Well, look, even so it’s unlikely that these guys were Buddhists or Hindus. They were probably a couple of rough customers, maybe bikers, or guys who had done time in prison. The swastika tattoos were a way of projecting badass attitude at the rest of the world; maybe they were actual Nazis, and maybe they weren’t. But what I’m trying to explain is that there are guys with swastika tattoos who aren’t literally believers in Nazi ideology; they’ve just appropriated the swastika as a symbol of power and intimidation (at which it is obviously quite effective.)
Curtis, let me try to explain your rough treatment here.
Think of the Dope as kind of a big party that’s been going on for a long time. Well, not really a party. Say a salon. Or a really boring party. But big, K? You invite yourself to this salon–which is fine; it’s an open house, all are welcome–but when you show up, it’s been going on for a long time, lots of different conversations going on. And so you come in, which again fine. But instead of kind of hanging around the perimeter of this conversation, or that group of people arguing in the corner, or hang out in the kitchen for a while, and kind of getting to know people, and get a sense of what they’re talking about, and offering some insight into the already ongoing conversations, you’ve brought a soapbox with you. And you clunk it down in the middle of the room, climb up on it, and begin telling people what you don’t like about them, what you’d do to change them, how much better your view of the world is than theirs.
What’s happened here is that, after that introduction, after making most of the people in the room think that you’re not all that much fun at parties, you begin a new topic. This time, your topic is that your sense of superiority and judgment of others makes you want to not just lecture them, or “save” them, but kill them. Torture them. “Quarter” them. Bore them to death with Orwell quotes.
Picture yourself as one of the other party guests. What would your response be? Right, mine too: a resounding razzberry. A healthy round of “Oh get over yourself.”
I’ve made this attempt to explain this to you so you won’t just think that the Dope is a place where no one is allowed to debate unpopular subjects. It’s not. But it’s also not a place that’s gonna give you any help in establishing yourself as a respectful, respectable participant who has something to contribute to the general conversation. That’s up to you.
When you step down off your soapbox, you’ll discover you’ve dug a bit of a hole for yourself. But don’t give up. Rethink your approach, maybe adjust it a little bit. You’ve got a little bit of a rough road ahead of you for the time being, but it’s still a pretty small hole to climb out of. Good luck.
(My best advice, in a general way, is try to learn as much as you teach.)
Since waging aggressive war has become US policy, it’s time to rehabilitate the Nazis, issue posthumous pardons and decorate their military leadership.
That YOU CHOOSE to display- not that others choose to put on it.
But you knew that, didn’t you?
I read in some other thread that you are one of our youngest posters. So perhaps you’re being exposed to ideas here that you’ve never heard anywhere else. So maybe this will be another new concept to you. Sin is whatever your religion says it is, and it might be different next week from this. And the church down the street has a different list of sins, and the one in the next town…
Sins and gods are entirely human constructs, for the most part created to control society through fear.
How can you dig yourself into a hole while standing on a soapbox?
One would think there’d be distance/leverage issues, not to mention an inability to dig UNDER the soapbox.
What’s with all of the judgment anyway? Isn’t that against your own principles? And if I follow what you said in another thread:
And that would make you pretty much even with the Nazis according to your beliefs.
I don’t think that the Bible is quite so simple. And maybe sin just means not being who we were meant to be. And for each of us that could be different.
I just can’t really bring myself to believe that a God of the cosmos that I see through the Hubble telescope could care one whit whether one man desires to be physically close with another. That kind of thinking is just too small.
That’s why so many people can’t believe in God but can accept the incredible possibilities of wormholes and dark matter and the reality of black holes. The latter are fantastic and awesome but God is punitive and small. They’ve limited God to the Bible and can’t imagine that “he” might be the source of science or of cosmic law or of all Awareness.
It’s unlikely, but possible that they were reformed white supremacists who didn’t have the dough to get their tattoos removed. I would at least get to know them before bashing their skulls in, or whatever it is you wanted to do.
I find it somewhat disturbing that you’d say thing, especially considering you’re Jewish. If you choose to display a swastika (and you aren’t Hindu) it sends a very clear message. If that’s not the message you intended to convey, well, tough shit. You’re an idiot.
The message displayed by an outlaw biker who has a swastika tattoo is precisely this: “I don’t give a fuck what you think. What are you gonna do, fight me?” Most of the time it has nothing to do with advocating actual Nazi ideology; it has everything to do with being provocative and issuing an unspoken challenge to people who see it. It’s saying, “I’m so badass I can get a tattoo of the most hated symbol in the world, and I’m not afraid of being challenged over it.” I’ve known outlaw bikers with swastika tattoos. It is not literally a symbol of Nazism. It is a symbol of “fuck the world.”
