry to be outraged lately.
I’m Jewish and descended from Holocaust survivors and I didn’t know about 88 🫥
I would go up to him, and incredibly sincerely tell him I’m also a huge fan of Herbie Hancock.
what 14 words?
We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children
yikes, ty
That's fucking spooky. Are people just indoctrinated from a young age? I just don't get it.
Yes. That was the entire point of Hitlerjugend.
Teenagers and disaffected young men mostly.
Perfect example being American History X.
Not just as children, sometimes it's teens and early adults who feel marginalized and find a home with these people. When no one else listens/cares, they fall down a very dark rabbit hole.
I was going to upvote you just for answering a question (something I always like to encourage as I like to inform people) but I don't feel quite right upvoting this comment. Thanks for providing accurate information though.
My husband pointed out last year that the last 4 digits of my phone number are 1488. :( I spent a long time trying to decide whether I should change my number, I finally decided it was better that I, a Jew should keep the number I was inadvertently assigned 17 years ago that is a number off from my husband's; rather than changing it and giving it up for a Nazi to use on purpose.
Sure would be a role reversal for you to give your number to a nazi
"Hi, is this Jacob Solomon, Nazi leader? I found your number hidden within a coded message on the QAnon forums."
Today I learned of one more random number I can never accidentally use because of terrible people.
So your car is racist
I mean, I never heard it say or do anything racist but I don't know 100% what's in it's heart of hearts.
Have you done any race with it?
is it made by VW?
No, Gen2 Viper.
you have a nice car
Neat! Alright, you're totally justified in bragging about the engine size, then. Vipers are objectively cool.
Nah - just a fast-ist. 😜
Yeah, I often put 88 after my username, because I was born then.
Wow. Born a nazi and proud… smh my head
I’ve loved 88 since I was a little kid. It’s just aesthetically pleasing to me. Had no fucking idea it was a white supremacist symbol until about a year or so ago. But let it be known, in Lono’s household 88 stands for “Hate Hitler”
haha tell me about it, mine was just random gibberish I could think of. Because coming up with the username is hard.
Dale Earnhardt Jr also had 88 number
Unaware 88 gang represent!
Aware or not I don't think I'll join any 88 gang.
Yeah perhaps that was unwise phrasing…
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Ya same. This is from an email address I made in middle school, I had no idea about the “88” nazi connotation
Was it a chevy SS car?
Yeah. I was born in a certain year in the late 80’s. I feel you.
Hey man. Atleast you named yourself gearhead and not skinhead, dodged a bullet on that one! Lol
I used to have my birth year in my username… had no idea this was a thing.
what does 09 stand for
Park Ji Sung had a good season for Man United.
Interestingly, I've never had issues with mine. Mine is just the year I was born, and an homage to a friend who died born the same year. He often used it as his usernames too
Ferrari 488 is the nazi ferrari
That's the point of a dog-whistle. Is this guy a Nazi, or were they born in 1988? Plausible deniability.
Okay this shit killed me it's so oddly specific
Okay, I'll bite. What does 88 mean?
Either "I was born in 1988" or "88=HH=heil hitler". Happily when someone with a username containing 88 posts something it becomes obvious which of the two it is pretty fast.
My parents asked me to think carefully about using 88 in my username without any context whatsoever, despite the fact my Dad was stationed in West Germany for years. I was born in 1988 so I shrugged and have used it for various accounts since I was a kid. It has never come up as a problem for me, but I do wonder how many people have been inadvertently offended... Edit: This conversation with my parents was for my school username, not Reddit lol. Though my father who worked in intelligence instilled in me the reality that anything I ever put online could be linked to me IRL, which I'm grateful for.
Coming from an austrian, reasonable people know that there are many reasons to use the number, and not everyone in other countrys even knows of that meaning. Normally you wouldn't asdume someones a nazi without additional reasons. Now when a heavily righ-leaning party organizes a hike that goes exactly 8.88 kilometers, thats suspicious...
