Asian faiths try to save swastika symbol corrupted by Hitler

https://apnews.com/article/religion-germany-race-and-ethnicity-europe-2c28b5892381cd4148dfde5bc4fbb004

by pseudolus • 4 years ago

104 145 4 years ago

t-35• 4 years ago

As usual, cultural diversity is abhorrent to the symbol-minded. A shape which has been drawn by humans around the world since prehistory is effectively banned because a small group of people decided to use it while they did a bunch of nasty stuff.

I don't see anyone trying to ban crosses or raise a fuss about them, and Christians have historically used it as a symbol while perpetrating many horrifying acts. Nobody is trying to ban the flags of any of the other countries which engaged in slavery, genocide, and colonial oppression, and those are at least reasonably unique. Why should this ancient religious symbol be forever tainted?

hulitu3• 4 years ago

Why should this ancient religious symbol be forever tainted?

Vae victis. This symbol has become a non symbol because the history was rewritten.

rocknor• 4 years ago

history was rewritten

Hundreds of millions of people still use it regularly in India, it's everywhere. It's pretty innocuous. Unless you stop them from doing so somehow, history is not rewritten. Attempts to colonize ancient symbols will not succeed.

beezlewax• 4 years ago

...the Nazis were hardly a "small group of people".

wongarsu• 4 years ago

1939 Germany had about 80 million inhabitants. By far not all Germans were Nazis, but then not all Nazis were Germans, so let's just use that as a first approximation. At the same time, India had about 320 million inhabitants, or four times as many.

Maybe calling Nazis a small group is a bit far, but they were definitely a minority of swastika users even at the time.

ram4jesus2• 4 years ago

% of total population in 1930s Germany that were ardent Nazis vs. the rest of the world’s population shows that it was a small group of people.

Three hundred years from now, no one will care about said symbols anyhow.

When’s the last time we see people be superstitious or negative towards a worse person like Ghengis Khan? He’s part of popular culture; projecting into the future, as depressing as it sounds, so will Hitler be.

tdeck• 4 years ago

Your examples are extremely powerful religions and countries, rhat's why any movement to curtail their symbols is a non-starter. If the Nazis had won, it would be the same with their symbols.

beachy2• 4 years ago

small group of people decided to use it while they did a bunch of nasty stuff.

Try again. A genocidal regime that conquered western europe by force, almost succeeded in overthrowing world democracy and caused the deaths of tens of millions.

gautamdivgi• 4 years ago

Isn't that a lot of European civilization going west and east? We don't taint all of Europe although they were responsible for some pretty bad things. I mean the Belgians did horrible things in the Congo. Churchill starved West Bengal causing a famine that killed 4m people. From a non-European point of view Hitler was bad but so were other European colonizers as well.

ivanhoe2• 4 years ago

and caused the deaths of tens of millions

40-50 million in the war itself to be precise, but that doesn't account for all the millions of people who died in years directly after the war as a consequence of hunger, diseases, revenges, crime, political fights and persecution caused by the new division of powers... especially in Eastern Europe and Germany itself.

t-35• 4 years ago

The Nazi party only had ~10% of the German population as it's membership at it's peak and gained power through nondemocratic means. They did a lot of nasty things, including slavery, genocide, and colonial oppression, as I mentioned earlier. Which part do you disagree with?

benj1113• 4 years ago

I don't think they're minimizing what the Nazis did, just pointing out that the symbol has been completely highjacked by one narrow use of the symbol.

emmelaich2• 4 years ago

I think you mean "many democracies in the world" rather than "world democracy" -- which has quite a distinct meaning.

moshegramovsky3• 4 years ago

a small group of people decided to use it while they did a bunch of nasty stuff.

It sounds like you might not understand the vast scale of the Holocaust, and that it affected every Jewish person in Europe. It sounds like you might not realize what also happened to the Polish Christians (and other Slavic peoples) under the Germans - which was another attempted genocide by itself.

