Asian faiths try to save swastika symbol corrupted by Hitler
https://apnews.com/article/religion-germany-race-and-ethnicity-europe-2c28b5892381cd4148dfde5bc4fbb004Asian faiths try to save swastika symbol corrupted by Hitler
By DEEPA BHARATH
Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment buildings co-op board calling her Diwali decoration offensive and demanding she take it down.
My decoration said Happy Diwali and had a swastika on it, said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights.
The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune, and was also used widely by Indigenous people worldwide in a similar vein.
But in the West, this symbol is often equated to Adolf Hitlers hakenkreuz or the hooked cross a symbol of hate that evokes the trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany. White supremacists, neo-Nazi groups and vandals have continued to use Hitlers symbol to stoke fear and hate.
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Girard442
(6,059 posts)usonian
(9,429 posts)Last edited Mon Nov 28, 2022, 03:22 AM - Edit history (1)
When people expropriate a symbol, all hell breaks loose.
There were plenty of incidents where hand gestures in recent times became gang symbols, and of course, the amerinazis pick up common gestures and charge them politically, like the "OK" gesture.
At one time, J.T. O'Sullivan, a journeyman quarterback for the 49'ers became a big hit with Mexican gangs, because his number, 14 in the alphabet is "N" and the Norte gang loved it.
Need I mention burning crosses? WTF
Gore1FL
(21,034 posts)The Gadsden Flag is lost forever, too.
Hestia
(3,818 posts)historical timeline. In taking the symbol back (non-nazi iteration), we are declaring that peace wins and hate loses. I, too, posted about taking the symbol back several years ago on this board and boy, you'd thought I'd killed everyone's dogs.
It's the same, too, for the original symbols of the US - the concepts of Peace, Liberty and Justice were all feminine symbols that ended with uncle sam becoming the US symbol during wartime and has never left. Why don't women's rights groups push to bring back those symbols?
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
https://www.britannica.com/topic/swastika
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29644591