Listen, we don't give a shit if it's Halloween: there are some things you just don't depict in your front yard. Don't decorate your house with a MAGA-themed "purge and purify" display, even if you swear it's not racist. And definitely don't follow in the footsteps of Susan Lamerton, a Florida woman who somehow decided it would be a good idea to transform her lawn into an incoherent scene at a Nazi death camp.
According to local NBC affiliate WFLA, Lamerton littered her yard in New Port Richey with skeletons bearing Stars of David on their chests and concentration camp ID numbers on their arms. She posed them to look like they were giving the Nazi salute, which, as Splinter notes, isn't just awful—it doesn't make any goddamn sense. As if all that weren't offensive enough, she topped off her display with a sign that read "arbeit macht frei," or "work sets you free," which appeared most notoriously at the gates of Auschwitz.
Lamerton's neighbors were, understandably, completely fucking horrified. One told WFLA she couldn't sleep the first night she heard about the display; another said that, especially in light of the mass shooting in Pittsburgh, she couldn't believe Lamerton would put it up.
"It sickens me. This is disgusting," Lamerton's neighbor Mitchell Katz told the outlet. "I'm Jewish. This says she hates Jews and we should die."
So why the hell would anyone ever do this? As Lamerton told it, it's a kind of weird, extremely problematic protest: She claimed to be in a bitter feud with her local homeowner's association—something to do with landscaping—and decided to strike back by filling her yard with atrocious anti-Semitic Halloween decor. All this, she insisted, despite being Jewish herself.
"They’re trying to take my house," she told WFLA when asked why she'd put up the display. "I have freedom of speech."
She claimed to have received death threats over the decorations, but refused to take them down. Hopefully, she'll eventually just get rid of them now that Halloween is over, which, you know, thank God for that. This holiday has been a complete goddamn mess.
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