Last week, Renzo Gracie — a former PRIDE fighter and pioneer of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the United States — made headlines for his seeming admiration for Nazi rhetoric.
Back in 2012, Gracie posted a tweet quoting Heinrich Himmler, a main architect of the Holocaust. He was then lambasted online, to which he pleaded ignorance by claiming he did not know who Himmler was. The tweet resurfaced in June 2020, and when confronted, Gracie once again claimed ignorance but defended his decision to post the Nazi quote by adding “I love the quote, biatch.”
Over the next few days, Gracie doubled down on his decision to post the Himmler quote, promised to watch a pro-Nazi propaganda documentary, and even attacked France and the supposed “soft generation” that voted for incumbent president Emmanuel Macron, “It’s not my fault that your grandparents let [Nazis] march through your country without a fight…now you pay,” Gracie tweeted at a French native who criticized him.