Ps. My thoughts are a little disorganised, so if there’s anything problematic or inaccurate, just let me know.
Let’s begin by talking about the hooked cross. Most of the culture around the world see it in a positive light. In India, they call it swastika, in China wan or wanzi, in Japan manji, in Korea manja, and so on. There are also various native American groups as well as Europeans (Ukraine, Finland) who revere this symbol. And from little that I know, I also heard about it being part of Jewish synagogues in some places.
Despite these groups being cooperative and making heavy changes to the symbols, by rejecting the angled cross, and adding dots and curves, the hate against PoC for following their beliefs did not stop. Could you deny the bigots a symbol for their evil ideology, by letting PoC reclaim the symbol? Yes. But would they choose to? No. For about 3000 years, it was a revered symbol in most parts of the world. For almost a quarter of a century, it was a hate symbol in a small part of the world. And yet, here we are.
Putting aside the symbol, let’s talk about the word itself. For most of the Indians out there, having the word “swastika” appropriated by Nazi is horrible - it robbed the original meaning of the word स्वस्तिक. People out there name their kids Swastik (masculine) and Swastika (feminine). I can’t just imagine how they’ll be bullied. Swastika is also related to various figures in the Hindu mythology. There’s also a yoga pose called the Swastik asana. There’s also Buddhist references out there that I’m unaware of.
If there’s so much concern about this hooked cross being a hate symbol, why isn’t it being calling it flyfot or hakenkreuz? Surely, those are Euro-centric words, right? Why drag a culture that had nothing to do with the Holocaust?
Enough about the swastika. Let’s talk about an imperialist symbol that is still respected. The symbol of terror, bloodshed, capitalism and colonialism. The Union Jack.
The first Union Jack was made in the early 1600s, when England and Scotland unified. In the 1800s, they colonized Ireland, and thus formed the modern Union Jack that you all know today.
Under this symbol and every version of it that has existed, 165 million Indians were killed in just forty year’s time - colonialism lasted for almost 200 years, starting from 1757 to 1947, and also add the other victims of colonialism of the British Empire, from America, Africa, Australia and Asia, as well as Europe. We are talking about atrocities like artificial famines, starvation, pogroms, slave-trade, and apartheid, just to name a few. National and religious artifacts were desecrated and stolen. Territories were robbed of their wealth. Natural resources destroyed. Artisans and craftsmen, torch bearers of culture were killed, or handicapped. Let’s also not forget the aftermath of disastrous independence of colonies. Like for example, the Partition of undivided India.
And yet, this hate symbol exists out there. People wave this flag in pride. The vilification of swastika was never about the Nazis. It is a convenient excuse to deflect how the Allied forces and anyone associated with it are the good guys at the expense of making vulnerable groups feeling uncomfortable. Invasion of Vietnam? War crime sponsored in Gaza? Genocide in Bangladesh? “We defeated the Nazis, we can’t be that evil”.
I’ve been calling the hate symbol “Hakenkreuz” for years before I was a commie, and I didn’t get why other people didn’t do the same… Like, it’s such a ridiculously small thing, to change the name of the hate symbol to acknowledge the difference between it and the perfectly normal symbol revered throughout the world, and yet apparently nobody around me can be bothered to try, even when I try to lead by example… I remember, actually, one time in lower secondary school, I was looking at the seals of the states of India on a school computer, and I actually landed in a bit of trouble with my teacher because one of the seals (Bihar’s) had swastikas on it. And I explained to my teacher that it was an Indian state seal, that the swastika is a sacred symbol, and my teacher said that she already knew but simply did not care. That little symbol made her so uncomfortable that she would not stand for me looking at it.
If we put on our POSIWID hats for a moment, we could say from this experience that at least one of the reasons why swastikas and Hakenkreuze are “painted with the same brush” and referred to with the same name, is precisely to discourage curiosity about other countries and cultures, by associating them with the shame, disgust, and uncertainty of antisemitic graffiti — to get people to laugh at other cultures, even, or to feel afraid of exchanging culture for fear of being misinterpreted (which is not helped by whites using “Hindu culture” as an excuse for actual hateful usage), and things like that… A lot of imperial exploitation is bound up in isolating the labor aristocracy from those whose exploitation they benefit from, and this type of cultural isolation is just one more tool in that arsenal.