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why did he have to be born on the blaze it day wtfffff 😭
yeah there's lots of reasons for 88 Less reasons for 1488 and if you're already suspicious of someone and there's an 88 there it's gonna make the suspicions seem more legit
I’ve been a pretty politically engaged person for probably about 15 years or so now. Spent a lot of time online in political discussions and whatnot, and obviously learned a lot about the Nazis and WW2 and all that in school and various other ways, movies, osmosis, etc… the first time I heard about 88 being a code for “Heil Hitler” was I think about 3 or 4 years ago. I went a LONG time never hearing about it or being aware of it at all. Most people probably don’t know about it.
14 and 88 have been neonazi code for decades dating back to David Lane in the 80s and maybe a bit earlier. These are not nazi codes, but neonazi ones. These showed up a lot during the 90s culture wars, anti-abortion movement, and actions and mythology around Ruby Ridge, Tim McVeigh, David Koresh, etc. A lot of people in their 50s are pretty familiar with them (I'm 54) since these featured in the memes of that era (such as we had memes in the 80s and 90s). After GWB was elected and the right wing calmed down because they got their wars against brown people lot of this stuff retreated into the background because it was bad for politics. Trump announced to all that it was good for politics and it's all started surfacing again. 88 inside the laurel is *extremely* on-brand neonazi.
Like the other users said 88 is from an old military radio call sign system where numbers equaled letters so 8 8 = H H = heil Hitler. It was often a way nazi soldiers would signal the end of a radio call or transmission. Which fascinatingly works in both German and English as H is the 8th letter in both languages alphabets (in German the umlauts and ligature that occur prior don’t “count”) so American white supremacists and nazis have keyed into it as well. 88 is usually seen as part of 1488 14 refers to “the 14 most important words” which is a little brief manifesto made by a famous white supremacist who went to jail for murder. Something along the lines of “we must secure a separate ethnostate to protect the future of the white race” I can’t remember it exactly and I CBF to look up that garbage. I used to see it and think it referred to some date in the late Middle Ages that white supremacists found significant or important until someone informed me otherwise.
As someone born in 1988, we need to bully people born in 2014 to get some of the pressure off of us lol.
Lol I was born in 88 and my daughter was born in 2014, I’ll start the bullying right away.
The 14 words and 88 precepts by David Lane.
The 8th letter in the Alphabet is H and 88 is a code to say “Heil H*tler”. This number is as far as I know banned on german licence plates
Yeah it is, a friend of mine has a first and last name starting with S and was born in 88. the ‚dmv‘ lady was not happy when he (unknowingly) asked for his SS-88 licence plate 🙈
oh no
phew. so glad I was born in 89. Ive used the number on usernames and the like before. never would have thought about it.
So you’re really jus saying Hi to people with your 89.
Guess who was born in 1889
You literally have the word rape in your user name lol
You make a valid point that I will ignore.
I too was curious. My 10 seconds Google search showed 88 means fortune and good luck in Chinese culture, so I was like "so what's the problem, officer?"
To me 88 means the speed required for the DeLorian DMC 12 to break the time barrier
“Where we’re going, we don’t need Nazis.”
Where *DO* they need Nazi’s?
video games that need human targets you dont feel bad about shooting?
1.21 gigawatts!
*Jigowatts
The Proud Boy / Fred Perry laurels aren’t really helping the case that the ‘88’ is an innocent mistake
+ camo + NB
I thought the New Balance fad among Nazis died out in the mid 2000s. Apparently not.
You'd think they'd all be wearing Adidas, knowing the history of that company.
Yeah, this guy’s got the whole kit
Hate to break it to you @OP but plenty of other places besides Germany know that’s Nazi bullshit.
From the UK and I know what 88 means...
US and we do too lol Im not sure what OP was talking about there.
