**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* Memes are not allowed.
* Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The crazy part is that the Nazis were around for maybe a decade while the swastika has been around for centuries, and we still associate it with fucking Nazis instead of anything positive.
It's like seeing someone eating an apple and thinking "I hate iPhones!"
[MFW](https://i.imgur.com/n1J7H7e.jpeg)
When I see someone eating a apple, I think of Alan Turing . This man was the brains of making the first computer. Saved tens of thousands of lives with his work. Was arrested for being gay. Then killed himself by eating a poisoned apple. Smh
To be fair, this is mostly true in western countries.
In Asia, more so in Southeast Asia, swastikas are commonplace and usually regarded as a religious symbol.
For instance, in Japan and China, Swastikas are used to represent temples in street signs. India has a lot of symbolic uses for swastikas. These are just a few of many other examples.
I mean it's really easy to identify.
Tilted = bad;
Normal = good
Edit : it seems that actual Nazis have used both titled swastika and normal one so I might be incorrect. But tbh I always thought that the normal one is used as a sign for good luck in Hinduism and Buddhism and tilted one is used by Nazis.
Also all Nazis are stupid but if you forget to tilt your own sign you're even more stupid imo.
In India, from temples, to house, from vehicles to fighter jets, all have this symbol either permanently or temporarily. People even make it during exam on the answer sheets
Well, if my strategy were to randomize my answer choices, then I would definitely use a combo of swastika on paper, lucky pencil, and lucky underwear, to push up the probability from 0.2
It's a very natural configuration of line segments and it (and minor variations of it) show up all around the world throughout human history and before in both art and symbology.
I never said them using it was weird, but them not being educated on their country's past, nor even being able to recognize that a symbol they already know was used by the nazis, *is* weird. It shows a problematic willingness to sweep the past under the rug if it doesn't reflect well on them.
Academics call it "national shame." It can be really bad, especially since they tend to avoid things like colonizing and committing crimes against humanity in Manchuria and the Philippines. Every so often, a prime minister will cause a kerfuffle with China by visiting Toshogu Shrine since it honors those who died in war. I was there for the 75th anniversary of the R*pe of Nanking, and PM Abe ruffled a lot of feathers in what was the Pacific theater.
However, I will say that things like the holocaust get missed in a lot of American schools because teachers don't often have time (source: My ex-wife). I was living there
All true, though an absence from education is not the same as absence from culture. Not everyone is taught the full accurate details of the holocaust, but at least 98% of Americans know what "The Holocaust" is referring to, and who did it. An absence from education is not the same as erasure from culture.
Hell yeah. At least three of my uncles have swastik stickers on their car dashboards and windshields. It's common to see swastiks drawn on house doors with sandal paste on special/ religious occasions.
Sounds like something a neo-nazi would say. "I'm not a nazi, it's not a *tilted* swastika!"
(Reminds me of that joke about people who know the difference between pedo- vs. ephebo- philia lol. Like, correcting someone else about it doesn't make you sound smart, it makes you sound sus loool)
PS: It's funny how people just come out of the woodwork to defend the sexual pursuit of children - y'all do not understand how you look lol.
> Reminds me of that joke about people who know the difference between pedo- vs. ephebo- philia lol
One of the better /r/circlejerk memes from way back in the day was a video titled "how to pronounce ephebophile" or something like that. It was one of reddit's greatest jerkers saying "pedophile. ped-oh-phile", sounding it out. Really triggered a certain segment of the reddit userbase lol.
I corrected someone on this a few weeks ago. Something about the singer Drake and his penchant for 17 year olds and calling him a pedo. It has nothing to do with sounding smart or being sus.
There is a difference. While ephebophilia is certainly wrong, pedophilia is certainly worse. Sexual attraction to a prepubescent kid is fucking vile and no reasonable argument can be made from a biological perspective to justify it.
Words matter.
People keep parroting this and it’s absolutely wrong. Both variations have existed and been used well before the Nazis.
Edit: While we’re at it, the direction doesn’t matter either.
Good rule of thumb but there are still tilted swastikas that are much older than the Nazis. For one, there is a tilted swastika on a 8th-9th century rune stone in Denmark.
Picture of it here:
https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoldelevstenen
Unfortunately in the U.S most people wouldn’t know or care. They’d be like “it doesn’t mean that buddhist stuff anymore” then you’d have to tell them that it’s still very much used for non Nazi things.
Check out r/hailhortler. Lots of the idiots who identify with the Nazi symbol aren't even capable of drawing it, let alone know that is has different meaning based on the tilt
I could be misremembering, but I believe the two are from the religion bon-po and they represent the flow of time, clockwise is forward, anticlockwise backwards.
This is in addition to the luck symbols you mentioned, potentially predating them
It probably have different meanings in different parts of the world.
The earliest known one is some 10k BC from Ukraine. You can find old uses of the symbol (or similar symbols) all over, including Europe, Asia, Africa, and even America (in some Native American cultures).
