German city bans ‘silent fox’ gesture in schools over similarity to far-right sign | Bremen says symbol, used to call for silence in class, ‘in danger of being mistaken’ for Turkish extremist ‘wolf salute’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/14/german-city-bans-silent-fox-gesture-in-schools-bremen-over-links-to-rightwing-sign

by GirasoleDE

42 comments

  2. Why didn’t they just ban nazism, extremism and other bad things? Are they stupid?

  5. That gesture was stupid af anyways, we just made fun of every teacher naive enough to try it.
    Telling us to shut up usually worked tho

  6. I just now realize how confusing the images of the Turkish fan groups had to be for primary school students.:
    All people make the gesture of the “silent fox” and scream and shout at the same time. They clearly don’t know how it works.

  11. Not that it’s important, but it’s not the city Bremen, it’s the state Bremen, which includes the cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven. Cities don’t have jurisdiction over schools, only states do. It’s also states, not the federal government. If you don’t like it, don’t blame the German federal government, blame Bremen. If you do like it, give credit to Bremen. Either way, this is the *state* Bremen. But I wouldn’t expect the Guardian to properly do their jobs anyway.

  14. A good old. “Schnauze halten jetzt!!!” Will do the trick

  16. Except the “far right” wolf salute itself is not banned in Germany on a federal level, including also in Bremen.

  17. Isn’t context essential for extremistic symbols? A swastika can be ok, if you happen to witness it in a mirror in Japan. A Hitler Greeting can be ok if done to catch a cab in NYC. And maybe a Wolf Sign can be ok, if used to pinch a pair imaginative lips together.

  18. That’s so dumb… it will have the opposite effect of limiting the reach of the symbol. By banning it, they only give it power. If they instead left it alone, people could make fun of the Turkish nationalists (a lot of whom ironically live in Germany and don’t move to Turkey) by telling them to be quiet.

  19. Can these extremist groups not come up with their own things, rather than ruining existing ones for everyone? We can’t even do the olympic salute anymore because of one crazy moustache man.

  20. My maths teacher used the Shaka gesture instead 🤙🏼 he was a real Dude

  22. Are we gonna ban every hand gesture 😭 be so fr. Isn’t that just metal hand hand gesture

  23. What?! My German teacher did this all the time in Munich! In the school I went to there is no affiliation whatsoever.

  24. But now I’m curious: is (was?) the Silent Fox commonly used all around Germany or is it a local or uncommon thing? Probably because I’m not too used to it, but is seems a little bit too cute to try to silence a group of kids.

    As a sidenote, I remember when I was a teenager I would help managing children up to ~14 usually at some summer camps (oratorio estivo/Grest for Italians) and there was this gesture where we would [show the open hand](https://imgur.com/a/WkSWPGb) to the kids and yell them: «Cinque!» and nothing else, which meant that they had 5 seconds to shut up. Worked like a charm. I’ve used it again some months ago to a group of kids from my town and still works. To this day I still don’t know if it was something very specific of my town or someone else would use it as well.

  25. As long as it won’t be replaced with the silent paper sheet

  27. Can’t do the Schweigefuchs now, because of woke.

  29. >The “silent fox” gesture – where the hand is posed to resemble an animal with upright ears (the little and forefinger) and a closed mouth (the middle fingers pressed against the thumb) – has long been seen as a useful teaching tool by educators in Germany **and elsewhere**. It signals to children that they should stop talking and listen to their teacher.

    I’m from Lithuania, and I’ve never even heard of “silent fox” in my life. Is that a German thing? Or is that some old obscure thing which is now used as a dog-whistle by the far right, similar to how they appropriated the “ok” symbol or the swastika?

  30. Next ban rock paper scissor for gambling or some shit please

  32. Kind of nonsensical. Using the sign outside the context of a class makes it the fascist symbol. Its the same thing with students raising their fingers in class not being mistaken for the islamic profession of faith

  33. because contextual extrapolation is so fucking hard. how on earth are we to know that group of 3-6 year olds aren’t in fact a mob of raging turkish fascists?

    fml, apparently our entire arsenal for fighting fascism consists of moral posturing and symbolic gestures.

  37. This is dumb as fuck. Nobody knows wtf the wolf salute is.

  38. I mean… It wasn’t a big part of German culture and we’re kinda used to sacrificing hand gestures from our common culture.

  39. *cries in heavy metal*

    >!^(I know it’s not the same, but you go and explain that to a police officer)!<

  40. Germany trying to create swastikas for other countries so they don’t feel left out. How nice

  42. Isn’t any symbol to silence a far left symbol…?

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