Klan hoods, a slave collar, a gas valve from a Nazi death chamber. These are items from atrocities that most would like to leave in the annals of history. But auctioneers in South Florida have dug up items from some of the worst that humanity can offer and are selling them for profit, the Sun Sentinel reports. Reporter Michael Mayo recounts walking through a warehouse full of concentration camp badges, Nazi flags, discriminatory signs from the Jim Crow South and letters written by serial killers, all part of the “The Ultimate Evil Auction.”…. “From a moral standpoint, I didn’t know whether it was right or wrong,” Scott Grasso, president of J. Sugarman Auction Corp, told Mayo. “But these items have a historical significance to them, and you can’t change the course of history. …So far, there’s been more interest than objection to it.”
Here’s a pro tip: If you have no real moral qualms about profiting off Nazi gas chamber valves, murderabilia, or Klan hoods, there’s a very high likelihood that you’re a sociopath and/or a miserable excuse for a human being. Proving that morals and business often share little in the way of common ground, The Ultimate Evil Auction is hawking a warehouse full of items most people would find objectionable and offensive.
Then again, the auctioneers are just trying to make a living…right??
To calls this “capitalism at its worst” really doesn’t begin to describe my feelings about it, though I can’t help but wonder what should be done with these items. I couldn’t in good conscience advocate for their destruction, because there is a lot of history in that warehouse. Some of those items deserve to have a wider audience if for no other reason than for their educational value. Think of the lessons that could be taught if these objectionable items were handled with care and awareness of the evil they represent. There’s a lot of good that could be done by using some of these items as teaching tools. Commoditizing them? Well, if all you care about is making a buck, it might be a good time to take a long look at the man in the mirror.
To say that “[f]rom a moral standpoint, I didn’t know whether it was right or wrong” impresses me as disingenuous at best and distressingly immoral and dishonest at work. Profiting off murderabilia and artifacts that represent some of the worst, most heinous crimes humanity has committed is about as sick and immoral as it gets. Yes, some of the items do have significant historical significance, but profiting off them is just wrong. They may belong in museums or universities or with anti-hate groups…but it doesn’t get much more immoral than auctioning them off to the highest bidder.
A press release from the auction house made it clear they “in no way intended to condone or glorify the heinous criminal acts of those involved.” Of course, that’s not about to stop them from profiting off “the heinous criminal acts of those involved.” Who needs morals when there’s money to be made?
Stay classy, eh?
