Yes, I do. What’s your point?
Can I suggest that you say that the Nazi swastika is a sign of unspeakable evil, but remain neutral on those used by people for whom the symbol is a sign of their piety? The Nazis perverted a religious symbol for their nefarious purposes less than a century, but that symbol had previously been around for thousands of years.
This was not invariably the case. These regimental standards for the Sturmabteilung (“storm troopers” or “Brownshirts”) have their swastikas upright rather than at the 45 degree angle more commonly associated with the Nazi symbol.
The “redemption” of the swastika is pretty much inevitable. If you go to India, China, or Japan it’s already a commonplace religious and artistic symbol. And why not? They’d been using it for hundreds of years before the Nazis got their grubby paws on it, and they were more insulated from Nazi atrocities than Europeans and Americans were. And there’s a hell of a lot of them.
As the holocaust fades from living memory, and the west mixes more and more with the east (not to mention Native Americans and European-descended Pagans who want to reclaim their ancient religious symbol too), the swastika will become more and more acceptable. They’ll be holdouts, I’m sure, like Germany and Israel, but eventually they too will lose the knee-jerk association of the swastika to Nazism.
The weight of traditionand population comes down on the swastika as a positive symbol. The only real question is how quickly this will happen.
So is America a Jewish country or a Hindu/Buddhist country?
<hikack>This is the type of arrogant pomposity that makes this board less than it should be. Your not a mod. Why do you care if we revisit an older topic in a new thread?</hijack>
The 45th Infantry, in which my grandfather was a medic in WW2, was a National Guard unit from Oklahoma before being federalized in 1941.
Check out his unit’s patch, which was obviously changed very quickly…
HERE
Did the OP specify America?
Look. America (which, incidentally, I love dearly, and no-one has call to say otherwise) is a polyglot nation, and it’s pretty much unique in that (yeah, yeah - start the examples). So no, I do not support laws against the swastika in America. However, I will excercise my right of freedom of expression to oppose any campaign to “redeem” it, and I will never treat one or its bearer with anything better than cold disdain. This is my right, as well. I will not employ violence, nor will I discriminate, nor do anything else illegal. But no law obliges me to be nice.
I have to wonder what would have happened had the Nazis chosen a symbol more common and important to Western culture than the swastika. Say, for example, a simple cross, the same kind found in any Christian church in the world, and often around the necks of the parisoners.
I mean, God knows that symbol has already been coopted by people doing some really repugnant shit, including stuff like the crusades and the inquisition and other acts of genocide that could give the Nazis a run for their money. And those people actually are the spiritual antecedants of modern Western Christians! At least Buddhists and Native Americans can rightly claim that they have no cultural connection whatsoever with Nazi Germany.
And yet, if someone suggested that Christians shouldn’t be allowed to display their religious icon of choice in public, or that Christians wearing a cross should be considered insensitive at the very least, I doubt they’d be looked at very kindly.
Seriously? Given that, in your own words:
if one of them one day happened to put on a string of beads with a carved swastika, you would feel entitled to treat them with “cold disdain”?
May I suggest that symbolism–something that addresses the emotions every bit as much as it addresses reason–is not really amenable to “corrections” regarding attitudes?
"You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place. " Swift(?)
I am not attempting to shut down this discussion, but I suspect that there will soon be a number of very frustrated participants if some posters continue to believe that all the positions thus far expressed are rooted in rational choice.
That is discrimination.
Alessan: One thing that I don’t get is, why are you so respectful of the Nazis interpretation of the symbol? Wouldn’t it be better to acknowledge that the Nazis stole and abused an important symbol from another culture, and that the original culture’s interpretation of the symbol should supercede the Nazi version?
If Osama Bin Laden Jr. began using the Star of David as Al Queda’s symbol, would you agree that it should be removed from Israel’s flag?
Alessan, may I ask you a question? Do you object to the use of the swastika inside temples and mandirs? I mean, not in public?
Doesn’t that sort of have an obvious answer? The Nazis were the ones using it, as recently as 60 years ago, to do horrible stuff (and neo-Nazis still do, in many cases horrible stuff to people like me (and like Alessan). So, regardless of how the symbol might have been used by some other group of people, or what warm and fuzzy feelings they might have toward the swastika, do you really expect us to look on it favorably?
This isn’t a perfect analogy, but go with me. Take a symbol that’s been revered in a culture for millennia - say, the star of David, or the crucifix. Imagine Pol Pot had used it as his symbol while he committed genocide. Now tell all the Jews and Christians they can’t use it anymore because of what Pol Pot did.
Strikes me that most of the people who are anti-rehabilitation of this symbol have never been to places where it is commonplace, revered, and ubiquitous.
But, pursuing your analogy, nobody’s telling the Christians they can’t use their crucifix. We’re just saying that it’s not reasonable for a Christian to go to Cambodia, wear a crucifix around his neck, and then be pissed off at the Cambodians for being insensitive when they’re uncomfortable.
I’m really surprised that perceived intent doesn’t factor into your interpretation of the symbol, Alessan. I saw an Indian dude walking around the other day wearing a shirt coated in swastikas. I did a double-take of course, but quickly put two and two together and continued walking. I mean, I guess it’s possible this guy was the first Indian neonazi I’d ever met, but it seemed unlikely. Is it not possible to say “Oh well in this context, it’s probably nothing?”
I suppose the obvious rebuttal is that as an individual of Scandinavian descent, I would probably not get away with wearing that shirt. But maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s a little reprehensible of me to assume that the symbol has positive connotations when I see someone who I percieve to be a follower of the Hindu faith, in that I’m not being particularly colorblind. I don’t know.
I guess in the end, it was hard for me to interpret the wearing of this shirt as an insult. But I’m not you, so who knows.
Well no, but then you don’t live in Israel (if I’m wrong, accept my apologies). Though there is that ancient synagogue in Israel with swastikas on the mosaic floor - what do you think should be done about that?
But also I think, as I said, you fail to comprehend the ubiquity of the symbol from India, Nepal, Tibet, through China, and throughout south-east Asia. It’s everywhere.
If that was to me, no, I don’t live in Israel. And I don’t think anything should be done with it in the old synagogue, or in India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Southeast Asia, etc. It doesn’t need reclaiming in those places, because the symbol doesn’t have a bad reputation there. It means something different than it does in Israel, Europe, or the US.
But nobody’s talking about the swastika being used in those places where it has a good reputation…We’re all talking about using it in Israel, Europe, and the US, where people deservedly associate it with evil.
There are shitloads of Hindus over here in the UK. If they want to build a temple with srivatsas on it, or wear them, I’m not going to stand in their way.