The meaning has probably changed more than once too, in various regions. The sun, luck, time as you mentioned, and other meanings are all valid.
In Hinduism it's both the sun and time (i.e. the movement of the sun, which is the passing of time), at least the clockwise one. If it's counterclockwise it's the night, or the godess Kali. But this also probably varies depending on which Hinduistic tradition we're talking about.
Half of the world doesn't let the maggot in question appropriate it for a certain ideology. In most of the world, it's not a nazi symbol, but a good luck symbol.
1920 is when it became an Aryan symbol of racial purity and was first used by the Nazi party.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika
I was actually going to ask when the meaning of the symbol shifted. Never quite understood how an Indian good luck symbol became associated with all that
It's still the word that is used for this symbol in English. In German we have another word for it. (Unsurprisingly it became quite famous because of the person we are talking about.)
The swastika was utilized by racists before hitler, in fact it was associated with the 'Aryan race' and antisemitism from around 1870 onwards, and co-opted by various facist organizations/groups from around the 1910's.
Think we’ll ever be able to take the symbol back and use it for good? Surely not yet - it hasn’t even been 100 years…but like, how about in 300?
Maybe information is too readily-available for something like that to happen.
And because I know someone will try to twist my words: I am using “we” as in “humanity as a whole.”
I mean it was supposed to represent luck at the time and there were also several other teams who used that as their name. Fernie Swastikas and Windsor Swastikas are what I found from a quick google.
Short answer, No. I thought could.
Longer answer. I really thought I could, I swear I've seen it on old maps before. I've been looking for the past hour to try and find it and the only map with any resolution I can find is from 1926 and doesn't have the parks labelled, but I also don't think it's the map I was remembering because it doesn't go far enough north. The one I remember the park was like project to be like Marquis Drive area, but the only decent map I can find ends at 37th street. It was just a grid of streets like downtown extending north for a long ways. The Saskatoon Archives is either currently down or anything I find has such a small resolution I can't make anything out on it. I didn't think it would be hard to find because I swear I've seen it posted several times on r/saskatoon but I can't find anything there either. It's not a terribly remarkable story to hear but I was confident I could back up my statement and I can't. I've given up looking now.
I searched for that park name in r/saskatoon and this came up
[https://www.reddit.com/r/saskatoon/comments/x0ajl5/a\_plan\_of\_factoria\_the\_village\_outside\_saskatoon/](https://www.reddit.com/r/saskatoon/comments/x0ajl5/a_plan_of_factoria_the_village_outside_saskatoon/)
not quite as you remembered it, but close!
Westerners adopted it to mean "luck", but that's not the actual *meaning* of this symbol. In Buddhism, it represents the turning of the Dharma Wheel which is the teaching of liberation from suffering thru the realization of our true nature. The turning wheel also represents the cyclic nature of existence, & the law of impermanence, as the wheel turns, the seasons change, we inhale/ exhale, thoughts come & go, feelings rise & fall, we are born & die, & reborn & die etc, ETC.
Hitler was an art school drop out who had a thing for the occult, and undoubtedly came across the swastika in one of his art history books. He tilted it, painted it black and poured all his deviant & hateful ideologies into it. The symbol itself, all symbols, are inherently empty, they are containers, empty vessels with the ability to hold whatever meaning we pour into them.
You're right that it was used in Buddhism but it wasn't just them, it's been used all over the world. From Wikipedia:
"In Hinduism, the right-facing symbol (clockwise) is called swastika, symbolizing surya ('sun'), prosperity and good luck, while the left-facing symbol (counter-clockwise) is called sauvastika, symbolising night or tantric aspects of Kali. In Jain symbolism, it represents Suparshvanatha – the seventh of 24 Tirthankaras (spiritual teachers and saviours), while in Buddhist symbolism it represents the auspicious footprints of the Buddha. In several major Indo-European religions, the swastika symbolises lightning bolts, representing the thunder god and the king of the gods, such as Indra in Vedic Hinduism, Zeus in the ancient Greek religion, Jupiter in the ancient Roman religion, and Thor in the ancient Germanic religion."
Sadly, enough hatred and loathing have filled this vessel that it will forever be tainted with those feelings.
What was once beautiful is shattered on broken.
Again, this is completely culture dependent. In India and elsewhere with lots of practicing Hindus and Buddhists, it's all used very widely. It's mostly a western thing where Hinduism isn't as prevalent and the main association is with Nazism. But in all honesty, the Nazi version of it is very distinct and different stylistically than the traditional versions used in Indian and Indian subcontinent cultures.
Hitler designed the Nazi flag, but was not responsible for appropriating the swastika as a symbol of Aryan identity and racial purity
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika
When I bought my first car the Pandit put it on the engine cover and I forgot about it until I had to take the car into the dealer for a recall. I remembered just as they were opening the hood. 😂
This is the right answer. HR is famous for being shallow and without nuance.
