User blog comment:Pary16/Hetalia featured on "otaku USA" magazine/@comment-1151277-20100827154059/@comment-1271618-20100827190540

@Anon: It's something that I wish fandom could be able to move on from, but unfortunately, it looks like we won't be able to all live it down thanks to those guys.

Basically: A bunch of Germany and Prussia cosplayers (and a few others mixed in with them) went for an outdoor photoshoot and thought it'd be hilarious and "cool" to do the Heil Hitler salute in the photo. Their cover-story for any passersby, according to one, was them yelling "HAS ANYONE SEEN KYLE? HE'S THIS TALL". Photos and word got out of what they did at the con, and it was bad.

People actually tried to defend the salute, including a few Neo-Nazis and trolls that invaded the Livejournal community, as well as mostly people that thought everyone was being "so mean" and "unfair" to be offended. One favorite tactic of the defenders was "Hetalia is offensive, so it's okay for people to do that! Omg, you are sensitive!" and of course, the idea that only Jewish fans or oversensitive ones would be offended. Nope. Some German fans and a Polish one (IIRC) spoke up about how horrifying it was to see that.

Thankfully, the mods memberlocked the topic when the trolling got too out of hand, but it didn't stop UnfunnyBusiness and SF_drama from reporting on it and making some very...crass comments and generalizations about all Hetalia fans. I remember seeing one person somewhere say that Hetalia fans deserved to die worse than the Holocaust victims for trivializing it. On UFB, there were people saying that we fetishize Japan and condone Himaruya's "Japanese privilege" to whitewash and disrespect history, and SF_drama said that the Hetalia fandom deserved to die and that if they did, the internet would be free of stupidity XD:. Yeah, pretty bad. You could say "haters gonna hate" but what about when they have reason to hate the fandom? fff

The Prussia who organized the photoshoot apologized for it, but it was a half-hearted apology and it later turned out she was lying about "not knowing" it happened, since it was revealed that she was in the photograph doing the salute. Some of the cosplayers claimed they had no clue what the salute was, but I don't know, some of that sounded like them trying to do damage control to me.