We spent 1000 years in Poland, and our entire culture was totally destroyed in just a few years. 90% of the Jewish people in Europe were murdered. In many places, no Jews remain at all.

https://vanishedworld.blog/exhibition/

t-35• 4 years ago

I didn't say they only did a small amount of bad things, I said "a bunch of". What exactly are you disputing here?

Khaine• 4 years ago

I think the point was that the number of nazis is small compared to all of the people in the world from the beginning of time until who have used the symbol.

That doesn't take away from the horrors that the nazi's did.

tom_2• 4 years ago

Who says it's forever tainted? World War II was less than 100 years ago, and it was a fairly major event. Still fresh in historical terms.

lamontcg2• 4 years ago

A shape which has been drawn by humans around the world since prehistory is effectively banned because a small group of people decided to use it while they did a bunch of nasty stuff.

Yep.

Trying to minimize WWII and the holocaust is not a good point to start an argument from.

It would also help if there weren't a resurgence of them to deal with today.

We have ongoing problems with that symbology.

Pretty much cemented my opinion there.

t-35• 4 years ago

How exactly was I minimizing anything? I even mentioned "slavery, genocide, and colonial oppression", so what did I miss? These bullshit insinuations of antisemitism are garbage, show me what I said that was wrong, show me where I trivialized anything, don't just accuse me of thoughtcrime based on your own kneejerk assumptions.

pxc• 4 years ago

Renaming Nazi uses of the symbol to 'hakenkreuz' seems like a good idea to me. But we should expect changes in connotation to happen slowly, and in a way that's not entirely controllable.

At the very least, I hope we can avoid getting the state involved in censoring or punishing genuine religious displays, as happened in one case described in the article.

dhruval2• 4 years ago

The word swastika itself is culturally appropriated from Sanskrit (India) by the British who had colonized the country during WW2.

Hakenkreuz (hooked cross) is the German term.

noworld• 4 years ago

When did loan words become cultural appropriation?

version_five• 4 years ago

Shortly after the end of the cold war, when we no longer had a common enemy to focus on and started fighting each other

tom_2• 4 years ago

When the British do it.

dhruval2• 4 years ago

Good point, I meant it is a loan word.

In the era of socially sensitive language, I would like to see the Nazi swastika referred to with the German term, to rehabilitate the term swastika.

If you are against socially engineering language to make it more culturally sensitive via things like gender pronouns, removing certain slurs etc. Then ok at least that is a consistent ethical position, and understandable.

But if you support the use of more inclusive language, then this would be my request.

gumby• 4 years ago

Wartime Enid Blyton books called it the “Crooked Cross” (which was vaguely mystifying to 8 yo me, 30 years after the end of the war and in the pacific).

benj1113• 4 years ago

So when 'the west' ignore things from other nations we're sidelining them and destroying their heritage. But if we take an interest in their culture and take it on board, it's cultural appropriation? What are we supposed to do. Say how great X is without ever doing X?

What parts of my own culture am I even allowed to partake in because most of it comes from elsewhere.

Can't you just be happy that cultures can take things from other cultures and make it their own and gain a bit of understanding about the former in the process, rather than make it into a culture war.

zoklet-enjoyer2• 4 years ago

"Holocaust survivors in particular could be re-traumatized when they see the symbol, said Shelley Rood Wernick, managing director of the Jewish Federations of North America’s Center on Holocaust Survivor Care."

How many Holocaust survivors are even left?

Tao3300• 4 years ago

Presumably < 100,000

https://time.com/4392413/elie-wiesel-holocaust-survivors-rem...

That was 2016.

moshegramovsky3• 4 years ago

It's not just the immediate survivors who were affected by the Holocaust.

A significant portion of the Hasidic Jews in the US are descendants of Holocaust survivors. For example: members of the Satmar dynasty. A significant number of non-Hasidic Jews in the US are descendants of holocaust survivors who immigrated after World War 2. This includes, children of survivors, grandchildren of survivors, and great-grandchildren of survivors. I assure you, the Holocaust remains a very difficult subject for many Jewish families, including mine, and it also affects a lot of Jewish families who weren't directly affected.

"Never Shall I Forget" by Elie Wiesel

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget that smoke.

Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever.

Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.

