A Russian singer pulled out of a performance at an opera festival in Germany. Why? The National Post put up the Associated Press report:
A German television program broadcast Friday showed old footage of a bare-chested Evgeny Nikitin playing drums in a rock band, in which a swastika tattoo partly covered by another symbol could be seen. The festival said Nikitin made his decision amid questions from a German newspaper about the significance of some of his tattoos.
Organizers made Nikitin, 38, aware of “the connotations of these symbols in connection with German history,” said a statement from the festival in Bayreuth, in the southeastern state of Bavaria. It added that his decision to pull out is “in line with the festival leadership’s consistent rejection of any form of Nazi ideas.”
If you trust today’s interview with the singer, he knew the “connotations of these symbols”; the tattoo was just unfinished. “[A]t one point in the process, with a lot of fantasy, you could have interpreted the unfinished rays of the star as parts of a swastika,” he says.
The lesson here: if you’re tattoo isn’t done and kinda looks like the symbol for the Nazis even the tinniest bit, keep your shirt on.
