I didn’t know this until now — universities don’t make these, I guess — but there is a class of memorabilia called challenge coins. Usually, these are given out by military organizations to commemorate specific events, ranging from a visit to a major victory, but there are many other organizations that hand them out for all kinds of reasons. I’ve never received one, or given one out, and I felt briefly left out when I discovered that the FBI is also handing them out, especially this one that Kash Patel is proudly giving people.
The challenge coins being handed out by @FBIDirectorKash. Seems someone put a lot of thought into this.
A skull with guns for teeth, and oh my god, it has spiders in it’s eye sockets, based on the Punisher logo? It’s just cartoonishly evil.
“Looks like a nerd stuck forever in puberty designed a challenge coin while being on 15 cans of Monster,” one user commented on the design.
Others quickly pointed out that the Punisher symbol might not be the best choice for an FBI director.
“The Punisher is a symbol of “law and order” failing. It has very little business in the office of the FBI Director,” one user posted.
The use of the Punisher logo by law enforcement and the military has drawn criticism from the character’s creator, Gerry Conway, who told Forbes: “It always struck me as stupid and ironic that members of the police are embracing what is fundamentally an outlaw symbol.”
That might work as a golf ball mark repair tool
That is so cringe I hope it gets a lot of attention just so I never have to deal with anything like it.
I think that would make it only the second thing that yokel has done at the FBI that I actually appreciate. The first was correcting Trump about the role of FBI agents on January 6th.
Because now the orange fraud has decided there actually were riots, but it was the FBI and not, you know, all those people who got convicted for rioting on camera.
That’s one interpretation. I see a very short alien with a big head toting two revolvers.
Did someone mention coins?
Treasury Department considers minting a $1 Trump coin
That explains one thing.
I’ve been seeing that stylized skull here and there for a while.
I saw it on someone’s T shirt on Thursday and on a comic strip character as well.
I had no idea what it meant or where it came from.
“Are we the baddies?” meets kitsch bling.
Speaking of coins and the mint, what happened to getting rid of pennies? The one thing lots of people agree on and they can’t get THAT right
#7, Getting rid of the penny is being done to give corporations cover for raising their prices.
RR #6: These aren’t baddies, this is the hallmark of assholes. Vile, pig-ignorant assholes.
#8 :):):)
They’re already raising prices. Repeatedly. Without any cover whatsoever.
I was given a coin by the Commander of the Medical Unit on Fort Dix New Jersey. It was oval shaped and had the medical symbol, the Rod of Asclepius, on one side and the unit’s insignia on the other. In civilian capacity I severed as a Case Manager (Registered Nurse) for the Soldiers deploying and returning from the Iraj and Afghan wars. Worked for the VA, they were contracted by the Arny to supply nurses for the job. Did it for eight years, when the wars were near their end, we were given a nice ceremony and the coins. The coin is very heavy and well done. I gave it to my son-in-law who is in the Army Reserves and is stationed on Fort Dix.
More about the Rod of Asclepius. Way back in the early 1980s as I was going through Nursing School one of the professors, probably Microbiology, told us the medical symbol was associated with the removal of the Dracunculiasis or Guinea worm. When the worm reached its exit point, usually the leg, it would be extracted by wrapping it around a stick and gradually turning the stick until the worm was fully removed.
Dracunculiasis, or Guinea worm disease, is a painful parasitic infection caused by a worm that emerges from the skin, and it is widely believed to be the inspiration for the Staff of Asclepius, the single-serpent-entwined staff that is the traditional symbol of medicine
Patel, just another clown with a flamethrower!
It’s also worth noting that the Tommy gun pictured on the back of the coin is pretty much indelibly imprinted in the USian psyche as a symbol of bank-robbing, bootlegging gangsters, not law enforcement.
ObRef:
“America, the escape room of countries.”
“Challenge coins” are a military-officer tradition. When visiting the Officer’s Club bar at a base other than your own, if there comes a time to determine who has to pay for a round of drinks, everyone produces their highest-ranking challenge coins, and the lowest-ranking one (or officer without a coin) pays.