Never.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satmar [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6720013/

rrwo3• 4 years ago

A significant number of Americans and Europe whose ancestors weren't directly persecuted by nazis, but who fought in WW2 against the nazis and fascists, and they also find the swastika offensive.

Also note that the nazis also murdered Romani, Sinti, Poles, Slavs in concentration camps and ghettos. They also murdered and starved the general civillian populations of areas they took over.

ThrowawayTestr4• 4 years ago

When you include second and third generation survivors? Potentially millions.

TulliusCicero3• 4 years ago

...I don't think that's usually what people mean by "Holocaust survivor".

zoklet-enjoyer2• 4 years ago

I don't

silisili• 4 years ago

When I moved to East TN temporarily years ago, I opened the door to the rental to see a swastika on the doorstep. My first thought was 'oh come on, really', as if every stereotype was right. It was small and in red, maybe lipstick?

So I googled, and realized it was backwards. And that was the apparently the symbol of the article.

I called the owner just to let him know I didn't do it. Really old 'grumpy' white guy. He said 'oh, some sweet Indian family lived here before you, they asked if they could do that and I told them it's theirs to do what they want. You can leave it or clean it off.'

Learned a lot that day, and busted a few common stereotypes in the process. Ended up being an area with a lot of really good people.

FWIW, I ended up leaving it after reading about it. As mentioned, it wasn't big nor offensive looking. I wonder if the next family went through the same thing.

monetus• 4 years ago

I'm in east Tennessee now, and have seen a few mandalas in front of businesses in the past month or so. It is pretty diverse here really - a lot of the Asian diaspora in particular. Thanks for sharing.

RickJWagner• 4 years ago

Ha, thanks for sharing this. I'm glad you saw past the stereotypes and got to really 'know' some people.

SanjayMehta2• 4 years ago

Not lipstick, vermilion.

ivanhoe2• 4 years ago

Not relevant just to Asian faiths, as it was a symbol widely used in many Indo-European cultures, particularly Slavic and Roman(and Germanic, but that perhaps hits too close to the problem). You still can see it as ornament carved into wooden beams under a roof and above doors on many old houses in rural areas of Serbia and Romania. Not sure though if it had any real superstitious meaning after the Christianity came, or it was just a traditional ornament that continued to be used purely as a decoration.

cuteboy19• 4 years ago

It's the only symbol of goodwill recognized from Ireland to Japan (before WW2 that is)

Anthony-G2• 4 years ago

Only just reading this now and wondering if you've any reference regarding its usage in Ireland. The only non-Nazi usage that I'm aware of is the Swastika Laundry (I used to work nearby and unforunately, the swastika is now gone from its chimney stack). When I researched it, it turns out that the founder was inspired by an ornament he saw at the 1910 Great Industrial Exhibition in London: https://www.nationalarchives.ie/article/behind-scenes-swasti...

With a layman's interest in history, religion, iconography (and a multitude of other areas that I don't have enough time for), I'd be interested in learning about other or older examples of swastika usage in Ireland. So far, I've found this wonderful blog post: https://rmchapple.blogspot.com/2017/10/always-remember-to-dr...

eternalban• 4 years ago

Like heaping earth to build which leaves only so many possible forms (like pyramids) there are only so geometric patterns before things start getting massively complex. Just like the Swastika, the hex-star (seal of solomon, star of david), the cross, & the pentagram (which are all very ubiquitous), these are things you would discover yourself looking for interesting geometric figures, likely quite early in your search for designs. It seems to come down to angles that were easily measurable, like (in degrees) 30, 45, 60, 90.

pengaru• 4 years ago

Somewhat related; another symbol Nazis used is the Fasces[0] has managed to continue widespread use to this day. Despite its obvious etymological roots in common with Fascism.

You'll even find it in the currently used Seal of the United States Senate[1]!

It's also often seen displayed prominently on stone buildings across the US. I was recently walking around downtown St. Charles, IL and there were Fasces overhanging the entrances of an old stone apartment building.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_the_United_States_Sena...

edit: correction s/Nazi symbol/symbol Nazis used/ thanks to commenter.

sph2• 4 years ago

Fasces are not a Nazi symbol. They were very common in Fascist Italy—due to its association with Ancient Rome Mussolini was a big fan of—and the Fascists were culturally and ideologically allied with Nazi Germany. But AFAIK it was not a Nazi symbol.

