Comments on: Unfortunate symbol

By: Duckling

Duckling — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 12:47:15 +0000

It’s pretty and a pity.

By: Patrick Moleman

Patrick Moleman — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 21:19:37 +0000

Oddly enough, there’s a really strange display at one of the Smithsonian Museums with an inadvertant swastika. An old photo of Amelia Earhart has her wearing a flightsuit with a swastika on it. This was, due to some horrible coincidence, only a few rooms away from some World War II exhibits. Extremely odd when your brain suddenly screams “Amelia Earhart flew for the Luftwaffe? Huh?” More evidence for the fact that I occasionally fall in and out of alternate universes.

By: W. Kiernan

W. Kiernan — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 20:08:19 +0000

In Hillsborough County, Florida, there’s a platted subdivision named “Swastika Subdivision.” Right there top and center on the record plat is a big fat fylfot symbol. As I remember the plat predates those God damn Nazis. I once surveyed a lot in that sub. The chief of parties handed me the rolled-up plat and the subdivision file folder and said, “You’re not going to believe the name of this plat!”

By: C.J.Colucci

C.J.Colucci — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 17:38:16 +0000

I know a serious academic named Ronald McDonald. He is old enough that he was named before the clown/hamburger salesman, but that was still a bad idea.

By: Chris Martin

Chris Martin — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 16:43:56 +0000

The Nazi swastika is angled at forty five degrees whereas the Hindu swastika isn’t. Among Indian Hindus both inside and outside India, the swastika is still commonly used in festive decorations, usually in conjunction with “om.” See this item on sale for $2.95 for example. It can be a problem when Hindus in America put swastikas on their cars. P.J. O’Rourke, in his essay on India that was in a recent Best American Writing, notes that he kept seeing decorations that seemed to say “Sieg Heil. Om Shanti. Sieg Heil.”

By: mjones

mjones — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 15:47:00 +0000

The Maltese symbol is similar to the Sicilian “three-legged emblem charged with the head of a gorgon.” Go here for a look.

By: bryan

bryan — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 10:13:27 +0000

‘how is it that it can’t be reclaimed)— the Nazi regime was vile; the destruction of European Jewry was a tragedy—how about the hammer and sickle? Weren’t more people killed’ Well the problem may well be that people WANT to reclaim the swastika, it has an ancient and noble history, it is found in all sorts of decoration all over the world, and therefore there are strong psychological imperatives to reclaim it. To do this reclamation is to triumph over naziism in a way. I’m sure, as a symbol that has been around for so long, it has no doubt had to be reclaimed many times in the past, the only difference being that with past reclamations this could happen by people who knew of it as a bad thing would die out or forget, not having a great deal of media to remind them (Nothing comes to mind that would work as an example of this, I’m just making a statement of belief as to how the world works.) I don’t think anyone outside of a communist or just someone that likes trouble would want to reclaim the hammer and sickle, there is no historical or cultural significanse to that sign that I’m aware of other than it’s Soviet one. That said I used to wear a jacket with a hammer and sickle on it back in my early twenties when I lived in Utah cause it was great for starting fights, but I had no intention of reclaiming the symbol – I just fancied myself something of a mean bastard.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 09:53:51 +0000

And as for Bach’s Rudolf cantata, am I the only person who hears “Oh, Susanna” in Schumann’s third symphony?

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 08:15:45 +0000

Asymmetrical symbols, like text, the fylfot or the triskelion, are problematic on flags, since preserving their sense requires fabricating both sides separately, which is seldom practical. I was reminded of this when I took the Gadsden flag to an antiwar demonstration last Saturday. Because of the prevailing wind it presented its reverse to the highway. DONT TREAD ON ME was an ambiguous message anyway, so it probably didn’t much matter that it was presented backwards.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 07:50:26 +0000

H.G. Wells, in his History of the World, commented on the ubiquity of the swastika in Bronze Age decoration. He described it as a sun disk. The illustrations looked more like spirals than crosses, IIRC. I don’t think anyone’s going to see anything sinister in the Isle of Man’s triskelion. However, the black-white-red color scheme that Rachelrachel mentions does sound uncomfortably like the Prussian “blood-and-iron” flag of WWI as well as the Nazi Flag. It’s easy to read too much into color choices, but one can at least surmise that no attempt was made to avoid that association.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 07:47:19 +0000

Dennett’s hypo about Bach and “Rudolph” reminds me of this eerily prescient 14th century fresco: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2481749.stm

By: rachelrachel

rachelrachel — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 06:53:49 +0000

When asked about why they chose a symbol that so obviously resembled a swastika, they were full of denials —- apparently it represents three ‘7’s, each 7 meaning 7 virtues or whatever. And their flag very strongly resembled the Nazi flag—red with a white circle in the middle with the black fylfot-like symbol on the circk=le.

By: liz

liz — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 04:32:59 +0000

You know what makes me curious (aside from the fact that the swirling cross—swastika—appears in many cultures (well, it is a design relatively easy to incorporate into linear media such as baskets, weaving, and tiles) how is it that it can’t be reclaimed)— the Nazi regime was vile; the destruction of European Jewry was a tragedy—how about the hammer and sickle? Weren’t more people killed? Howe about whatever symbol Pol Pot used? How about little radios, the source of the genocide in Africa?

By: jimbo

jimbo — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 04:19:50 +0000

A handsome symbol, damn near ruined by the Nazis. “Damn near”?!

By: Maynard Handley

Maynard Handley — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 01:32:32 +0000

“The Manx flag resembles a 3-pointed swastika.” Which was of course the symbol of the Ossewa Brandwagt, one of the white power groups in South Africa in the 1980’s who insisted that apartheid would end over their dead bodies. When asked about why they chose a symbol that so obviously resembled a swastika, they were full of denials—- apparently it represents three ‘7’s, each 7 meaning 7 virtues or whatever.