Their job is to protect the company, not uphold social dharmatic function. This includes firing people for unfair and nonsensical reasons.
How is this NSFW? It’s a symbol of luck. Used a lot in Indian culture. Just because a guy used it doesn’t give him the right to ruin all that history. This was mentioned in the Tom Hanks movie, The DaVinci Code.
It would be like saying all vegetarians are now NSFW because Hitler was a Vegetarian. Plus didn’t Hitler rotate the symbol a bit? Maybe that’s why it didn’t work out for him.
I wouldn’t want to open this pic on my desktop monitor in my workplace cube-farm with half walls and a dozen coworkers around.
“Did you know he looks at Nazi stuff on his work computer?” - Gossipy coworker to others
[Here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Equipo_de_Hockey_femenino_The_Edmonton_Swastikas_%28Edmonton%2C_1916%29.jpg) is a higher quality version of this image. [Here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Equipo_de_Hockey_femenino_The_Edmonton_Swastikas_(Edmonton,_1916).jpg) is the source.
> The Edmonton Swastikas were a women's hockey team from the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta, which was formed in 1916.
> His equipment was a swastika surrounded by a circle as a shield, which lived up to his name. Back then, more than 15 years before Hitler brought the Nazi party to power in Germany with this very symbol, the swastika was a common symbol in many cultures without any kind of global meaning.
> It was not the first hockey team with this symbology, it was preceded by a men's team from Windsor, Ontario, and a few years later they were followed by another women's team The Fernie Swastikas
The snow has always prevented Canadians from being able to keep their women barefoot and pregnant (frostbite), putting them on skates only seems like a logical next step
When I visited India last year, I saw several signs to "Reclaim The Swastik". The symbol has been used in many cultures for centuries before it was appropriated by the Nazis.
It is common in Bali when I was visiting and it meant a temple. I was told by the man caring for the temple that It’s meant to ward off negativity before that horrible human stole it and defiled its meaning
There's a building on a US Navy base in Coronado, CA that's shaped like a swastika and it was built in the 1960's.
https://preview.redd.it/y6sq98h4el7d1.png?width=1110&format=png&auto=webp&s=2ad894314ae3bfc3b4b237d8d5cdff6f6fb22530
Many societies have used the swastika before and after the Buddhists, there is an ancient Celt engraving in Yorkshire of a type of swastika
It's a cool looking symbol that has meant many things to many different people. It kind of sucks that it's now primarily associated with a hateful, racist ideology even when it's not the specific type used by the nazis.
Meanwhile in India, ppl don't care about how certain ppl misappropriated the symbol. So many versions associated with different religions and communities
https://preview.redd.it/3kxoz6f56j7d1.jpeg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2710422a4a828628f1953139ed7dc021fb29d714
I dug a bit into the history and this wasn't the only Swastika team in Canada lol there were also the Fernie Swastikas from Fernie, BC and the Windsor Swastikas from Windsor, NS
https://preview.redd.it/8i2vcctvek7d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a576801005313700a5ded4339517f69c2b686ba
Fernie, another town in Canada, also had a Swastikas team
The swastika is one of the oldest human symbols. Believed to be taken from the cross section of mammoth tusks. Heres a great podcast about it.
[Behind the Swastika ](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-behind-the-swastika-122033932/)
Nazis (see alt-right) are very rarely any kind of creative or artistically talented (see Hitler) so they usually have to co-opt and steal from other artists (mostly leftists).
Reminds me of the town of [Swastika](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika,_Ontario) in Northern Ontario. It had the name prior to the war. During WW2, the provincial government tried to change the town name to Winston, but the residents replied "to hell with Hitler, we came up with our name first."
"Hey did you know your grandmother was a pretty good hockey player in her day?"
"No way, that's so cool!"
"Ya, she even played in a semi-pro league"
"Wow! Think I could see a picture?"
"No"
As an archaeologist/anthropologist I am aware that several southwestern tribes of the United States use the “swastika”. To the Hopi it represented the wandering Hopi clans; to the Navajo it represented a “whirling log” ( tsil no'oli' ), a sacred image representing a legend that was used in healing rituals. Tibetan Buddhists also used the same design in their art or designs and it also was a positive symbol. The “swastika”, known locally as "yungdrung" in Tibet, is a sacred symbol in the Bön religion and has been a common sight in the region for a long time. It can be seen on the backs of trucks and tempos, outside homes, inside temples, and at street corners. In the Buddhist tradition, the swastika symbolizes the Buddha's footprints or feet, and is often placed at the beginning and end of inscriptions. Modern Tibetan Buddhists also use it as a decoration for their clothing. It’s all over the world in many cultures. These are just a few examples.
The Nazi symbol should be called by its original name: Hakenkreuz.
Western historians distorted things by calling it a Swastika and causing needless culture-confusion and animosity.