But they're not a Fascist icon either, despite what your comment suggests. The fact that it appears on the Senate building probably refers to the Roman meaning. The point of TFA is pointing out that these symbols are NOT owned by the Fascists or Nazis but should instead be returned to their cultural origins.

throwaway2945663• 4 years ago

The fact that it appears on the Senate building probably refers to the Roman meaning.

The roman meaning is very much fascist, if phrased in modern terms. Fasces were carried by lictors accompanying a roman official, symbolizing the "imperium", or absolute, king-like power, held by that official over his domain. While for a time, the imperium of lower officials was somewhat curtailed during the republic, military commanders with imperium still held the absolute and immediate power over life and death of their subordinates (other officials still had power over life and death, there just was an opportunity for citizens for appeals and vetoes by equal-ranked officials) . Lictors with their fasces were not only bodyguards but also a small police force at the discretion of the commander, who would seize an offender, hold him for a drumhead trial by the commander and then punish (e.g. execute) him if so decided. Under the later roman dictatorships the dictator (imperator, emperor or caesar) of course also held those powers, with the same symbolism of imperium represented by the fasces. Fasces always have been a symbol of capital punishment, justice by drumhead or thumbs down, and absolute power.

justsomehnguy• 4 years ago

Somewhat related: another symbol Nazis used was Fasces.

mjklin• 4 years ago

When I was teaching in China I went with a student to a paint-your-own pottery shop. She painted a little cat and finished it off by drawing two 卍 on the ears. I wonder if this is part of the Chinese inheritance from India? Chinese families also commonly paint bindi dots on the foreheads of toddlers.

mytailorisrich2• 4 years ago

It's a Buddhist symbol and also indeed a symbol that has been incorporated in Chinese culture and is a Chinese character pronounced wàn in mandarin.

If you open Google Maps over Japan you'll see it used to mark the location of Buddhist temples.

jlengrand• 4 years ago

Also seen in GitHub in the wild at times. Always brings interesting discussions...

https://github.com/pdoc3/pdoc/issues/64 https://github.com/pdoc3/pdoc/issues/87

I've learnt a lot about cultures through those PRs

ThrowawayTestr4• 4 years ago

The thumbs down on the measured response to a reactionary request makes me sad.

netsharc• 4 years ago

... makes me sad.

Sad face emoji? Geez, the use of emojis, in this serious context, makes me think I'm reading a 6 year old's response.

baryphonic• 4 years ago

It's sort of weird this is a huge issue, considering the official Python logo looks slightly swastikaesque.

tgv5• 4 years ago

I'm not going to say you can't use a swastika in India, but the people the article opens with are extremely naive, and should recognize that, or they're just trolling. You can't live in the US (Queens is in NY, right?) and think you can simply display a swastika, mirrored or not.

markdown3• 4 years ago

Why not? You don't get to impose your beliefs on your neighbour.

This silliness of taking things out of context and then attacking them has got to stop.

Hindus were using the symbol long before the existence of the German state.

Nazis using the swastika as an expression of hate, not OK. Hindus using their symbol, OK.

compiskey• 4 years ago

Because humans are far more intolerant than the high minded philosophy they memorized makes them believe they are.

signatoremo• 4 years ago

Why not? You don't get to impose your beliefs on your neighbour.

