actually, the swastika is a buddhist symbol
when i was 17 i spent a summer in japan as an exchange student. i stayed with a family in kyoto prefecture and was absolutely enamored by shino and buddhist shrines. because this was a million years ago, i mostly got around with paper maps and signs, and on those signs they would have a very familiar symbol.
to the casual western onlooker with a basic high school education, this looks like a swastika. however, most people would probably not lose their shit seeing this symbol in this context. for starters, if you are in japan you likely already have an interest in japanese culture. you are probably familiar with some of their religious symbolism since it shows up quite a bit in japanese pop culture. on your trip to japan, you might possibly run into signs around well known temples that explain the symbols context. perhaps you could also see the thousands of normal people walking around the temple, people who are clearly not neonazis sieg heiling and goosestepping. this is, i think, not extraordinary or unexpected behavior from the average person, who would probably adapt quite quickly to an unfamiliar situation using their lived experiences to help guide them.
if i sound overly sarcastic and terse here, its because i am. i am annoyed, dear reader, at how often i see this argument. im not sure why we must endlessly defend the innocence of the swastika but thats precisely what we're doing when we bring up the non sequitur about buddhism.
to this, i say: who gives a fucking shit. who genuinely cares where the symbol came from.
this may be surprising to you, but the nazis were not buddhists. they were not socialists either, despite what the term 'national socialist' will tell you because, surprisingly, nazis lie. this is a feature of fascist ideology that credulous rubes insist on ignoring because it is better to trust adolf hitler than anyone else. the nazis were propagandists, and i wont even say they were particularly good at it, but they were effective at harnessing symbolism and imagery already familiar to racists. we give the nazis too much credit for their appropriation and derivative aryan mysticism and mythology. much of what they believed had already existed prior to hitler.
this, of course, makes sense. the nazis were not an aberration but a logical continuity of colonialism made manifest on internally colonized populations in europe. domenico losurdos brilliant liberalism: a counterhistory details the history of liberalism as an ideology and how it climaxes with the orgiastic industrialized murder of the holocaust. from the poor house to the slave ship to the plantation to the reservation to the concentration camp, liberalism has much to answer for.
when we remove the nazis from their historical and political context, we open ourselves up to ridiculous mythologizing that either becomes glorification or minimization. the argument goes that swastikas have been around since humans first created art and therefore we should try to reclaim that positive intention once more. i wont deny the possibility of future reclamation in the west, but as it stands, the swastika represents white supremacy, and nazis know this. they are attempting to normalize the display of white supremacist symbols by including or associating them with innocent ideas. this is called a dog whistle and examples include the ok hand symbol, glasses of milk, and pepe the frog.
it is very very silly to get angry at a mere glass of milk, but thats only if you ignore the context, which nazis are counting on you to do. they want you to feel crazy. they want you to feel like youre blowing things out of proportion. this is the point of a dog whistle because most people, even racists, do in fact balk at exterminating other peoples. what leads to genocide is often a slow build of up tensions and antagonism fed by hateful language and social exclusion. the holocaust could not have happened without two thousand years of antisemitism in europe, and yet we are all supposed to let bygones be bygones and welcome the swastika back into our daily lives.
this argument also relies on symbolism remaining static for all eternity. no symbol carries inherent meaning because all humans interpret them in different ways. but the pro swastika argument suggests that because the symbol has a specific context in some specific space and time then it must therefore become a universally accepted interpretation. why? well because some people really want to use swastikas in public. for some reason! lets not question their intentions, of course! after all, someones right to wave a swastika in public for their emotional well being supersedes the terror and stress that symbol inflicts on minorities! my precious free speech! you are worse than the nazis! the nazis would let me sieg heil in public!
the hysterics over hate symbolism is stressful, partially by design. it is true that people usually object to hate speech for emotional reasons rather than ones based on Facts And Logic, so i will argue against hate speech in public from a purely logical perspective.
there are many versions of the pyramid of violence but all of them begin with speech. this could be its own separate essay but dehumanizing and hateful attitudes have a provably negative effect on affected populations. i am completely against the concept of free speech because speech can never be truly free in a society that upholds some lives over others. speech is not an abstract concept; if anything, language itself makes human beings human. on top of that, arguing that 'its just words' while also obsessively defending the right to scream slurs in public is hypocritical and reveals that the intention is not noble freedom of expression but freedom to harm others with impunity. if you insult me its not illegal, obviously, but you do not have the right to say whatever you want without a reaction from others. on top of that, if your speech is used to intimidate others from public life, like with bigoted hate speech, you are clearly weaponizing language to suppress other people. freedom of speech is almost exclusively used to justify harm rather than the right to truly express oneself how they see fit. this is why the US legally cannot legislate against bigoted hate speech yet is fine repressing trans peoples freedom of expression. we are not allowed to be who we are since you define us as 'obscene' but you are certainly allowed to scream slurs at us and fire us and deny us housing--this is, after all, protected speech.
i dont think anything ive said is controversial since its this is literally the fucking basis of semiotics! saussure is rolling in his grave! but it is far more difficult to refute these 'common sense' quips about horrific ideologies than it is to carelessly throw them out there. if the swastika is a buddhist symbol, why are we all so hysterical about it? other cultures use it. you are all just snowflakes. marginalized people are not to be believed. the only people whose rights matter are those who want to hurt others, and this is normal rather than deeply concerning bizarro world behavior.
i think its telling that we have not seen tons and tons of asians and practitioners of eastern religions in the west openly flying swastikas. i am loosely involved in some buddhist spaces in rio and i have never seen a manji publicly and proudly flown, because even though a manji is not a nazi swastika, people have a level of common sense about this. in brazil, public displays of the swastika are illegal because this is a normal reaction to the holocaust, i think! it doesnt mean racism doesnt exist here or that every bigot goes to prison immediately like americans seem to think happened in the leo lins case. it simply means its more difficult to convince people that these are innocent symbols.
i dont believe its enough to simply ban symbols without addressing the deeper social and economic sources and incentives for bigotry. this is why i became a marxist because the deeper i dug for answers and solutions, the fewer actually seemed possible under capitalism. however, i dont think the alternative to a socialist revolution right now is a complete abandonment of decency and respect towards others. racists dont get instantly thrown in prison in brazil, sure, but is it so bad that people have to consider if bigotry is worth promoting? is it genuinely a tragedy that people fear going to prison for promoting fascism? if so, then dont expect me to cry for these people.