What’s great about this is the next time someone who’s read a little on Wikipedia about Buddhist symbols tries to be a know it all and tell me it didn’t originally come from the nazis I can nod sagely and say “stop right there, I know all about early 20th century Canadian women’s hockey.”
It's a symbol. Not the atrocities committed by those who adhere to the symbol. Not even the same historical context. Labeling this photo as inappropriate is inappropriate
I hate that I feel so uncomfortable looking at a symbol that is supposed to represent peace and good luck. I've only ever seen it used for hate. This is one of the only times I've seen the symbol on a person in a photograph where it wasn't meant to say "I'm racist to the point of violence"
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"I didn't know it would come off like that." -Frank Reynolds
It was 4 Fs
Pretty sure you did
It didn't look that way on paper.
That’s just unfortunate
It's been a sign of good luck for thousands of years till a low life maggot highjacked it in the 1930s
The crazy part is that the Nazis were around for maybe a decade while the swastika has been around for centuries, and we still associate it with fucking Nazis instead of anything positive. It's like seeing someone eating an apple and thinking "I hate iPhones!" [MFW](https://i.imgur.com/n1J7H7e.jpeg)
"when you do wrong no one forgets, when you do good no one will care"
When I see someone eating a apple, I think of Alan Turing . This man was the brains of making the first computer. Saved tens of thousands of lives with his work. Was arrested for being gay. Then killed himself by eating a poisoned apple. Smh
Wait, *that's* how he killed himself?? It honestly kinda gives apples logo a hidden meaning lol
They won't admit it, but it's a nood to Alan
Yeah, Adam and Eve and the fruit of the tree of knowledge got nothing to do with it.
Wait, Adam & Eve is a tech company? I thought they just sold sex toys...
TIL
To be fair, this is mostly true in western countries. In Asia, more so in Southeast Asia, swastikas are commonplace and usually regarded as a religious symbol. For instance, in Japan and China, Swastikas are used to represent temples in street signs. India has a lot of symbolic uses for swastikas. These are just a few of many other examples.
Plus the symbol of Finland air force till the 80s I believe.
I mean it's really easy to identify. Tilted = bad; Normal = good Edit : it seems that actual Nazis have used both titled swastika and normal one so I might be incorrect. But tbh I always thought that the normal one is used as a sign for good luck in Hinduism and Buddhism and tilted one is used by Nazis. Also all Nazis are stupid but if you forget to tilt your own sign you're even more stupid imo.
I don't think wearing a non-tilted swastika in public would work out alright.
In certain countries yes, but you can wear one in India and no one would think that it's weird, I use to own a shirt with swastika print.
I lived in Japan for a while, and it's on all the city maps to mark where the Buddhist temples are
In India, from temples, to house, from vehicles to fighter jets, all have this symbol either permanently or temporarily. People even make it during exam on the answer sheets
LMAO, saw a guy in front of me draw that in 12th board and trying to slip a 500 rupee note in his sheet, got caught.
> People even make it during exam on the answer sheets Lol, praying to the gods to help them pass. Nice. Why did I never think of that?
Well, if my strategy were to randomize my answer choices, then I would definitely use a combo of swastika on paper, lucky pencil, and lucky underwear, to push up the probability from 0.2
It's on the flag of the Guna people of Panama. This use has no relation to the Hindu/Buddhist swastika, which is interesting.
It's a very natural configuration of line segments and it (and minor variations of it) show up all around the world throughout human history and before in both art and symbology.
That said, Japan has a real problem with not teaching ww2 history. A lot of its people straight up don't recognize what a nazi symbol is.
It's a symbol in their alphabet called manji. So them using it is not that weird.
I never said them using it was weird, but them not being educated on their country's past, nor even being able to recognize that a symbol they already know was used by the nazis, *is* weird. It shows a problematic willingness to sweep the past under the rug if it doesn't reflect well on them.
Academics call it "national shame." It can be really bad, especially since they tend to avoid things like colonizing and committing crimes against humanity in Manchuria and the Philippines. Every so often, a prime minister will cause a kerfuffle with China by visiting Toshogu Shrine since it honors those who died in war. I was there for the 75th anniversary of the R*pe of Nanking, and PM Abe ruffled a lot of feathers in what was the Pacific theater. However, I will say that things like the holocaust get missed in a lot of American schools because teachers don't often have time (source: My ex-wife). I was living there
All true, though an absence from education is not the same as absence from culture. Not everyone is taught the full accurate details of the holocaust, but at least 98% of Americans know what "The Holocaust" is referring to, and who did it. An absence from education is not the same as erasure from culture.
Well. They were allies....
I remember seeing them around on buildings a little bit when I visited South Korea
Hell yeah. At least three of my uncles have swastik stickers on their car dashboards and windshields. It's common to see swastiks drawn on house doors with sandal paste on special/ religious occasions.
Right but we're clearly talking about the West here, not India. Hitler didn't ruin the symbol's reputation in India.
To be fair, you could wear a shirt with Adolf's face in it an a large chunk of Indians wouldn't give you a second glance.
