‘Nazi’ washing powder and Germany’s PC police

A new packaging of washing powder called ‘Ariel’ has caused the latest German PC-shitstorm, reports the German weekly Focus. The packaging features a white German football team shirt emblazoned with the number ’88’. It has been interpreted by some German Twitter users as a direct allusion to fascism. They opine that ‘8’ stands for the eighth letter in the alphabet ‘H’, and therefore ’88’ stands for ‘HH’, or ‘Heil Hitler’. The product’s claim that this is a ‘new concentration’ of washing powder has also been interpreted as a nod to concentration camps. Following this bizarre logic, it seems likely that washing white clothes might be banned in the near future, as attempts to ‘keep Germany cleansed and white’ could be interpreted as racist. And after that? Banning ‘Ariel’ altogether as its name is only one letter away from ‘arier’, the German word for ‘arian’? Outlawing waving the white flag as a symbol of arian fury? Whatever, the German language police needs to get a grip.

Matthias Heitmann is a publicist and public speaker based in Frankfurt, Germany. He is dedicated to unravelling and uncovering the misanthropic ‘zeitgeist’ of our times. Visit his website here.