RoadKill pulls S12 E05 “Road Tripping in a ’39 Ford” shortly after car journo points out guest’s alleged white supremacy tattoos

SS Bolts and what looks like 14/23 were clearly visible even from screenshots of the episode.

If you were looking forward to watching RoadKill Season 12 Episode 5 “Road Tripping in a ’39 Ford” on Motor Trend Plus, you’re out of luck. Shortly after the episode went live it was pulled offline, any links to the episode now showing a 404 not found.

On Amazon Prime, where RoadKill also streams, the episode is listed as unavailable.

Although RoadKill hasn’t officially released a statement explaining why they pulled the episode, a Twitter thread started by Car Journalist Kyle Hyatt on May 8 might shed some light on the situation.

Screenshots shared by Hyatt on Twitter supposedly shows one of the guests on that episode with what looks like tattoos with symbolism connected to white supremacist ideologies.

Tagged in the thread are Motor Trend and RoadKill including the show’s hosts Mike Finnegan and David Freiburger.

Here’s Hyatt’s thread below.

Oh yeah, no it gets worse. pic.twitter.com/dteIdAPvXB

— Kyle Hyatt (@kylejhyatt) May 9, 2023

Although I did not watch this particular episode, thankfully Redditor /u/ConnectingWithBrands on a thread discussing the episode’s disappearance breaks the episode down, who this guy is, and how much screen time he got.

RoadKill’s hosts are driving a 1939 Ford from Georgia to Texas and, along the way, they stop at Combat Park in Eastboga, AL.

Combat Park describes itself as, “The Premiere Outdoor Experience in Northeast Alabama. Featuring Paintball, army tank rides, and so much more.”

“At the park, a park worker hydrolocks an H1, F&F (Finnegan and Freiburger) drive another through a mud puddle, and then F&F drive over a Honda CRV with a ‘tank’ (self-propelled howitzer?) while the same employee hangs off the turret barrel,”/u/ConnectingWithBrands comments.

“The park employee is the white-supremacist-tattoo-haver. He gets maybe five minutes of screen time, is miked for sound, and yes, I could make out the racist tattoos on my TV and recognized them instantly.”

Returning to Hyatt’s screenshots, the first screenshot show’s the guest in question with his forearms with tattoos visible.

Half the tattoo design is visible with what looks a lot like SS Bolts and the number 23 on a shield.

According to the Anti-Defamation league,

“…SS Bolts are a common white supremacist/neo-Nazi symbol derived from Schutzstaffel (SS) of Nazi Germany.”

And 23, according to a reply, is possibly part of the number combination 14/23 which, also according to the ADL,

“… refers to the “23 precepts,” a list of rules that Southern Brotherhood members must follow…”

The Southern Brotherhood is the largest white supremacist prison gang in Alabama.

The other screenshot shows what looks like a grim reaper face with an SS Bolt on the side of the reaper’s face.

Discourse surrounding the episode being pulled seems to have two camps.

The first set of people, like the Redditor who started this thread titled “Thanks for getting the episode pulled,” maintain the episode shouldn’t have been pulled and most viewers, like this guy, this guy, and this guy, didn’t even notice the tattoos anyway.

The other camp (which yours truly is in) thinks RoadKill should’ve done a better job vetting their guests and, even after the fact, edited (or cut) their footage, to not give alleged white supremacists a platform.

Dude shouldn't be on film, regardless of what they were doing. Don't support Nazi's by giving them a platform.

— Nick Toomey (@5_Slow) May 9, 2023

It’s not clear if the episode will be edited blurring out the man’s arms, if they’ll cut the segment out entirely, or if they’ll not re-upload it at all.

My guess is the latter.