NORTHAMPTON — Weeks after tweets by a human rights panelist spurred questions about what is and is not appropriate online behavior for people in municipal service, one Facebook post Tuesday from Mayor David Narkewicz raised a few eyebrows.
Narkewicz shared a video featuring a movie version of Hitler, referred to in the clip as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, as well as an image of Godell with a Hitler-like mustache and NFL logo bearing a Swastika behind him. The video pokes fun at “Deflategate” and what many New England Patriots fans consider a league-wide conspiracy to stifle the team’s glory.
The video, which was not created by Narkewicz, is one of many of its kind that use the same movie clip of Hitler and his staff strategizing in German inside a war room. Each of the clips offer a different explanation through subtitles as to why the angry Hitler’s plans have been thwarted. Another recent example was made by NCTV and featured discussions of the downtown Northampton economy.
Narkewicz said he shared the video, viewed some 300,000 times on YouTube and shared by dozens, via former Lt. Governor Jane Swift’s Facebook page.
Some, like two who commented on the mayor’s Facebook post, find the video insensitive.
“Videos like these trivialize the Holocaust and, in so doing, erase the history of the suffering of Jews and, in a way, normalize it,” wrote Ben Power, curator of the Sexual Minorities Archives. “Just depicting the swastika is a trigger to many people. I would urge to delete the post especially because a communication from a mayor carries more gravitas — and thus responsibility — than one from a non-official citizen.”
“Perilously close to the edge for a sitting mayor to post a Hitler video,” agreed another commenter, Michael Owen Budnick. “Mel Brooks can get away with such humor (barely) but unless I am mistaken you do not share his heritage.”
One commenter, Richard Parker, came to the mayor’s defense, posting in response to Budnick: “…. Why take life so serious when life is so short.”
Narkewicz said the post to his personal Facebook page spoke to his passion for the Patriots and nothing more.
“Am I a rabid Pats fan? Guilty as charged,” he told the Gazette on Wednesday. “I don’t think that a reasonable person would believe that I was posting it as an act of anti-semitism.”
He said the parody captured what he and other fans were feeling about Goodell, and their desire to be privy to his off-camera conversations about the “Deflategate” scandal.
He said: “I think there was a lot of feeling that the NFL was really going after the Patriots, and probably in his office somewhere…it would have been nice to be a fly on the wall. When I saw the video it was more just in that context.”
Narkewicz said that as social media becomes increasingly a part of our world, it can be tricky to strike an online persona that fully reflects him.
“If you go look at my Facebook I think you’ll see it’s a combination of my personal life and my public life,” he said. “I have a personal life but I’m the mayor as well — it’s always a balancing act.”
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.