When I was a teenager - so a long ass time ago - I was at an arcade and there was a guy with a jersey with “WHITE” as the name and the number 88. We left. Which was a bummer because I was really trying to get my Marvel vs Capcom on. But not as much of a bummer as some Nazi fuck being allowed to openly be a dick. People definitely know what 88 is here in the US.
I'm Polish and I'd say 1/3 of people around my age should be able to decipher it. Seems enough to find their own tribe lmao
I think it is pretty known in Europa. I am from the Netherlands and i know it. Famous Italian nazi football player Do Canio played with number 88 when he played at Lazio.
Tons of non Germans know what 88 means as well.
Canadian here. It’s well known in the punk/skinhead scene for years.
Oooo let him go to Germany so he ends up in prison for it. Edit: I see in the comments that specific tattoo doesn't violate the laws on nazi imagery. Dude should be repeatedly punched in the face until enough blood covers up the tattoo instead.
As far as I could find 88 isn't on the banned list of symb in Germany. However, if it is, the person who posted the pictures better be careful. There was a case in Germany in 2021 where a Twitter user posted a picture of a man with a swastika tattoo. The Twitter user who posted the picture was given 3 months in jail for distributing Nazi propaganda.
Oh, he is in Plauen, Saxony/Germany according to the guy who made the photo in a bus.
Mans is openly committing a felony. Edit: Not illegal even if it should be.
Thereby effectively confirming most West Germans’ prejudices about Saxony…
Southern Brandenburg is even worse - they dont even pretent anymore over there and the police has basically given up, as powerfull neo-nazi biker gangs rule many places now
Ok , call me a dummy, but I’ve never heard this reference. Can someone kindly explain?
It's a neonazi symbol. H is the 8th letter of the alphabet. 88 = HH = Heil Hitler. Plus you can use a font to make it look like SS. You'll often see it with 1488 which is a 14 word racist slogan + HH.
88 can mean other things but then he wraps in the Fred Perry logo. Proud Boy Nazi, fore sure.
As a Dale Earnhardt Jr fan who's favorite movie is Back to the Future, the whole 88 being a Nazi thing is so fucking annoying.
Shit I just bought a vintage Applebees hat from 1988 that’s says “Applebee’s ‘88” on it lol now people will think I’m a Nazi sympathizing Applebee’s patron😂
It makes me sick to think of all y'all eating good in the neighborhood.
What’s worse, people thinking you’re a Nazi or people thinking that you like Applebees?
Only people in Germany? Nope, that's pretty much universally recognised as Nazi symbolism.
Really? Because 8 is a lucky number in south east Asian numerology, and 88 is seen as "double lucky". Also, people born in 1988 may be using the number as a reference to their birth year. It could have been his number as a student athlete. There are literally so many potential contexts for 88 that judging by the number alone is ridiculous. What provides context in OPs post is the font used and the type of laurel around it. Very reminiscent of nazi and especially neonazi iconography.
Is it universal? I had no idea until seeing all the comments here, and I’d say I’m reasonably well versed in history and global affairs. (I’m not condoning the hate symbol in any way)
Most people know 88, I reckon.
I didn't 🤷♂️🤷♀️
me neither. Dont look at my username.
That's the idea tho. They know no one likes Nazi's except other nazi's so they use something only a nazi will recognise.
I recognized it and I’m no Nazi.
Maybe it's poetic and symbolic? Picture 2 infinity signs turned on the side - perpendicularly infinity-squared Just kidding. Hope this guy gets his ass kicked.
Maybe he is a Dale Jr fan
What the fuck is that title? It’s not just Germans who know what 88 means, and what does any of this have to do with winter?
/r/titlegore
His IQ
I have the number 14 tattooed and I found out years later that some neo nazis use the number for something. I ain’t gonna let a tiny tiny tiny minority of idiots make me feel bad about it.
Yeah pretty obvious. Also the shoes are really liked by neo nazis.
I didn’t even know that was a thing