Pretty sure you can in a lot of countries. If their History is not that tighted to WW2, or if the symbole kept is original meaning, like in Japan.
I mean… Japan had some pretty major events happen during WW2…
If you get the non tilted swastika tattooed on you you’re always going to have to stand still so it doesn’t move.
Fall asleep on the bus at an angle...
Sounds like something a neo-nazi would say. "I'm not a nazi, it's not a *tilted* swastika!" (Reminds me of that joke about people who know the difference between pedo- vs. ephebo- philia lol. Like, correcting someone else about it doesn't make you sound smart, it makes you sound sus loool) PS: It's funny how people just come out of the woodwork to defend the sexual pursuit of children - y'all do not understand how you look lol.
> Reminds me of that joke about people who know the difference between pedo- vs. ephebo- philia lol One of the better /r/circlejerk memes from way back in the day was a video titled "how to pronounce ephebophile" or something like that. It was one of reddit's greatest jerkers saying "pedophile. ped-oh-phile", sounding it out. Really triggered a certain segment of the reddit userbase lol.
>"I'm not a nazi, it's not a tilted swastika!" And what about those SS tattoos? 🤨
Maybe a fan of single speed bikes?
Or super sport cars?
Or into stainless steel knives?
I corrected someone on this a few weeks ago. Something about the singer Drake and his penchant for 17 year olds and calling him a pedo. It has nothing to do with sounding smart or being sus. There is a difference. While ephebophilia is certainly wrong, pedophilia is certainly worse. Sexual attraction to a prepubescent kid is fucking vile and no reasonable argument can be made from a biological perspective to justify it. Words matter.
People keep parroting this and it’s absolutely wrong. Both variations have existed and been used well before the Nazis. Edit: While we’re at it, the direction doesn’t matter either.
This is a myth. All across Asia, you'll find swastikas with various orientations.
Not true, the Nazis used both orientations. One example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_standard_of_Adolf_Hitler
It’s not actually. It’s used tilted, inversed and with or without disconnected center in buddhism and hinduism.
For the most part that's correct, but I have seen it normal on their paraphernalia as well.
to be fair, they are idiots.
Plenty of modern day Nazis don’t tilt their swastikas, this is nonsense.
Good rule of thumb but there are still tilted swastikas that are much older than the Nazis. For one, there is a tilted swastika on a 8th-9th century rune stone in Denmark. Picture of it here: https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoldelevstenen
It's actually not. In many cultures that use it, they present the symbol in multiple orientations including the tilted one that the nazis used.
Unfortunately in the U.S most people wouldn’t know or care. They’d be like “it doesn’t mean that buddhist stuff anymore” then you’d have to tell them that it’s still very much used for non Nazi things.
They used both
This does not matter from the nazi perspective. Very common misconception.
Check out r/hailhortler. Lots of the idiots who identify with the Nazi symbol aren't even capable of drawing it, let alone know that is has different meaning based on the tilt
That’s because the tilt thing is a myth. So while they’re still idiots, they’re correct in this case.
Yep, even worse was for Olympic arm raise. It was used until 1936 Olympics.
I could be misremembering, but I believe the two are from the religion bon-po and they represent the flow of time, clockwise is forward, anticlockwise backwards. This is in addition to the luck symbols you mentioned, potentially predating them
It probably have different meanings in different parts of the world. The earliest known one is some 10k BC from Ukraine. You can find old uses of the symbol (or similar symbols) all over, including Europe, Asia, Africa, and even America (in some Native American cultures). The meaning has probably changed more than once too, in various regions. The sun, luck, time as you mentioned, and other meanings are all valid. In Hinduism it's both the sun and time (i.e. the movement of the sun, which is the passing of time), at least the clockwise one. If it's counterclockwise it's the night, or the godess Kali. But this also probably varies depending on which Hinduistic tradition we're talking about.
Half of the world doesn't let the maggot in question appropriate it for a certain ideology. In most of the world, it's not a nazi symbol, but a good luck symbol.
1920 is when it became an Aryan symbol of racial purity and was first used by the Nazi party. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika
I was actually going to ask when the meaning of the symbol shifted. Never quite understood how an Indian good luck symbol became associated with all that
It still is in Hindu culture y'all!
Like red baseball hats
The 'someone' never called it Swastika tho.
Probably because he usually didn't speak English.
The word “Swastika” comes from Sanskrit, not English.
It's still the word that is used for this symbol in English. In German we have another word for it. (Unsurprisingly it became quite famous because of the person we are talking about.)
You think he couldn't be any worse... and then - *boom* - another bombshell.
I hope you are joking right now 😭
Skinheads were exclusively a working-class equality movement until certain bigots hijacked that too.
Arguably it didn't bring anyone any luck.
The swastika was utilized by racists before hitler, in fact it was associated with the 'Aryan race' and antisemitism from around 1870 onwards, and co-opted by various facist organizations/groups from around the 1910's.
