Police interrogate spelling bee official about ‘grammar-nazi’ connections

The district attorney’s office in Rostov has taken a curious interest in a company that runs a local spelling bee contest. Earlier today, police called in for questioning the company’s head, Alexei Pavlovsky, asking him about “grammar nazis” and whether they finance his firm’s activities.

“They showed me pictures that this movement uses (there were stylized Nazi symbols), and asked me to describe my attitude about the images. They also asked me how I feel about people who make mistakes [during spelling bees], and whether I want to exterminate them,” Pavlovsky said.

Not long ago, in March 2015, a woman in Ulan-Ude was fined for posting a Nazi symbol on the Internet that police interpreted to be the grammar-nazi emblem. 

Over the past several months, Russian police have stepped up efforts to crack down on Nazi symbols. The low tolerance for the icons of German fascism has led to raids on souvenir stands and toy stores, as well as multiple prosecutions of Internet users posting pictures of swastikas (even without any apparent support for Nazism). In late April, several bookstores in Moscow even stopped selling copies of Art Spiegelman’s anti-fascist masterpiece Maus, because the cover art depicted swastikas. 

For more on Nazi symbols in Russia today, see: Gone mad with political correctness: How Russia’s anti-fascist censorship has jumped the shark