A Trump-backing couple have been banned from shopping at Walmart for a year after video showed them wearing swastika face masks at a store in Marshall, Minnesota.
The man and woman marched through the Marshall Walmart donning red masks adorned with giant swastikas.
“If you vote for Biden, you’re going to be [living] in Nazi Germany. That’s what it’s going to be like,” the woman says in video shot and posted to Facebook by shopper Raphaela Mueller.
“You’re literally wearing a Nazi flag right now,” another shopper retorts.
“We literally had a f–king war over this. The Nazis lost. Please don’t wear those masks,” Mueller adds.
The woman responds by griping that her fellow patrons “aren’t getting it.”
“I’m trying to tell you: If you vote for Biden, you’re going to have socialism,” she says.
WATCH: Nazi face mask couple in Walmart:
Cellphone footage shows the man and a woman wearing bandana masks adorned with giant swastikas while paying for their purchases at the cash register.
In the video, a man who is off camera can be heard telling the couple, ‘You’re sick. You have an illness, you can’t be American and wear that mask.’
As the man is speaking, the woman flings her arms up into the air in a ‘ta-da!’ gesture, before flashing her middle fingers at the camera.
The man also raises his arms into the air, before quickly going back to putting items onto the conveyor belt.
‘We literally had a war about this,’ the off-camera man says, as the swastika-decked woman saunters over.
As the woman mumbles something unintelligible, a second man off-camera says, ‘My grandfather killed Nazis.’
The woman then paces around, denying the fact that she’s a Nazi, saying instead ‘socialism is going to happen here in America’ and that ‘If you vote for Biden, this is what we’re going to have, socialism!’
The woman needs to read a history book.
Hitler’s Germany was not socialist, but fascist.
In April 1933, Hitler had communists, socialists, democrats, and Jews purged from the German civil service.
Hitler then banned all political parties other than his own, and prominent members of the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps.
One of the off-camera men brands the mask ‘so incredibly offensive’ as the woman walks away.
Mueller, vicar of a southwest Minnesota parish, wrote in her Facebook post: ‘I was born and raised in Germany, and I grew up hearing about my great-grandmother who fought in the underground against the first wave of Nazis in the 1930s and 40s.
‘Let me make this abundantly clear once and for all – THE SWASTIKA IS A HATE SYMBOL AND YOU DO NOT FLY THE FLAG, YOU DO NOT WEAR THE SYMBOL ANYWHERE ON YOUR BODY, YOU DO NOT USE OR DEFEND THIS SYMBOL, EVER. END OF STORY.’
Mueller wrote on Facebook that the store manager said ‘he didn’t have the power to keep them out, regardless of what mask they were wearing.’
Police said that they were called to the Walmart at about noon Saturday because the couple’s masks were creating a disturbance at the location.
Marshall PD then issued the couple – identified only as a 59-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman – with a notice of trespass.
The duo then left the store without incident, police said.
On Saturday night, Walmart issued a statement about the incident.
‘What happened today at our store in Marshall, MN is unacceptable. We strive to provide a safe and comfortable shopping environment for all our customers and will not tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment in any aspect of our business,’ Walmart said in the statement.
‘We are asking everyone to wear face coverings when they enter our stores for their safety and the safety of others and it’s unfortunate that some individuals have taken this pandemic as an opportunity to create a distressing situation for customers and associates in our store.’
Walmart also told the news station that the trespass notices issued to the couple ban them from going to any Walmart for at least a year.
The couple had apparently decided to wear the swastika bandannas as a way to protest the state’s mandatory mask rule, which went into effect Saturday and was issued to help slow the spread of coronavirus.
Although authorities haven’t named the couple, Facebook users claim to know the couple.
They ‘have been known bigot [sic] in the town for awhile now,’ one Facebook user wrote.
‘They spray painted “build the wall” on their garage one year. I had to drive to the middleschooleach [sic] day and pass it.’
While the swastika-wearing couple are not facing charges stemming from this incident, they could be arrested if they step food inside a Walmart in the next 365 days.
Wearing a nazi flag is a vile act. However they do have their 1st Amendment rights. I hear constantly about those that burn the US Flag which many people find equally offensive if not more so are allowed/protected to do so under the 1st Amendment. Does it only work one way?
Hitler’s Germany was indeed socialist. The official name of the Nazi Party was “National Socialist German Worker’s Party.”
Adolf Hitler was not a socialist. In fact, his political views were based on a foundation of racism and anti-Semitism. That was the backbone of the Nazi Party. The word “socialist” doesn’t change that, just as the word “Democratic” does not make the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — North Korea — a democracy.