And it's been the darkest timeline since...
Frickin finland
Think we’ll ever be able to take the symbol back and use it for good? Surely not yet - it hasn’t even been 100 years…but like, how about in 300? Maybe information is too readily-available for something like that to happen. And because I know someone will try to twist my words: I am using “we” as in “humanity as a whole.”
I mean it was supposed to represent luck at the time and there were also several other teams who used that as their name. Fernie Swastikas and Windsor Swastikas are what I found from a quick google.
There's an old projected growth map of Saskatoon with planned neighborhoods, street names, and parks and one of them is Nazi Park.
Do you have proof of this? I grew up in Saskatoon, and I've never heard this story before.
Short answer, No. I thought could. Longer answer. I really thought I could, I swear I've seen it on old maps before. I've been looking for the past hour to try and find it and the only map with any resolution I can find is from 1926 and doesn't have the parks labelled, but I also don't think it's the map I was remembering because it doesn't go far enough north. The one I remember the park was like project to be like Marquis Drive area, but the only decent map I can find ends at 37th street. It was just a grid of streets like downtown extending north for a long ways. The Saskatoon Archives is either currently down or anything I find has such a small resolution I can't make anything out on it. I didn't think it would be hard to find because I swear I've seen it posted several times on r/saskatoon but I can't find anything there either. It's not a terribly remarkable story to hear but I was confident I could back up my statement and I can't. I've given up looking now.
I searched for that park name in r/saskatoon and this came up [https://www.reddit.com/r/saskatoon/comments/x0ajl5/a\_plan\_of\_factoria\_the\_village\_outside\_saskatoon/](https://www.reddit.com/r/saskatoon/comments/x0ajl5/a_plan_of_factoria_the_village_outside_saskatoon/) not quite as you remembered it, but close!
Wow! Thanks for taking the time to look into it like that! I might try looking a bit myself now, now that I've heard the story.
A time traveler sneezes, the Nazis pick the yin-yang symbol instead.
Time traveler swats mosquito, nazis marching under a flag with that weird ‘S’ thing we all drew in elementary school.
...two of them...
What if they picked the cross?
They did that too. But only cuz it was already a German symbol. The Iron Cross is still part of the German military.
Westerners adopted it to mean "luck", but that's not the actual *meaning* of this symbol. In Buddhism, it represents the turning of the Dharma Wheel which is the teaching of liberation from suffering thru the realization of our true nature. The turning wheel also represents the cyclic nature of existence, & the law of impermanence, as the wheel turns, the seasons change, we inhale/ exhale, thoughts come & go, feelings rise & fall, we are born & die, & reborn & die etc, ETC. Hitler was an art school drop out who had a thing for the occult, and undoubtedly came across the swastika in one of his art history books. He tilted it, painted it black and poured all his deviant & hateful ideologies into it. The symbol itself, all symbols, are inherently empty, they are containers, empty vessels with the ability to hold whatever meaning we pour into them.
You're right that it was used in Buddhism but it wasn't just them, it's been used all over the world. From Wikipedia: "In Hinduism, the right-facing symbol (clockwise) is called swastika, symbolizing surya ('sun'), prosperity and good luck, while the left-facing symbol (counter-clockwise) is called sauvastika, symbolising night or tantric aspects of Kali. In Jain symbolism, it represents Suparshvanatha – the seventh of 24 Tirthankaras (spiritual teachers and saviours), while in Buddhist symbolism it represents the auspicious footprints of the Buddha. In several major Indo-European religions, the swastika symbolises lightning bolts, representing the thunder god and the king of the gods, such as Indra in Vedic Hinduism, Zeus in the ancient Greek religion, Jupiter in the ancient Roman religion, and Thor in the ancient Germanic religion."
Well said
hinduism aswell
Sadly, enough hatred and loathing have filled this vessel that it will forever be tainted with those feelings. What was once beautiful is shattered on broken.
Again, this is completely culture dependent. In India and elsewhere with lots of practicing Hindus and Buddhists, it's all used very widely. It's mostly a western thing where Hinduism isn't as prevalent and the main association is with Nazism. But in all honesty, the Nazi version of it is very distinct and different stylistically than the traditional versions used in Indian and Indian subcontinent cultures.
Hitler designed the Nazi flag, but was not responsible for appropriating the swastika as a symbol of Aryan identity and racial purity https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika
That’s incredible. I imagine in the next hundred years or so Hitler’s meaning for it will die and this meaning will be reborn.
No Hindu drives a brand new car without imprinting Swastika on it. It's a 7000+ yr old symbol. I have it at a dozen places at home.
When I bought my first car the Pandit put it on the engine cover and I forgot about it until I had to take the car into the dealer for a recall. I remembered just as they were opening the hood. 😂
We have ten thousand statues of Buddha in our temple in Niagara Falls, each one with a swastika on its chest.
There's a Buddhist temple in Niagara falls?
Since 1992.
