Rising social media influencer and US Army 2nd Lieutenant Nathan Freihofer has become the latest in a long line of US military personnel who have been reprimanded or discharged due to social media posts.
Army officials suspended Freihofer, 23, from his leadership duties, and he is now the subject of an internal probe after netizens alerted the service to a recent so-called “comedy” post on his 3.1-million follower account, Stars and Stripes reported on Monday.
Paul Szoldra, Task and Purpose editor-in-chief and US Marine Corps veteran, reposted a screen recording of the brief video in question. The video clip has amassed over 1.5 million views on Twitter alone.
“What’s a Jewish person’s favorite Pokemon character?” Freihofer asks his followers. “Ash!”
Be advised, the video below contains language some may find offensive.
The US Army, however, did not end up following the influencer’s suggestion, as an investigation into the post was launched within hours of it going viral.
Furthermore, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Twitter account retweeted Szoldra’s post, highlighting that Freihofer wrote in his full post: “For legal reasons this is a joke.”
The Oświęcim, Poland, museum sits on the grounds of the World War II-era Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. An estimated 1.1 million people, 960,000 of them Jewish, died or were killed at the present-day research center and UNESCO World Heritage Site.
According to new Army regulations and the service’s “Think, Type, and Post” effort, service members are “responsible for content they publish on all personal and public internet domains to include social media sites, blogs, and other websites.”
The Army has also experienced a drastic uptick in soldier-linked street gang activity – translating to a 66% increase in law enforcement reports involving known or suspected gang or domestic extremist group members in fiscal year 2018, Sputnik reported.
Current reports on the matter claim Freihofer’s TikTok account has been suspended or deleted by either the influencer or the platform.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
