Swastikas and context

http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=635

by kaptain • 16 years ago

33 36 16 years ago

I don't know, the article seemed so badly reasoned from my perspective - a very narrow Western view. In my country (and in my religion) the Swastika is seen everywhere and it is no way used in relation to the Nazis at all. Ironically, the fact that it is such a hated symbol, I learned from the Internet. Maybe he's being reasonable because the target audience is indeed Western. Hmm. But from my seat, I find this really lame.

deadsy• 16 years ago

Right - In India and in many parts of Asia the symbol is considered as a positive, being used for religious adornment, political parties and product advertising. It's a great piece of graphic art and it's a real pity the Nazis screwed it up with bad associations for the western world. Most Americans aren't aware of the Symbol being used in other contexts (my wife expressed surprise when she saw it on a Balinese temple earlier this year). Perhaps as the USA becomes more multi-cultural the symbol can get rehabilitated.

thwarted5• 16 years ago

In India and in many parts of Asia the symbol is considered as a positive, being used for religious adornment, political parties and product advertising.

Heh, as I was reading the above, I was thinking I wouldn't want to see the stereotypical Republican Elephant or Democrat Donkey used by other players in these games either -- it does distract (in some way, it's sad that people have such strong identification with groups and their symbols like that, it reeks of being proud of groupthink). As the author points out: the game isn't a forum to discuss these things, and symbols like those have meanings that are not part of the core intent of the game or why people are there. Presumably trademarks are out too, but that may be more of a civil legal issue than just having to deal with misinterpretation of intent.

thwarted5• 16 years ago

He really should have put the TL;DR at the top. He could have worded the entire piece as "You may think our policy is capricious and arbitrary but the internet is filled with a lot of jerks. We hope to be consistent in our rulings; you'll just have to deal with it, as we don't want to spend our time dealing with lame issues. And this is a lame issue."

akkartik2• 16 years ago

What is the point of putting the tl;dr at the bottom, or the middle, or anywhere but the very top?

Avshalom• 16 years ago

"a very narrow Western view"

Claiming that the swastika is associated with Nazis isn't a "narrow view" if it IS associated with Nazis for half the fucking planet.

train_robber2• 16 years ago

Half the population of the world? You might need to think about that, not many in Asia or Africa is that concerned about Nazis. That makes it a non-issue for around 75% of the world.

aniket_ray• 16 years ago

To be fair, Swastika is considered very auspicious by Hindus.

Here in India, you'll see Swastikas everywhere. Till I grew up and read about Nazis, I never even knew that there was anything negative about the symbol. It's just a symmetric symbol and I don't see any reason for blocking that symbol.

The author might not agree with the political views of the Nazis but that is frankly not a reason to ban a symbol. To use the author's words, no one in the educated world would consider the Swastika as a purely Nazi symbol. Then, why block it for people who have other sentiments attached?

PS: Personally, I don't have any affinity to the swastika or any other symbol. My point is that its just a symmetric shape. Some people have positive feelings, some have negative, others have none at all. As a service provider, your duty is to cater to consumers without letting your personal preference mix.

mrcharles• 16 years ago

When I was a kid, I came up with a swastika design all by myself. At maybe 6 or 7 years of age. I knew nothing about WW2, and had had no exposure to it in any form.

I carved it on a block of wood because I liked the shape of it. My father saw it and sat me down and told me that it was a symbol that had come to represent an awful lot of Bad Shit(TM).

It is a symbol that you simply can't disassociate from the context it is known for. In India, that context may be different. In the western world, it is not.

barfoomoo• 16 years ago

I guess he is more concerned with the way Swastika is interpreted in the western world. It is sort of synonymous with white supremacist groups. And the contrarian mentality that he explains is very apparent in reddit. In reddit, I see people just jump on anything that has to do with US/White/Christianity/Israel but go to extreme hilarious lengths to defend obviously radical practices/ideas associated with other cultures.

Ps:I am from India and I very well know the religious significance of Swastika.

ajscherer2• 16 years ago

...and if you have evidence that more people will quit your service because you allow swastikas than will quit your service because you don't allow swastikas, what would your duty be?

I feel a lot of complainers about political correctness miss this. Companies strive for political correctness not because of the personal sentiments of executives or investors, but because it makes them money to be PC. Allowing swastikas on xbox live would be making the service less appealing to customers in order to advance a personal ideal (that this is the internet and you should be able to say whatever the hell you want).

loumf• 16 years ago

The phrase "political views" doesn't even come close to explaining why people have negative attitudes towards the swastika.

The Nazis tortured and murdered millions of innocent, defenseless people.

The symbol was widely associated with this action, and that association has been reinforced through 60+ years of cultural recounting of the events in fiction and non-fiction venues (books, TV, movies, comics, documentaries, the History Channel, Castle Wolfenstein, etc).

I still haven't come close to explaining it, but the problem wasn't with their political views.