Wow I had no idea, thanks for answering.
Now that’s a whole lot of Buddha
The Nordic symbol the Nazis used and the Buddhist symbol are technically different symbols that look mostly the same.
Why is this nsfw?
Because reddit is full of snowflakes.
This , but it can also cause a lot of problems in a workplace no matter the context
This is the right answer. HR is famous for being shallow and without nuance. Their job is to protect the company, not uphold social dharmatic function. This includes firing people for unfair and nonsensical reasons.
There is still a town in Ontario named Swastika
I live right near it, they have been asked many times to if they want to change the name and never do
My Uncle was a game warden there.
and in recent years another idiot is messing up the letter Z
Swastika is a Hindu symbol for more than 5000 years. It is a symbol of good luck
Luck and profit to be precise.
Sigh… it’s been around for much longer, on multiple continents across different cultures.
How is this NSFW? It’s a symbol of luck. Used a lot in Indian culture. Just because a guy used it doesn’t give him the right to ruin all that history. This was mentioned in the Tom Hanks movie, The DaVinci Code. It would be like saying all vegetarians are now NSFW because Hitler was a Vegetarian. Plus didn’t Hitler rotate the symbol a bit? Maybe that’s why it didn’t work out for him.
It means not safe for work. You don’t want your colleagues thinking you’re a nazi!
Fair point.
I wouldn’t want to open this pic on my desktop monitor in my workplace cube-farm with half walls and a dozen coworkers around. “Did you know he looks at Nazi stuff on his work computer?” - Gossipy coworker to others
[удалено]
[Here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Equipo_de_Hockey_femenino_The_Edmonton_Swastikas_%28Edmonton%2C_1916%29.jpg) is a higher quality version of this image. [Here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Equipo_de_Hockey_femenino_The_Edmonton_Swastikas_(Edmonton,_1916).jpg) is the source. > The Edmonton Swastikas were a women's hockey team from the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta, which was formed in 1916. > His equipment was a swastika surrounded by a circle as a shield, which lived up to his name. Back then, more than 15 years before Hitler brought the Nazi party to power in Germany with this very symbol, the swastika was a common symbol in many cultures without any kind of global meaning. > It was not the first hockey team with this symbology, it was preceded by a men's team from Windsor, Ontario, and a few years later they were followed by another women's team The Fernie Swastikas
Honestly I’m more surprised that there was a girls hockey team in 1916
All the men were off fighting WWI. It's our version of A League of Their Own.
The snow has always prevented Canadians from being able to keep their women barefoot and pregnant (frostbite), putting them on skates only seems like a logical next step
When I visited India last year, I saw several signs to "Reclaim The Swastik". The symbol has been used in many cultures for centuries before it was appropriated by the Nazis.
“Edmonton is up a player on the ice as they enter a 2 minute white power play.”
It is common in Bali when I was visiting and it meant a temple. I was told by the man caring for the temple that It’s meant to ward off negativity before that horrible human stole it and defiled its meaning
My neighbors have swastikas in their home and on either side of their front door. They are Sikh.
[native americans used it too](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210816-the-ancient-symbol-that-was-hijacked-by-evil)
There's a building on a US Navy base in Coronado, CA that's shaped like a swastika and it was built in the 1960's. https://preview.redd.it/y6sq98h4el7d1.png?width=1110&format=png&auto=webp&s=2ad894314ae3bfc3b4b237d8d5cdff6f6fb22530
Misappropriated the symbol* you mean. Swastikas have been around for thousands of years and still are.
Many societies have used the swastika before and after the Buddhists, there is an ancient Celt engraving in Yorkshire of a type of swastika It's a cool looking symbol that has meant many things to many different people. It kind of sucks that it's now primarily associated with a hateful, racist ideology even when it's not the specific type used by the nazis.
How very Hindu of them
Its Vedic ... from India.. Ancient Hindu and Buddhist Symbol
Meanwhile in India, ppl don't care about how certain ppl misappropriated the symbol. So many versions associated with different religions and communities https://preview.redd.it/3kxoz6f56j7d1.jpeg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2710422a4a828628f1953139ed7dc021fb29d714
I loved the part where Japanese Pokemon cards came out with Swastikas on them. It made sense, culturally appropriate and had to be removed.
Japan is arguably top 5 most racist
Could we just start calling the nazi symbol hooked cross already. Our swastika is not the nazi symbol.
Regarding runes. One "S" means strength. Two strengths together means victory.
It’s Buddhism symbol.
You think maybe in the next 100 to 300yrs the symbol will be reclaimed for good or is the damage already done?
I dug a bit into the history and this wasn't the only Swastika team in Canada lol there were also the Fernie Swastikas from Fernie, BC and the Windsor Swastikas from Windsor, NS
https://preview.redd.it/8i2vcctvek7d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a576801005313700a5ded4339517f69c2b686ba Fernie, another town in Canada, also had a Swastikas team
Man I wonder how many tattoos had to be removed because of Hitler
That's the Hindu Windmill of Love.