It’s nothing to do with belief, more with common sense and respect. Tourists are advised to cover their heads when visiting Middle East countries; or not wear shorts when visiting Buddhism temples. It’s the same here for visitors to Western countries, where Nazis have left a deep deep scar in the society.

amriksohata3• 4 years ago

Nowhere in the mein kampf by Hitler does he call it a swastika, in the original German publication He called it haken Cruz which literally means hooked cross, it being a hooked Christian cross. t was a Christian bishop who translated it to English and translated hakencruz to swastika. Effectively taking the blame off Christianity and pushing it onto eastern religions

tgv5• 4 years ago

Hitler wasn't a Christian, and it isn't a hooked version of the Christian cross. And it doesn't matter what he called it. This is about the symbol itself, as it's on display. It is seen as a Nazi symbol in the US. That's where these people live.

taking the blame off Christianity and pushing it onto eastern religions

Nonsense. Nobody in their right mind blames Eastern religions for what the Nazis did.

throwaway2945663• 4 years ago

In German, there are no two terms for those, both are called "Hakenkreuz". And the Nazi ideology actually made references to eastern culture and peoples, claiming that Germans were descendents of the Aryan peoples: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/aryan-1

And while Nazi antisemitism was of course descended from the traditional christian antisemitism, there were also parts of the Nazi movement that called for a replacement of christianity by an "Aryan" or "German" religion, which seems to have been a mixture of Germanic/Norse religion and more modern esotericisms.

So yes, while eastern religions are blameless for what the Nazis made of their symbol, it also isn't of christian descent either.

aaomidi• 4 years ago

A white person corrupted a symbol so every PoC who’s had this symbol for generations now has to stop using it.

I’m well aware of the trolling that happens with this. But that’s definitely not an excuse to say genuine uses of it are not allowed.

tgv5• 4 years ago

It's not "a white person." It's not about "PoC". It's the horror of the Nazis vs. some ancient symbol co-opted by religions (and AFAIK, one of many symbols in these religions, and never the main one), being on display in the US, not in Eastern Asia.

nowayjose67• 4 years ago

America is not that open minded. Even though the commercials say so. As long as we give folks privilege because of the color of their epidermis white/black/yellow/glow in the dark pink. If they can't get past realizing that it's performance that matters vs your shell. They will never get past symbol stories. Just the reality on the ground. No matter how much money you throw at it.

diebeforei485• 4 years ago

You can't live in the US and think you can simply display a swastika, mirrored or not.

The US has the First Amendment. This would clearly be protected First Amendment speech.

Obviously a condo board or co-op board can have its own rules about displays in common areas inside the building similar to a HOA. But even these are subject to the Fair Housing Act, and cannot discriminate based on religion.

tgv5• 4 years ago

May be, but the people are allowed to think something else, and say that too. So, bad luck if they get grouped with neo-nazis, and that's it? When in Rome...

retrac• 4 years ago

It's not that unusual to see swastikas in their appropriate context among the various Indian communities living in Canada; I've seen them on homes, temples and on Diwali holiday cards.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/swastika-fla...

"It's nothing with Hitler. We don't follow Hitler. We don't follow even extremist people right now, okay? We are a religion against that," he said. "Believe me I don't know that's his symbol. That's a Hitler's symbol? I don't know."

Naive is a little harsh, but maybe it's the right word. It's usually not trolling. When I was a kid, a family in our neighbourhood, recent Chinese immigrants, initially chose the English name Adolph for their son. They'd certainly heard of Hitler; but they were unaware of the intensity of the name taboo.

ram4jesus2• 4 years ago

One of the biggest shames in the West is the taboo around Nazi symbology when it was plainly coopted into that political movement. These symbols will be reclaimed. We just have to wait.

The Nazi rampage will be a footnote in history like most tragic events before.

Emma_Goldman2• 4 years ago

WW2 was the deadliest conflict in human history, and involved both the Holocaust and the first - and so far only - military use of nuclear weapons. To say nothing of the fact that it completely reshaped the international order and led directly to the Cold War.

