Texas bladesmith Johnathan Sibley was just minding his business at The Blade Bar in Edom — a tiny town between Tyler and Dallas — when a couple waltzed in with a request: Could he swap a Hitler Youth knife emblem onto another knife?
Sibley’s response? A firm “No Nazi bullshit,” as he slid the knives back like an unwanted check at dinner. The woman, surprisingly chill about being denied her little fascist arts-and-crafts project, accepted the refusal. Sibley, ever the professional, even offered to “denazify shit” with a modern German forestry seal instead. No takers. Off they went.
The exchange was captured on the shop’s Ring camera, and the video — posted on TikTok by Sibley’s wife Rhiannon with the caption “Some orders aren’t worth taking” — blew up, racking up more than 83,000 likes and 5,300 comments.
Those kinds of requests aren’t new, Rhiannon told The Barbed Wire via Facebook message, adding that they get them “more often than we would like.”
“I would say at least a few a year,” she said.
But the online response has been “incredible,” she said, with “so much support.”
They’ve heard from “people sharing their stories, hearing how much it means to people is meaningful,” she said. “But hearing the ‘why’ behind it is powerful and a reminder of how important it is to continue to honor those who fought to put a stop to that atrocious time in our history.”
For context, Hitler Youth knives were used in the 1930s to train kids into becoming full-fledged Nazis. Johnathan Sibley, 53, has been sharpening blades since he was 13, and has no interest in participating in the country’s apparently renewed interest in Naziism.
“It shouldn’t be worthy of the attention it’s getting. It should be standard practice,” he told Chron.com. “I thought we had an agreement on this shit 80 years ago.”
Since going viral, Sibley’s anti-Nazi quotes — especially “no Nazi bullshit” — are now on T-shirts, tank tops, and even candles. His store’s Etsy shop sold out so fast that Etsy itself locked the store.
Rhiannon Sibley told The Barbed Wire that the responses they’ve gotten have “been at least 99% positive, but there have been a few haters.”
“But if you are doing something with deep meaning, that is to be expected,” she said. “We have continued business as usual, we have a huge support system and we are keeping our focus on the positive.”