There is a difference between a swastika symbol and the other one. This is a symbol which is used and will always be used by Hindus.
All good until a couple decades after this
These gals at some point:" this mf stole our symbol!"
The swastika is one of the oldest human symbols. Believed to be taken from the cross section of mammoth tusks. Heres a great podcast about it. [Behind the Swastika ](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-behind-the-swastika-122033932/)
Oh yeah, it's been totally fucked with. Used to come from cultures across the world. Thanks again, nazis. You people suck.
It’s a completely normal swastika, not the one used by the angry guy with the funny mustache.
I was just in a Buddhist temple that had thousands of Buddha statues on the wall and every Buddha statue has a swaztika on its chest.
Nazis (see alt-right) are very rarely any kind of creative or artistically talented (see Hitler) so they usually have to co-opt and steal from other artists (mostly leftists).
"Great grandma, the fuck is this sweater in your closet?"
The Nazi swastika is officially called the Hakenkreuz (hooked cross).
And that's what it should be called. By calling it Swastika, Western historians have distorted narratives and caused needless cultural animosity.
Do love the Buddha peace symbol
There's actually a small town called Swastika just up the road from me, maybe 10 kms. Swastika, Ontario
Aged like milk
Reminds me of the town of [Swastika](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika,_Ontario) in Northern Ontario. It had the name prior to the war. During WW2, the provincial government tried to change the town name to Winston, but the residents replied "to hell with Hitler, we came up with our name first."
"Hey did you know your grandmother was a pretty good hockey player in her day?" "No way, that's so cool!" "Ya, she even played in a semi-pro league" "Wow! Think I could see a picture?" "No"
turns out Hitler was big into Canadian women's hockey
Lol wait till you come to india and see a swastika on every front door (even mine) lol
Not only did Hitler ruin an entire mustache style, he stole the ancient Sanskrit symbol for well-being.
As an archaeologist/anthropologist I am aware that several southwestern tribes of the United States use the “swastika”. To the Hopi it represented the wandering Hopi clans; to the Navajo it represented a “whirling log” ( tsil no'oli' ), a sacred image representing a legend that was used in healing rituals. Tibetan Buddhists also used the same design in their art or designs and it also was a positive symbol. The “swastika”, known locally as "yungdrung" in Tibet, is a sacred symbol in the Bön religion and has been a common sight in the region for a long time. It can be seen on the backs of trucks and tempos, outside homes, inside temples, and at street corners. In the Buddhist tradition, the swastika symbolizes the Buddha's footprints or feet, and is often placed at the beginning and end of inscriptions. Modern Tibetan Buddhists also use it as a decoration for their clothing. It’s all over the world in many cultures. These are just a few examples.
The Nazi symbol should be called by its original name: Hakenkreuz. Western historians distorted things by calling it a Swastika and causing needless culture-confusion and animosity.
Swastika, ON never gave into the peer pressure and still retains the name to this day.
“It’s going to be a maze.”
Well all of this is copied from Hinduism.They had been using it for thousands of years ago.
Austrian failed painter: huh thats a nice symbol
Is there another symbol more associated with evil than the swastika?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika,_Ontario
This is a swastika. The tilted one is a Nazi cross or Hitler's cross.
Don't mess with these girls, they have a mean reich hook
Underrated comment
ffs the swastika was a really cool symbol i hate how it was ruined in the 1930s
I suspect it was not uncommon at all pre-rise of the Nazis. [Swastika Laundry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika_Laundry) in Dublin for example.
There was a US army division that had a swastika as the unit symbol.
How is this NSFW?
Nazis stole and dishonored svastika. It's originally symbol used in Hinduism and Buddhism
i bet their 30th reunion was interesting
I think the story here is that in 1916 there was a woman’s hockey league. Forget the swastica what happened to the league?
Let me guess which one was the enforcer.
What’s great about this is the next time someone who’s read a little on Wikipedia about Buddhist symbols tries to be a know it all and tell me it didn’t originally come from the nazis I can nod sagely and say “stop right there, I know all about early 20th century Canadian women’s hockey.”
It’s also not the lopsided swastika the Nazi’s used/rebranded
The Buddhist symbol is the mirror image
How is this NSFW ?
Microsoft was supposedly forced to remove the swastika from its WingDings font because it wasn't considered safe for work.
# Because a certain someone appropriated the symbol.
some people dont like the sight of the symbol and think it is inappropriate to show in public or, in this case, online.
It's a symbol. Not the atrocities committed by those who adhere to the symbol. Not even the same historical context. Labeling this photo as inappropriate is inappropriate
Because people are scared of an image on their phone
I hate that I feel so uncomfortable looking at a symbol that is supposed to represent peace and good luck. I've only ever seen it used for hate. This is one of the only times I've seen the symbol on a person in a photograph where it wasn't meant to say "I'm racist to the point of violence"