Even if you zoom out and view it, like Eric Hobsbawm, as belonging to a century of warring ideologies much like the wars of religion, it will remain one of the foremost events in world history for a long time. It would take many thousands of years for it to become a 'footnote', assuming the species even lasts that long.

etc-hosts• 4 years ago

I hate being That Guy, but it is possible more people died in the 1850 Taiping Rebellion.

noworriesnate• 4 years ago

In the Jewish Roman wars, the Jews murdered 250k men, women and children on the island of Cypress, skinning them and boiling their flesh, and they also completely depopulated Lybia and did similar things in Alexandria. The result? The Romans renamed Judea to Palestine, cypress passed a law that activated instant death penalty on any Jews who landed on the island. Maybe that was the origin of modern day antisemitism? Maybe we don’t move on from stuff like this, instead it becomes racism. Maybe we can be different this time and not say that all these ancient religions (including ancient Germanic paganism) are evil.

naniwaduni• 4 years ago

Centuries, plausible enough. Thousands? What are the most salient historical events to you over a thousand years old? Would you really bet on last century's Big Thing being so uniquely great that nothing will compare for another thousand years?

amriksohata3• 4 years ago

beardyw2• 4 years ago

I have a set of Rudyard Kipling books with swastikas on them. Printed 1927 they obviously predate Naziism and reflect Kipling's association with the symbol.

Not aware of Disney having used it.

watwut4• 4 years ago

Nazism existed in 1927. It started right after WWI. Beer Hall Putsch was in 1923. 1927 is when Hitler got the right to speak in public back. The movement was considerably large at that time and publicly very much known about.

Hitler gained complete control over Germany in 1933.

beardyw2• 4 years ago

Yes, I realised my mistake. I meant its common association with Naziism.

krupan• 4 years ago

Humans are really good at interpreting the same word/symbol differently when used in different contexts, as long as we know the context.

emptybits2• 4 years ago

I'm neither Jewish nor Asian, but I do always have a large tin of this delicious Chinese vegetarian barbecue sauce in the fridge with a prominent 卍 on it.[1] It's a fantastic marinade, among other things.

Anyways, it resembles a Nazi swastika enough for the uninitiated to look twice when opening the fridge. It causes me some cringe when I think about it but my Chinese friends and family assure me it's common, has nothing to do with hateful values, and long predates the Nazi use, and ... shrug?

[1] https://www.kuohua.ca/shop/p0540023/

mytailorisrich2• 4 years ago

It's pronounced wàn in mandarin.

Indeed, it predates the Nazis by centuries if not millenia and has nothing to do with the Nazis. So why should Chinese (and East Asians in general) change their ways because a crazy foreigner in a small country on the other side of the world used a similar symbol?

amanaplanacanal• 4 years ago

Vegetarian barbecue sounds like an oxymoron.

emptybits2• 4 years ago

Cooking food over fire. Vegetables or meat. Traditional everywhere and all kinds of delicious! :-)

shrubble3• 4 years ago

I have a late 1920s or early 1930s "Better Homes and Gardens" type magazine, that has a single panel humor cartoon in it of the "you always want us to keep up with the Joneses" variety.

The Native American teepee in the cartoon is depicted with a swastika on it; apparently it was a symbol of good luck with some tribes?

City of Albuquerque web site on its use: https://www.cabq.gov/artsculture/kimo/history-of-the-kimo/ki...

watwut4• 4 years ago

Early 1930 is when Hitler got to full power.

shrubble3• 4 years ago

The magazine is in storage, many miles away; from memory, 1927-1932 is the date of printing.

nadieyninguno1• 4 years ago

Ultimately, the symbol is based around a famous star arrangement in the Northern hemisphere, the Swastika being it at Spring / Summer / Fall / Winter.

As such, it exists in a variety of cultures in the Northern hemisphere.

Finland is another example of a nation with a historical use of it.

rrwo3• 4 years ago

The symbol is going to be associated with nazis so long as nazis keep using it, and people in the west (especially for places and people affected by the nazis) will find it offensive.

jquery3• 4 years ago

Yeah. Any talk of “reclamation” isn’t going to work very well as long as actual nazis are around and using the symbol. People are welcome to try, of course, but to act like victims when they’re politely asked to hide the symbols is hypocritical.

mckern2• 4 years ago

Such symbols have been used way before the Nazis and are still present in Asian societies today. What’s hypocritical is being woke about issues like this then denying the culture and heritage of others. These people shouldn’t have to modify their cultures to accommodate the inability of westerners to distinguish the semantics of this symbol. To describe these people as “acting the victim” is seriously bordering on racism. The world does not revolve around the west.

