True. There are a lot of college students who think the communists were great.
Right…and just imagine if those same college students were walking around with swastikas on their t-shirts instead. What if they said, “hey, it’s not the hatred of the Jews we are supporting, it’s the ideology of fascism.” Why is it that we are not all outraged for the families of the millions of people who were murdered by Stalin?
True. There are a lot of college students who think the communists were great.
Because he murdered their families too. Seriously.
Also, Stalin killed whoever got in his way, or could be a threat, or was not loyal enough. He may have planned to kill all the Jews in the USSR (It’s unclear if his planned Jewish Autonomous Region was designed to put all the Jews in one place out of the way, or to put them all in one place and kill them). But, that was a matter of administrative inconvenience. He didn’t spend decades howling his hatred of any particular group. Killing was just a tool for him. For Hitler, killing was an end in itself. Killing all the Jews wasn’t a step to some further goal. It was the goal.
Because wearing a symbol of your religion is not the same as flying the flag of Nazi Germany?
So, are you equally offended by the Crusaders’ cross?
1096 Crusaders massacre Jews of Worm
1096 1st Crusaders slaughter Jews of Werelinghofen Germany
1099 Crusaders herd Jews of Jerusalem into a synagogue and set it afire
1189 30 Jews are massacred at King Richard I (lion hearted) coronation
1190 Crusades begin massacre of Jews of York England
1190 Crusades complete massacre of Jews of York England
1190 Crusaders kill 57 Jews in Bury St. Edmonds England (@)
CMC fnord!
I don’t think it is wrong to ban offensive symbols, though. There are limits to free speech, and that should be one of them.
That is true.
I can’t tell you how much I wholeheartedly disagree with you on this one. If anything, this is the kind of thing that free speech is meant to protect. “I may not like what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” If we all went around only saying things that were not offensive to anyone, we wouldn’t have a need for freedom of speech.
Captain Amazing I disagree as well. Offensive and unpopular speech needs protection. I support my neighbor’s legal right to fly the Nazi flag, Confederate flags, or flags supporting Phelps.
Offensive and unpopular speech needs protection. Nazis don’t need protection. Nazis need a bullet in the back of the head.
Those are excellent points. Regarding #2 though, I would say that hatred of the capitalist and aristocratic class was one of the founding points of Leninism, but as DocCathode states it was seen only as a means to the end, not the end in itself as the Nazi motives were.
I do think the classism v. racism of the two ideologies is a key difference between the two. Communist hatred could also claim that it was based on reason, while the Holocaust had extremely irrational motives - which digs deeper into what makes us human. The emotional has usually been stronger than the intellectual side.
I also wondered about #3. I think that because it is an original symbol, it does not have the emotional appeal the swastika has, and plays a large part in the historical attitudes toward the two.
It still strikes me as strange that there is so much more hatred for the Nazis than any other group. Hell, the West had no problem with Fascism per se. No one was screaming for Franco’s head. I would love find some unbiased reports, but I imagine that Mussolini and even Hitler were not that dreaded before the war. Disliked definitely, but not at the level they reached during and after the war.
The entire issue has struck me as odd. Most of the wounds from that war have been healed. Europe is still enjoying the longest peace that ever lasted among the great powers, and there is no sign of it stopping. Outside of hate groups and other freaks on the fringe, no denies the Holocaust. But as soon as the swastika appears, everyone flips out like it was the 1930-40s’ all over again. Why does this symbol cause so much more grief?
And it is the attempt to lessen that grief that I would like to see it reclaimed in the West. As others have shown, it was never really misappropriated it in the East - though I wonder what the situation would be if Japan had used it also? It just might have become irredeemable at that point.
This is the difficult part. This is where the members of our judicial system have my sympathy, because it is hard to define the line where speech crosses from offensive to hate. When speech stops being an opinion and becomes an act, I have no problem with it being stopped. If someone wants to dress in full Nazi regalia and shout out “Mein Kampf” at the top of his lungs in the public square, I have to defend that right. If that same person tries to enact any of the garbage from that text I want them arrested though. YMMV.
And I guess it would be magical if that misinterpretation of that particular part of the Constitution didn’t continue to hold sway.
Yep. And there’s the added benefit that the assholes are more readily identified.
I should point out that there are swastikas hidden in a number of NYC subway station wall artworks that were built in the 1910’s and still remain to this day. If they can survive there, they can survive anywhere!
I think the swastika is an attractive symbol that is ancient and beautiful in its simplicity. I wouldn’t mind wearing a nice, small, conservative gold swastika around my neck.
But I can’t, because it would offend someone.
That gives them power over me.
Pisses me off, someone telling me what I can or can’t wear, with heaps & heaps of politically correct emotiono-religious guilt trips piled on top.
Levdrakon, no offense, but your attitude is exactly why this thread riles me up so much.
Does your right to express yourself includes the right to determine how people react to your precious self-expression?
You CAN express yourself, you know. You have free speech. You can get a swastika tattoo on your face. You can give the ancient salute of Caesar’s legions. You can display the Confederate battle flag.
But different people are going to interpret those things in different ways. You hvae the right to express yourself, but you’re responsible for the hate and fear and revulsion that your self-expression creates. It upsets you that people associate the swastika with genocide? Well, genocide upsets people more. Grow up.
I associate the cross with the Inquisition, witch burnings, and lynchings, should Christians limit their self-expression because of my hate, fear and revulsion?
CMC fnord!
One of us gets control. Either I control you by wearing a swastika and upsetting you, or you control me by guilt-tripping me into not wearing it. Control=bad.
Yeah, I can fly a Nazi flag, or a Confederate flag. I guess I’d be making a statement by doing that. Statements I have no desire to make, but am allowed to make enjoying freedom of speech. A swastika is a simple, ancient symbol. It’s not a flag. I could stick a big “M” on my forehead. Unless it looks exactly like the McDonald’s logo, what statement I’m making, if any statement at all, is up to me, and nunya business.
You know, I’m just not all that responsible about how you interpret what small gold piece of jewelry I decide to wear, and I really don’t think you should be giving me that kind of power, or trying to exact that kind of power over me.
A Wiccan friend of mine blessed a small star shaped medallion and gave it to me. It looked sorta like a Star of David. But maybe also like a Devil-worship symbol. I’m neither, and took & wore it for the reasons it was given to me. Love.
Only if you, personally, are enough people to make your revulsion known without getten beaten up for expressing it.
It seems odd, to me, to see people acting as though we could take a simple vote and pass out brochures to the masses and expect to get people to change their emotional reactions to visceral symbols.
If someone wants to “rehabilitate” the swastika, I suspect that their best effort would be to begin using it in every venue they could while including a small caption of the Nazi emblem in the corner of their media with a declaration that that, alone, is the Nazi symbol and that they are harkening back to an earlier meaning. With a sufficient effort, they may accomplish their goal.
And leave the illuminati out of this.
You do realize, I hope, that it is just a bit odd to claim that (potentially) making a statement is not any business of one’s audience?