A group plays paintball at an outdoor shooting range. Photo by Jack F / via iStock
By Hannah Feuer
May 14, 2025
Paintball players typically take to online forums to discuss game tactics and compare gear. But this week, the niche subreddit r/paintball was overtaken by discourse about a different subject: moral outrage over Nazi hate symbols.
The controversy started when Marcello Margott, a paintball world champion and author of Paintball IQ, posted an Instagram story last week displaying his trainee Dan Bilzerian’s vast collection of paintball equipment. Astute viewers noticed a paintball gun decorated with Nazi insignia — including the Nazi Eagle, SS Bolts, and Celtic Cross.
The reaction was swift. On Tuesday, the National Paintball League, known as the NXL, created a new rule prohibiting “displaying offensive, inappropriate, or discriminatory content during any NXL-sanctioned event.” And Margott, who played for the professional paintball team Edmonton Impact, was kicked off his team’s roster.
In a statement posted to Instagram, Margott wrote that he did not notice the paintball gun in his video until it was pointed out to him the next day. “I do not condone any symbol of hate, period,” he wrote, adding that he believes “in having friends with different world views.”
Yet Margott did not commit to stop coaching Bilzerian, a poker player turned social media influencer who plays for the Las Vegas paintball team Protocol. It’s not the first time Bilzerian has come under fire for antisemitism. The 44-year-old has said “most of the problems today are caused by Jewish supremacy,” claimed that Jews killed John F. Kennedy and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and said that Jews orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, among other antisemitic conspiracy theories.
But the SS-themed paintball gun seems to have triggered new levels of outrage, and satire, across paintball players on social media. Many condemned the hate symbols and poked fun at the idea of battling a real-life Nazi on the paintball field.
The custom gear company Ugly Paintball posted a meme captioned “Updated plans at the start box,” showing one paintball player asking, “Do you know what we’re doing?” The reply: “Yeah, shootin’ Nazis.”
“F— paintball Nazis, all my homies hate paintball Nazis,” Evan Horton posted to Reddit alongside a photo of him wearing paintball goggles and a yarmulke with a Star of David.
Horton isn’t Jewish, but his wife and kids are. He told the Forward he posted the photo to show other paintball players that “there are actual Jewish people out there playing the game.”
Other non-Jews are also speaking out. John Moran, who sells custom paintball jerseys in Birmingham, Ala., commented on Margott’s statement asking if he was “really okay standing beside people who openly express hate.” Moran said he loves the adrenaline rush he gets from playing paintball — and doesn’t want the sport to be ruined by a few bad apples.
“A lot of us are putting our foot down, like, this is completely uncalled for. It doesn’t need to happen,” Moran said. “We don’t want it inside our community.”
Horton added that paintball already struggles with a reputation for attracting far-right extremists — and incidents like this don’t help. Some players prefer calling the equipment “markers” instead of “paintball guns,” to emphasize the game’s nonviolent spirit.
Horton also noted that the paintball community had dealt with another Nazi controversy last December, when the paintball gear site HK Army sold headbands with symbols resembling SS Bolts and the Nazi Eagle. After backlash on Reddit, HK Army recalled the product, writing in a statement that the business had not identified the offensive symbol during the design and production phase and was taking steps to “ensure that nothing like this happens again.”
While Horton said the incidents involving Nazi symbols have been disturbing, he’s also been heartened by the response on social media.
“The amount of support has just been astonishing,” he said. “Definitely didn’t have the paintball community rallies around the Jews on my 2025 bingo card.”