TulliusCicero3• 4 years ago

They supported a new California law that criminalizes the public display of the hakenkreuz — making an exception for the sacred swastika.

There is zero chance such a law is found to be constitutional in the US.

Waterluvian3• 4 years ago

Imagine if we decided the letter Z needed to be removed from our language because of Russia’s atrocities.

But I think there’s plenty of room for understanding and nuance rather than just saying, “hey people who are offended by this symbol, read your history books and toughen up!” Millions were exterminated by those wearing the symbol.

There is no such thing as ownership of a symbol. It has different, equally valid meanings to different audiences.

thomassmith65• 4 years ago

If the Nazis had used a common letter like Z, there would not be the same stigma attached to the symbol. That this is so obvious suggests your argument has a flaw.

Waterluvian3• 4 years ago

How common must a symbol be before it’s immune to the stigma of murdering millions?

I’m curious how one calculates that.

Also: don’t mistake an observation for an argument. I’m not implying anything. I think it is an interesting thought.

hrnnnnnn• 4 years ago

Someone at my work actually suggested, with a straight face, that we do just that. I think specifically they suggested we stop referring to "gen-z" because there was a letter Z in it.

squiffsquiff2• 4 years ago

You seem to be under the misapprehensions that:

- Anyone can re/claim any symbol - No other symbols have been banned

You may not like or agree with it, but symbols do have owners and they do matter. Look at today's news around the USA football team and the Iranian flag today for an example.

Waterluvian3• 4 years ago

What I was (poorly) trying to communicate is that no one side gets ownership to dictate how a symbol is interpreted by or affects others.

By that I mean that those who see it as a religious symbol and those who see it as a symbol of nazism need to be mindful of each other. Neither “group” has moral authority to tell the other that they’re wrong about the symbol’s meaning.

userbinator2• 4 years ago

I remember when people would sell various bits of plumbing such as valves and pipe fittings with swastikas on them, claiming them to be WW2 German artifacts, when in fact they were prewar products of the American Crane company:

https://mechanical-hub.com/did-you-know/

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/60edsv/a...

emmelaich2• 4 years ago

If you consider the angles as feet, then similar icons are the three-legged Isle of Man one and the many legged Easter European symbol.

Customs house in central Sydney has Fylfots on its floor.

bsaul• 4 years ago

America never ceases to amaze me. So it’s not ok to use « whitelist » or « blacklist » in your *source code* in xcode when coding in swift in case someone may actually be offended just reading those words, but displaying the symbol of nazis is fine, because hey, you shouldn’t impose your own cultural taboos over people with other backgrounds.

I think US will have to admit that they, too, just like every country in the world, have their own culture, with their own taboos and peculiarities, norms and habits, and accept for this culture to have some kind of special status over the other ones. Much like you find it absolutely normal and respectful to take into account the specificities of a country you’re visiting as a tourist.

userbinator2• 4 years ago

I think far fewer people care about "whitelist" and "blacklist" (and likewise, "master") in the general population than they do about swastikas. The former is largely isolated to one faction of the tech bubble.

marcellus232• 4 years ago

So it’s not ok to use « whitelist » or « blacklist » in your source code in xcode when coding in swift

Can you explain what you mean by this? This seems to suggest there's some kind of compiler error or warning in Xcode when using those terms, but I just tried it and there's no such thing. No one is preventing you from using those terms, as far as I can see — some people have chosen to stop using them, but they're not forcing their decision on you.

amiga3863• 4 years ago

I have an example of Apple _forcing_ you to change terminology.

Apple decided to rename the function IOMasterPort() to IOMainPort() and marked IOMasterPort() as deprecated, for what would appear to be non-technical reasons. You can see that they did it hastily and poorly; e.g. in the documentation of most functions that take a port, the type definition has been renamed "mainPort" but the parameter is still labeled "masterPort" https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iokit/1514494-iose...

If you use IOMasterPort(), Apple nags you to use their new wording instead. If you follow their advice, your program immediately stops working on macOS < 12.0, those OSes don't have an _IOMainPort symbol. If you reject their advice, your program stops working on macOS 13.0, that OS doesn't have an _IOMasterPort symbol

djur• 4 years ago

“A rose by any other name is a rose,” he said. “In the end it’s how a symbol affects you visually and emotionally. For many, it creates a visceral impact and that’s a fact.”

