The presence of a swastika in the background of a photo posted by MSNBC host Chris Hayes gave Twitter a chortle this week.
On Tuesday, Hayes posted a photo of himself with Rachel Maddow on his Twitter account.
“Gotta to hang with my buddy today,” he wrote.
Gotta to hang with my buddy today.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 4, 2022
Twitter users who were interested in inspecting the books that formed the backdrop to the photo noticed that when they magnified the picture, a document with a swastika on its cover was visible near Hayes’s right hip.
The presence of a hate symbol in a picture of two liberals mugging for the camera was too much to ignore.
“Dog whistle, much?” one Twitter user posted, while another wrote, “What’s this?” in bafflement.
Why you got a swastika on your desk?
— ELIJAH SCHAFFER (@ElijahSchaffer) October 5, 2022
What’s going on with the German National Socialist propaganda, Chris? pic.twitter.com/h6uNdmCT2q
— Aldous Huxley’s Ghost™ (@AF632) October 5, 2022
What’s this? pic.twitter.com/Vu8KZ2C9Yu
— TexZeus 🚥 (@vinnieoftexas_) October 4, 2022
Um… Why is there a swastika behind you on the desk, Chris? Dog whistle, much?
— Sour Patch Lyds (@sourpatchlyds) October 5, 2022
Eventually, Hayes had to respond.
Rachel printed it out from a digital archive for me because the first part of it is all about the anti-semitic menacing that fascist groups were doing in the Bronx in the late 1930s.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 5, 2022
“Just so incredibly perfect that I have a typo in this tweet. Also, the pamphlet behind me, which indeed have a swastika on it, is an incredible anti-fascist pamphlet put together by an American christian minister to counter the work of the Christian Front fascist gang,” he tweeted.
“Rachel printed it out from a digital archive for me because the first part of it is all about the anti-semitic menacing that fascist groups were doing in the Bronx in the late 1930s,” he wrote.
As noted by conservative commentator Todd Starnes, Hayes in the past had linked Trump supporters to the swastika.
Do you buy the explanation of the presence of the swastika on the desk?
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“Trump staffers scooping up little red swastika golf balls into Make America Great Again hats is the tableau of the campaign so far,” Hayes said in 2016, Starnes noted.
Hayes is not the only one who had to recently explain why a swastika has appeared in a place where it would hardly be expected, according to news reports. A Goodwill branch has, too.
As reported by the website Vice, the Goodwill of Western New York online store was selling mugs adorned with the swastika, the motto of the SS (“My honor is called loyalty”), and the face of Adolf Hilter.
Vice reported that it was told by Goodwill after the items were brought to the organization’s attention that the items were removed from its online auction.
