This is going to be pretty controversial

the real question is who cares?

The Russians care.

He has stated several times he thought it sounded cool. There is no explaining taste.

stalin certainly doesent care

Czechs might

thats not a playable country

Its one of those things where the first thing that pops into your head when you see his name is "wtf is wrong with this chump/tool"

but idk maybe he was being ironic. always wondered

Whatever the case is, million people from my country died by the hand of Waffen SS. He could have choose something less offending to other people.

I am inclined to agree, Dejan0707-

But, at the very least, it is the thankful consequence of that war that we live in a world where we are still free to make statements- he, I suppose, to garner attention, even to offend (if so he wishes, or if even unintentionally) and we to make our statements of disdain towards such actions.

(And out of curiosity- which country are you from? And do you mean a "country: country or a group of people... a fellow Jew?)

Alright here's a lesson from an unlikely source. Fuhrer means leader in German. Nothing more, nothing less. It's the same as Duce in Italian. Just because facist dictators happened to like referrefing to themselves that way doens't irreprably change the connotation of the word. Reich means something along the lines of empire, as I understand it. There have been three Reichs in German history, only one of them bad. The second was under the Kaisers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While they mave have been expanionist and aggressive, that can be said of almost every European nation at one time or another. The first was under Friedrich Barbarossa, one of the most badass kiings in European histroy. Brutal, expansionistic and power-hungry, yes, but so were most monarchs. The only truly bad Reich was that of Adolf Hitler, and it was hardly a Reich; more of a mockery of the other two. The SS is slightly more inflamatory. SS does have a connotation of Hitler's personal bodyguard and the highly fanatical divisions of the German army. However, SS stands for Storm Troopers, which was part of the German military when Mussolini and Hitler were still Corporals. The Strom Troopers were German infantry from the first World War trained to attack with little or no artillery bombardment beforehand, thus giving an attack surprise and disallowing defenders to reallocate reserves to thin areas along the attack axis. So, maybe the name is in poor taste, but it's not quite as bad as you might think.

The SS were a paramilitary group started by the nazi's and doesn't stand for storm trooper.

It's a poor choice of a name.

Poor choice or not, it's his right to use it. I can't believe there is a thread here about somebody's username and now I can't believe that I am posting in it.

Obiwanobiwan I meant country, not group of people. I am not Jew, but in my city Jews were important minority, with several synagogues here till WW2 come. Today we dont have not even one of this synagogues and only few older Jews remain, others were killed by Nazis.

I am not denying anyone right to choose his name here, but certainly would be wiser to skip names like that. I am sure that nobody would like to see someone with name Al-Qaida as well (large percentage of people here are from USA so I made that example).

im sure there are plenty of names of plenty of butchers he is just one of the better known
there is also a xerxes playing names are names what you take from them is your compulsion

The odd (or maybe not so odd?) thing is is that he is a pretty hard line Christian.

I thought we went through this and that he was gonna change his name

if he had ss, reich, or fuhrer as a name separately it would be fine but i think the combo could come off as obnoxious to many people.

I'm sure any one of those words would have elicited the same reaction in people as the combo does.

Exactly. In his defence, he did talk about changing his name when people kept commenting, but there were also lots who told him to keep it.

If he's not a German then it's legal

lJ Tyler D, that's crap. Are you one of those people who hears he word 'faggot' and tries to claim it's not hateful because it means a bundle of sticks? Words evolve and it's pretty clear from Ssreichs reactions to his name what it means.

I agree, even the words Reich and führer have bad connotations nowadays. Don't forget they're mainly being used by neo-nazi groups. It would be the same like using a swastika pattern to decorate your house. It could be quite neat but in Western culture there's just too much history in that symbol.

I just have to say that the mere fact that we have a thread to talk a about X persons user name is ridiculous. haha

and Dingle when I mentioned that little fact about faggots in the gay thread I hope you didn't think that that is actually what I consider the word to mean now a days and that I understand it has changed drastically.

Jman, I didn't know you actually did. LOL. It was more the point that there are so people who do .

haha, really? I thought like no one knew that and so figured that you had seen it in a post. amazing.

thread=570809 You guys really shouldn't be so quick to judge.

See threadID=570809

@ Dingle - You're dealing with connotation, I'm talking about denotation.

@ Otto - I oversimplified that point. Hitler's personal bodyguard were known as Brownshirts or Stormtroopers. Later, when they got turned into military units, they were renamed the SS. So yes, SS doesn't stand for Stormtrooper, but the SS came from them.