ALTON - A concerned parent took to Facebook following receiving a "treat" she thought contained Nazi symbolism on Liberty Street in Alton.
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Toni Webb of Alton posted on Facebook Monday, Oct. 30, after trick-or-treating with her daughters, granddaughters and neighbor's child, ranging in age from 2-8 and receiving an item she believed to be threatening. It was a small plastic, red eagle with a black seven-pointed star made to clip on something such as a zipper. She said children were made to "dab" to attain one.
A dab is a sort of dance move in which someone raises both hands toward the same direction in an upward diagonal direction while looking toward the ground.
That dab was too similar to a Nazi salute, Webb believed, and she advised parents to toss whatever item they attained from that home on Liberty Street.
Owners of that home on Liberty Street, however, assured they are not Nazis, instead describing themselves as "tree-hugging hippies." Resident David Asher told Riverbender.com in a Facebook message Wednesday afternoon the Halloween decorations outside the home he shares with his wife were meant completely as satire.
"Halloween is about dressing up as something scary, right?" Asher commented. "The Alt-Right movement is pretty scary to us, so we thought we'd poke fun at them a bit. Our salute was the dab, just to make things absurd."
Other parents commented on Webb's original post, saying they too received the eagle, and were concerned about its origin and meaning. She included a pagan definition of the seven-pointed, or Elven, star, which claimed it was popularized by noted occultist Aleister Crowley, a.k.a. "The Beast."
While, yes, the star was made popular by Crowley's followers in the recent era, it was also made popular even more recently by the television show, Game of Thrones, of which Asher described himself a fan.
When asked if he believed the satire of his piece would be lost upon many young people who came to the door, Asher said the older children understood the joke, adding everyone wanted to "join the revolution," advertised by doing the dab.
Asher also said the eagles handed to children were made through 3-D printing. He said his household goes all out for Halloween with former themes being underwater life and extraterrestrials, but this was the first year they did anything political
"It's Halloween, just in fun," Asher said. "I don't necessarily feel bad that people were offended, as long as no one gets hurt. It was kind of an interesting social experiment."
Before being told it was a satire, Webb said it was not amusing "in her book," adding she did not intend on taking her children to any locations Tuesday night.
"I didn't mean to cause a big ruckus," Webb said of her public posting, which has since been shared several times. "It just didn't seem quite right to me. I was bothered by it."
