Was someone at SkepticalScience plotting to pretend evil skeptics created these pictures? (… surely not.)
Brandon Schollenberger found them on the SkS forum. Admire the effort taken to get the SkS penguins, the leaf insignia on the hat, the lapels, the button…
Reichstuhrer J.Cook
Or lo, is this just the weekend fun of teenagers let loose with photoshop? Looks like.
Spartans for Science, Watts, Monckton and Delingpole
Anthony Watts has a larger set (and a pretty good six-pack too) which is “lucky” (sort of), because not long after he posted the first few, the images disappeared from their original links. In a true SkS logical maneuver they were moved to …/images/a11gon3 (images “allgone”), which took real skeptics about five minutes to find. That set have gone too now (except for the 400 copies placed all over the Internet).
As Anthony says, Skeptical Science takes creepy to a whole new level.
Brandon wonders (like we all do) why anyone would bother?
It’s possible these images were taken from somewhere else and uploaded, but that seems unlikely as a couple of them show signs of further photoshopping done to improve them. To see what I mean, compare this image to this one.
Combined with the fact there are a number of similarly photoshopped images done to flatter Nuccitelli, it seems almost certain SkS members have photoshopped images of SkS members as Nazi soldiers. I can’t think of a single sensible reason they would do that.
I don’t think they dream of being Nazis, and I can’t imagine it was particularly fun to make those images. It’s possible they made these with the idea of a false flag operation in mind, but that seems ridiculous.
As RichieP says in a Watts Up comment:
Shows how little these people know and understand (and not only about science). They’ve forgotten that the Spartans (and the others with them) were standing up for freedom against the autocracy and domination of the Persian king of kings.