SmokenJoe• 16 years ago

I am amused by his attempt to correct his info on the history but continuous to be belligerent. Note the symbol in question was the most pervasive religious symbol ever before it was adopted by a political party. If you beleve the cross was adapted from it then all the more respect. Of you remove one religious symbol than ban them all. I dot want to waste my time with this kind of thing but don't make it into am popularity contest. This should be about the game not ego.

PS thismis ome of the first web sites in months I could not read on my web pad due to bugs. What do you guys think this reveled?

thwarted5• 16 years ago

It's unfortunate that by hiding the symbol because it might offend and increase support issues (the latter of these I actually find to be a legit reason), it doesn't help strip the symbol of its offensive connotation to westerners. It ends up further retarding progress in reducing ignorance.

If the Nazis used a big capital N as their logo, no one would consider the letter N to be offensive. The main reason it has such strong Nazi association is because that symbol is used in few other contexts in western culture, it's relatively rare (which may be a strong reason why it was chosen by the Nazis, it had little modern western cultural baggage, so they could define it). In contrast, one of the major western religion symbols is the t-shaped cross.

CWuestefeld3• 16 years ago

It’s not political correctness, it’s fundamental respect.

I think that's the battle cry of all those who enforce PC behavior.

UH OH! OUT COMES THE INTERNET PUNDITS! <g> ... Most of them are just contrarians. They would never dare to wear a swastika openly, but they love to argue about how the world has "misunderstood" this symbol.

The way I read this is as a criticism of people who do not hold a particular belief, but are defending the rights of others who do hold it. This seems completely contrary to the ideal attitude of "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

ajscherer2• 16 years ago

What right are you talking about here? There is no right to use a privately owned service in a way that scares off paying customers, much like you don't have the right to spray paint a swastika on your neighbor's house.

The right to free speech means that the government can't punish you for your speech. It doesn't make it illegal for someone to do otherwise legal things (such as banning an xbox live account) in retaliation for your speech.

I don't understand why so many people view the first amendment as a guarantee that one's self expression will never have negative consequences.

CWuestefeld3• 16 years ago

There is no right to use a privately owned service in a way that scares off paying customers, much like you don't have the right to spray paint a swastika on your neighbor's house.

This is perfectly correct, and I never claimed otherwise.

As far as I can see, this part of the discussion was purely abstract, about whether the negative associations of the swastika so overwhelm other uses as to render the latter irrelevant.

Indeed, the whole discussion would be irrelevant given your context. That is, in a conversation about how a property owner chooses to allow their property to be used, the only relevant point, legally and morally, is "this is how I choose to allow my property to be used". There need be no further explanation.

Since the whole thing is dilatory in that context, the only meaningful interpretation is as an abstract discussion of why one might want to make such a distinction. In such a discussion, the idea of tolerating the thoughts of others -- not just those who might claim offense at seeing such speech, but also those who would like to profess their beliefs -- certainly has a place.

anthuswilliams• 16 years ago

He's not criticizing the defenders of free speech. He's challenging the internet iconoclasts who defend the viewpoint itself, and worse, do so dishonestly.

The thing is, I have a chickenboner uncle who defends the use of the word 'nigger' by citing its (supposedly) non-racist etymology. He emphatically claims he is NOT racist. I'm not so sure, but let's do a thought experiment. If he's at all reasonable, he'll probably make the same assumption I do when he encounters someone who uses the word frequently: thar be a skinhead.

Toulouse is right in pointing out that most of these people are Americans who are presumably familiar with western opprobrium wrt the swastika. If they saw a guy on the street with it tattooed on his chest, Toulouse argues, they would cry neo-Nazi, just like the rest of us.

I happen to disagree with the guy on the issue of the swastika, because I know that its disgracefulness is largely a western phenomenon. But I know that online gaming is not a suitable forum to challenge cultural norms. It's interesting to note that many Indians I talk too are far more understanding of the swastika's inappropriateness in that context than these reddite Americans are.

I'm all for challenging normative cultural symbolism, but I know that's not what this is about. As Toulouse points out, the same arguments are made regarding the term 'fag', and the fact that means 'cigarette' in the UK. The issue is not free speech; it's intellectual dishonesty.

prat• 16 years ago

"no educated human on the planet looks at the swastika symbol on a video game service in the year we make contact and says oh, that symbol has nothing at all in any way to do with global genocide of an entire race and, even if it did, one should totally and reasonably ignore that because it’s a symbol that was stolen or coop-ted from religions."

Really? no educated human? Well I guess I am an exception or at least was until I came to the US - because you see, I am educated and likely more highly educated than the author.

The author, most likely never having stepped outside the US, has no idea of the diversity of world sensitivities and cultures.

