A group of St. Petersburg teenagers used a neo-Nazi slogan as their team name as they won a quiz contest marking International Tolerance Day.
The competition was part of a wider program of combating xenophobia introduced in schools all over Russia.
Joining the government’s efforts to boost tolerance among pupils, the teachers of Petersburg School No. 420 organized a quiz that would award the team with the most right answers.
The award itself was put on the school’s bulletin board, which is how it caught the attention of an Internet user who photographed it and published at LiveJournal. The diploma featured the team’s name: “14/88,” which contains two numbers used prominently in Nazi slogans. The first one, known as “The Fourteen Words,” was coined by David Lane, a member of 1980s white separatist organization The Order. The second symbolizes an 88-word statement from Adolf Hitler's “Mein Kampf,” and can also refer to the Nazi greeting “HH” ("Heil Hitler") – the eights representing the eighth letter of the alphabet.
The school’s teachers said they were unaware of the code’s meaning. Once informed of the incident, they removed the diploma and promised to talk to the pupils – to find out if that was a silly joke or something more serious.
Comments (9)
Б. Кропоткин (unregistered) 18.12.2012 00:05
Undo
Kenbruce (unregistered) 03.06.2012 06:47
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Zikan (unregistered) 03.06.2012 05:20
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