Who would've known!

I spoke to a friend today who mentioned something to me that is quite sensitive to most of the world: The Swastika. Yes that would be the symbol used by the Nazis during WW2.

Apparently one of his friends had it tattooed on his arm last week, and now my friend is reluctant to stay friendly with him. It spurred me on to do some research on what exactly the Swastika is meant to represent, and to be honest it came up with some rather interesting facts about the symbol.

We all know that the Swastika is a VERY powerful symbol. Used by the Nazis to murder millions of people and to promote their beliefs. However for centuries before this, it was a positive symbol. So what is this history of the Swastika? And what does it represent today to people? Good or evil??..

Used for over 3,000 years (dating even before the Egyption Ankh), the Swastika was used by ancient cultures in China, Japan, India and Southern Europe. It was a symbol of peace.

(Left) Swastika, representing a symbol of peace.


In the 1800s, countries around Germany were getting bigger and becoming empires, yet Germany was not unified until 1871. To counter the stigma of youth, nationalists in Germany used the Swastika, as it had India/Aryan origins, to represent Germanic/Aryan history.

Then Hitler came along. And in wanting to keep a Germanic/Aryan history and race, he used the Swastika as a symbol to represent his beliefs and to represent "Germany's struggle". This in turn has caused the symbol to have negative effects on the world.


(Left, the Swastika as used by Hitler and his Nazi regime)
Now some people have said to me that as the symbol was originally used for peace and used by many Buddhists, Buddhists, should the symbol as their own and attempt to repatriate it to its original meaning -for example, gay people use the rainbow flag or the pink triangle.

Now I have to disagree with this argument. Whatever it's history, it is remembered by the generation of today and yesteryear as "Nazi", "Holocaust" and many other negative terms.
The fact that the Nazis had such a big impact on the world, as far as I'm concerned means they have redefined the symbol. You can't reclaim the symbol of the whole regime - what would it be signifying? The pink triangle you can (although I'm not really very keen on it), because it's a symbol of the oppressed, not the oppressor. (For those of you who don't know, the pink triangle was used in Nazi camps to identify homosexuals)


The pink triangle, used in concentration camps to identify homosexuals.


Lets use an AWFUL AWFUL analogy here: A black man may call himself or his black friends nigger, but he is not going to walk around wearing KKK emblems is he??

There'll no doubt be a difference based on where you are in the world too. If it's a Buddhist symbol then it'll be seen differently in a part of the world with a Buddhist tradition. Europe isn't one of them, hardly anyone had seen it before Germany started to use it, so that's what it means here.Even if it was another symbol, I'd be a bit suspicious of a religious symbol being used (I'm guessing) outside the religion. In which case you could justify it by saying it just looked nice, but I'm also guessing the religious stuff will be used to justify a swastika. People's reactions to "oh, I just like it" about a swastika would be interesting though, don't you think???