I'm sympathetic to both sides of this argument, but I think the "rose by any other name" allusion is inapt. The rose by any other name would smell as sweet, because the physical existence of the rose is independent of our social or cultural understanding of the rose. The swastika is a symbol and its offensiveness is due to our cultural understanding of its meaning as a symbol. The swastika is neither inherently a symbol of hatred and murder nor one of peace; it has no objective meaning or reality in itself.

sohkamyung• 4 years ago

There is also a Red Swastika Society in China [1]. In Singapore, there is a Red Swastika School [2]. AFAIK, the Jewish society in Singapore has never objected to its presence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Swastika_Society

[2] https://redswastika.moe.edu.sg/

FooBarBizBazz• 4 years ago

An irony is that this symbol coexists in Hindu temples with that other symbol known in the West as the "Star of David" -- which is not, actually, a specifically Jewish symbol.

That this also appears in American indigenous cultures is extremely interesting, because it points either to very old origins (before people crossed the Bering Strait), or to co-evolution (almost like the "discovery" of mathematical abstractions).

Related, there is some evidence that some American indigenous myths, related to the constellations, share a common structure with myths from ancient Greece and elsewhere. Again, this may point to very old origins before the human diaspora across the continents.

I wonder how much culture is shared, dating back to the neolithic.

This then is a second irony: That symbols from closer to the root of the linguistic and phylogenetic tree -- symbols that are more in common to us -- are used to divide.

wink• 4 years ago

ad 2) I think it's just not complex enough to not evolve organically, same as a pentagram or star of david.

If you ever doodled on square paper with tetris-block shapes you're kind of bound to have some sort of accidental swastika shape in there.

SanjayMehta2• 4 years ago

Hitler used a Hakenkreuz.

A hooked cross. I haven't seen it for myself but there are pictures floating around claiming it's visible in art in the Vatican.

It really infuriates Hindus and Buddhists to see this ancient symbol associated with that regime and its modern debris.

benrapscallion• 4 years ago

Strangely, the article fails to mention that the hateful and religious symbols are actually not the same: they’re mirror images.

c0m• 4 years ago

The reason for that is that you are mistaken. Both right and left-facing swastikas are used within religious contexts.

AtomicOrbital• 4 years ago

Living and working in Asia for many years I have enjoyed seeing this symbol on many temples ... its a beautiful energy boost obviously absolutely nothing to do with hitler influence ... long live this symbol

fellellor• 4 years ago

To say that Hitler was appealing to some shared aryan culture by using the hakenkreuz symbol turns out to be just absolute bullshit. Hitler was a Christian fundamentalist. And his hatred for the Jews originated from his belief in Christianity. It was certainly not because Aryans hated the Jews. Or some such ludicrous thing.

Nakagaki’s research also shows the symbol was called the hakenkreuz in U.S. newspapers until the early 1930s, when the word swastika replaced it.

I think further research will show you that Hitler himself never used the word Swastika and always referred to his own symbol as the hooked cross.

I’m guessing that maybe the leading Christian voices of the time were so guilt stricken by what Hitler had done in the name of their religion that they were happy to blame his pathology on him dabbling with obscure alien philosophies rather than admitting that he was just being a “true Christian”.

It has taken a long time for Christian religious institutions to absolve the Jewish people of the crime of “killing Jesus Christ”. Or have they? I don’t know.

For Hitler himself, the motivation to use the hooked cross was probably to symbolise a return to the roots of Christianity and for that he chose the oldest version of the cross he (or his designer) could find.

rswskg• 4 years ago

Many years ago, I stopped(pleaded..) a very large man from punching an indian student who was wearing a swaztika badge (one correctly orienteted).

I did advise the student that London in 2004 wasn't yet ready to understand the subtle differences.

Not sure it's moved any closer since then.

Asian faiths try to save swastika symbol corrupted by Hitler

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