They get these tattoos precisely because THEY DON’T CARE about the message it conveys to other people. They fully realize the connotations of the swastika symbol, but their displaying of it is meant solely to provoke intimidation and fear in other people and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with any kind of organized belief in Nazi views.
If they don’t care what I think, then they won’t care that I think they are Nazis. And if they don’t care if I think they are Nazis, why do you care?
Sorry, but people don’t get to say both “I don’t care what you think” and “You can’t think that.”
Carl’s Jr. is a hotbed of neo-fascism, apparently…
Whatever; you can think they’re Nazis. I just don’t want the OP to murder the guys that he saw and chop them into pieces and cut off their testicles, only to find out that they weren’t actually Nazis.
You’re really really weird.
Hey, I’m not the one who wanted to chop the nuts off of two guys I saw at a fast-food joint and then cut them up into pieces because they had swastika tattoos. There are guys out there with swastika tattoos who don’t deserve to be chopped up and castrated. (Tommy Lee has a swastika tattoo - should he be killed?)
Well, yeah, it’s probably a safe assumption that most people with swastika tattoos would be hard pressed to discuss Nazi political philosophy. To believe that they espouse the same platform as a party embedded within a very different world and context (post-WWI Germany, European, etc.) is amiss. Absurd, in fact.
But that absurdity pales in comparison to the suggestion that all you can read into a swastika tattoo is that the person sporting it wants to convey an “I’m a badass/in-your-face” attitude. It’s about as silly as suggesting that all you can say about someone shouting “white power!” is that he loves the smell of bleach.
FYI, the OP’s a 12 year old.
I’m with Argent Towers on this one - of course, a lot of people with swastika tattoos will be racist, bigoted, what have you. I’t think a lot of them would consider themselves Nazis, too. But I’d agree that a significant proportion of them got the tattoo to say “Fuck you”, fully cognizant of what it says to others, without being racist or Nazi themselves. Because they don’t care what you think, because they want to intimidate you.
Now, I doubt they’d be offended if you thought they were a Nazi. Because like we’ve said, that’s the point of the tattoo, they don’t give a fuck what you think. But just because they won’t be offended doesn’t mean that I want to base my thoughts and actions on wrongful assumptions. And since “Nazi” is such a damning label, I might highly suspect them of it, but still give them the benefit of the doubt without further evidence.
It’s not really the same as yelling “white power”: stupid kids have been using the swastika as a “dangerous symbol” since the 70s. I don’t think anyone’s ever done the same with the phrase “white power”.
Read Post 11. It’s not his fault. (Unlike the gay, which evidently people are responsible for having.)
Allegedly. There are some doubts goin’ round.
Sonny Barger, Hells Angels president and founder, has swastika tattoos and SS thunderbolts; along with a lot of the other big men in the Angels club. They rode with Chinese, black and Hispanic members; they were friends with the Dragons club, which was all-black. These guys were not Nazis; they never advocated any Nazi views; they wore the swastikas, German eagles, SS symbols and what have you for the sole reason that it looked cool and intimidating and threw off an “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. Barger writes in his autobiography that it all started when he wore an old German military-surplus belt with a swastika and eagle on it. As he writes, “as far as I was concerned it was just a belt!” But he started a trend and the Nazi regalia stuck. It shocked and offended people and that was exactly what they were trying to do.
Of course there are actual Nazi skinheads who DO believe in Nazism and wear swastika tattoos (although from what I’ve read, these guys are much, much more likely to wear newer White Power symbols that are not immediately recognizable as neo-Nazi signs.) Why? Because a lot of them DON’T want other people to know that they’re neo-Nazis. Young skinheads are not necessarily tough badasses; a lot of them are the exact opposite. They KNOW that if a non-white person sees a swastika on them, they are going to be in for a fight, so they get pseudo-Nazi designs like this or “codes” like the number 88.
A veteran outlaw biker though, he doesn’t give a shit. He’s not afraid of someone challenging him, so he’ll wear the swastika.
Right. I certainly agree that there are plenty of twelve-year-olds who carve swastikas on their notebooks as a content-less way of sticking it to the man. And, of course there are plenty of adults with the cognitive/physical development of a twelve-year-old who get tattoos.
But I disagree that even a small number, a barely statistically significant number of people with swastikas are wearing them as an ironic symbol. “I’m so badass that I can wear a racist symbol without being a racist.” “I’m so badass that I transcend hate.” “I’m so badass that I can redefine a symbol that’s come to represent the murder of millions in the name of racial purity.”
Naw, those just don’t fly. Sure, the “I’m a badass” bit stays there. But that a swastika doesn’t also say “I approve (or at least like the idea) of killing non-whites and non-Christians” or other similar blather is, well, blather.
Then again, there must be a few emo Nazis out there…