Does the author, for example, know of the Khmer Rouge symbol? I am educated and I didn't until I googled it.. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/79176.stm

So stop using the word "planet" for the west .

axod2• 16 years ago

People who get offended by geometric shapes have way too much time on their hands.

jpr• 16 years ago

Are there shapes that are non-geometric?

axod2• 16 years ago

clouds :/

Be-The-Water• 16 years ago

There are many theories on this, its pretty well know that the swastika pre-dates Hitler by thousands of years. But some people think that he chose it because of something called the "Aryan Invasion" of India, of which some believe that one of the original ancient religious books now adopted by Hindus was written by the Aryans. There is evidence of the symbol not just in ancient Indian civilizations, but in ancient European as well and is thought to be carried through to India. But no one knows for sure, and no one knows exactly why Nazi/Hitler chose it.

ajays• 16 years ago

So if the Nazis had instead used the Holy Cross as their symbol, everyone (in the west) would be OK with banning it from churches and all forms of public display?

ugh• 16 years ago

I don’t think so. Context matters in this case, too. The swastika was a unique symbol in the west, the Nazis had it completely for themselves. If they had used a cross they would be just another of the many, many organizations in the west using a cross as their symbol. (Christians in general, KKK, Red Cross, …) They would never be able to claim complete ownership of the symbol. They wouldn’t be able to define or redefine the symbol, they would just add another entry in the dictionary under “Cross”.

armandososa• 16 years ago

I found it hypocritical coming from an industry that very often relies on the entertainment values of random acts of violence.

"Look, in this game you can shoot people on the face as long as you don't wear any swastikas or call people 'fags' becaus then that would be wrong."

ig12• 16 years ago

Different people are offended by different things, there's nothing hypocritical about not being offend by game violence while being offended by a swastika.

Some people are offended by nudity, gambling, pigs, swearing etc. There's no rule saying that if your not offended by one thing you can't be offended by anything. It's simply an arbitrary personal choice.

CWuestefeld3• 16 years ago

Different people are offended by different things

Certainly true, but this makes the whole exercise futile. How can one try to prevent their platform from becoming a medium for offensive speech, when every viewer can potentially be offended by different, orthogonal, thresholds?

JeremyBanks• 16 years ago

"Look, in this game you can shoot people on the face as long as you don't wear any swastikas or call people 'fags' becaus then that would be wrong."

You're not going to turn off any customers by having shooting in shooters. That's less true for swastikas and slurs.

ax0n• 16 years ago

First Amendment doesn't carry any weight on private territory. Business owners can boot rowdy loiterers. pg can ban people from here. I can squash trolls on my servers, and XBL can enforce arbitrary rules at will. You can have your freedom of expression, but you cannot graffiti it onto the side of my car.

writetoalok• 16 years ago

Lets look at this guys arguments closely, shall we.

>It’s not political correctness, it’s fundamental respect.

It is narrow mindedness. And when you say its respect for some, it is disrespect for others ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Hinduism ). So your context is too narrow. In your high seat of judging other people, your views are shallow.

>If you think the swastika symbol should be re-evaluated by societies all over the Earth, I think that’s great.

Good, you agree. But it seems you don't give a shit if it is.

>Your Xbox LIVE profile or in game logo, which doesn’t have the context to explain your goal, is probably not the right place to do that.

Care to explain why? No. And what is the purpose of the LIVE profile or in game logo? And what if the Swastika actually has entirely different meaning in other places? Oh, places like these: http://www.xbox.com/en-IN/live

>And by the way, that doesn't just go for the Swastika, it applies to many other symbols as well that my team does indeed take action on when we see it.

Bother to list some? No. And how do you judge what to act upon? Is there an objective criterion? Or is the subjective criterion explained or listed somewhere?

>Context.

Is unexplained, subjective, narrow minded, dogmatic, force-fed

>Yes we can have the discussion in other venues about the double meaning of various terms, something my team does everyday.

Ah you want to show that you are considerate and well reasoned person. But that belies your shallow views and blind beliefs.

>But for many topics, its kind of a no-brainer.

And this shows me your sheeple traits. No-brain-uh

>Context

Whatever

notahacker• 16 years ago

Its an avatar for a war game series originally themed on WWII

Now sure, sometimes you can have an angular black swastika in a white circle on a red background in an entirely innocent context, even in Europe in the mid 20th century http://www.askaboutireland.ie/aai-files/assets/libraries/dub...

But in a Western wargame? Sure, I'm sure most people wanting swastika avatars are kids trying to be controversial rather than active neo-Nazis promoting an ideology of hate, but I'd be reasonably confident none of them are doing it because it's an auspicious symbol in Hinduism.

Irrespective of whether permitting people to use Nazi symbols actually offends anyone playing a game where the objective is to shoot people, I'm not convinced there's a legitimate freedom-of-speech argument to be made about the avatars a private company chooses to bar from their services. I think censoring a few show-offs is probably an acceptable price to pay for the freedom to operate their services in Germany and it's legal intolerance of Nazi references. Perhaps the counterculture kids can pick hammer-and-sickles or Che Guevara instead....

Swastikas and context

Related Stories