Challenge coins tend to be handed out by very senior people as “attaboys” for in-person small things, often ridiculous-to-civilians military-courtesy or unity-against-the-outsiders things. Due to a couple of my duty assignments, I collected about a dozen…
The FBI Director should not be trying to participate, unless he’s trying to imply that the FBI is a paramilitary organization — and I don’t think he would, then it would be obligated to follow the Geneva Conventions (which, by participating in ICE “actions,” it isn’t).
@Jaws, 16
That wasn’t my understanding of the coins – and I was given a few in different military units. What I understood was that the coins are given out to people who have had difficult experiences together, overcame something, served in a particular place and time together. You all get one, and you all know each other. If you happen to meet up in a mess or a bar somewhere in the future – you show your coin. Whoever doesn’t have theirs on hand buys the round.
For this to work, the pool of recipients need to all know each other or at least know OF each other. The ‘challenge’ is when you present your coin to a fellow member of the pool and see if they have theirs.
The thing that Patel is doing is just minting tokens to hand out to assholes. And to be fair – he’s not the first. I’ve been given a bunch of challenge coins that could not possibly serve their original function, since I would have no way of knowing who to challenge, since we have no shared history together.
“Challenge coins” are a military-officer tradition. When visiting the Officer’s Club bar at a base other than your own, if there comes a time to determine who has to pay for a round of drinks, everyone produces their highest-ranking challenge coins, and the lowest-ranking one (or officer without a coin) pays.
Do you realize how exploitive that is?
Make the poorest pay? That is disgusting.
jrkrideau, you obviously don’t get it. It has zero to do with wealth.
[ah, right — you confused the coins with the people, rank-wise. Tsk]
@ 14 Morales
Did you miss #6 or just ignore it?
@ 20 Morales
Er, no. You confused the word “poorest” as referring to wealth, which it obviously was not in context. Read for comprehension my man.
@ ^ Silentbob : Your continuing failure toanswer and avoidance of my questions for you here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/09/30/why-are-they-on-the-front-lines/#comment-2279245
is duly noted.
Kind of like what Nazis would do if they decided to be clowns instead of Nazis.
@17:
They’re supposed to be frivolous, “expressable” only on a social occasion (with some aspect of “bonding” under the surface). I’m sure that some grantors, and even some recipients, have turned it into something they think of as substantive; the unity-against-the-outsiders aspects were, while I was on active duty (decades back), of different meaning to grantors who had served in Vietnam. Just about any officer-oriented social tradition can be (and is) twisted for other purposes, or recast for substance instead of the tradition itself; ask yourself why a haggis is trooped at any Dining Out on Robert Burns Night… and what the lower-grade participants understand its meaning to be now versus half a century ago.
@18:
They’re in the form of “coins,” but not currency; having a challenge coin is only incidentally an indicator of wealth. It’s much more an indicator of direct contact with flag officers (and some civilians-in-the-hierarchy-who-have-served) than anything else.
Apparently, Patel’s new nickname is “douche canoe.”
so aside from the factors that are a matter of taste (cringe, juvenile comic book imagery etc.)
he has both his personal logo from his blog/podcast (the stylized ‘Ka$H’) and the official seal of the FBI on this thing, and he’s the head of the FBI
if using tax dollars to make the things : how is this not waste/abuse (embezzlement?)
if using his own money (which I doubt) how is it legal to use the official seal?
if nothing else it is a waste of time and resources – do your damn job and arrest pedophiles and other actual crooks etc. not this bullshit
My husband served in the DOD for 43 years – Active Duty AF officer, Reserve officer, and civil servant.
He has collected many of those coins over the years. I’ve mostly associated them with Hail & Farewell occasions, when we arrived at a new base, or when we left one.
We also have a collection of coins and other memorabilia from military balls and galas.
The most poignant exchange of coins that I’ve witnessed was when our son stepped off of the Marine Corps drilling field and saluted his father, who was in uniform for the occasion.
It’s so sad to watch these fools corrupt the joyful traditions and memories from our lifelong association with the military.
My husband gets red-faced, balls up his fists and pours himself another drink every time he watches the news.