By Richard Bordelon

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Like most fans of the United States soccer team, I was not incredibly pleased when Germany claimed victory in its match in the group stages of the 2014 World Cup this summer. While reading commentary online after the game, however, I became discouraged and disheartened with the frequent use of the word “Nazi” on Twitter.

Deadspin reported that when Germany scored their one, game-winning goal, uses of the words “Nazi” or “Nazis” reached 20 tweets per second.

The use of this word in the manner of light-hearted joking is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it conflates the people of today’s Germany with the members of the Nazi Party who committed horrible atrocities in the name of a psychotic, evil dictator. Secondly, it fails to give gravity to and satirizes the baseness of the Nazis’ actions.

For over half a century, the German people have dealt with the grim Nazi past that characterized the 1930s and early ’40s. After World War II, the country went through a period of denazification that sought to eradicate Nazi influence from German society. Former Nazi leaders were removed from power and Nazi propaganda and paraphernalia has been banned completely from society, even denying the Holocaust publicly is considered a crime. German attorney Sylvia Stolz, a right-wing extremist, was arrested and jailed for even defending a well-known Holocaust denier in court by trying to argue the definition of genocide.

In everyday life, when Germans walk through cities, they are reminded of the horrible things that occurred during the reign of the Third Reich. In Berlin alone, one encounters the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Wittenbergplatz Monument erected by the League of Human Rights in the 1960s, both located in heavily-trafficked areas of the city. German schoolchildren are mandated to take field trips to former concentration camps.  German society has dealt with the issue of the Nazi past. They understand its implications of what occurred and promise to make it never happen again. “Nazi” is not a joke; it is a grim past that they are determined to never repeat.

Why then, does this stereotype persist? Do Americans so crave nationalistic pride that they resort to name-calling? Maybe it is just a way to vent after losing to a better opponent.  The humor in the joke is lost when you realize that this actually furthers a stereotype. Tweeting and calling people this name creates the image in impressionable minds that Germans may carry racist tendencies today.

I can take a joke, but the Nazi reign of terror over much of Europe was and remains no joke. The wholly inappropriate jokes continued in the World Cup semifinal game between Germany and Brazil.

“Man the goalie really holocaust them the game, I bet Brazil’s coach was like Aw Schwitz,” tweeted comedian and associate editor of Click Hole, Daniel Kibblesmith.  Maybe it is just me, but Auschwitz is not a very appropriate topic for a mocking joke from an online comedian .

The genocide that serves as the benchmark for all modern genocides is not a joke. It was and remains an atrocity that should be remembered with all seriousness. It is not the punch line during a soccer match.

The German people have dealt with their Nazi past and understand its gravity; why have we not?

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Richard Bordelon, FCRH ’15, is a history and political science major from New Orleans. He is Opinion Editor for The Fordham Ram.