The Confederate Flag, the swastika, and the problem of symbols

[struggle4progress]

by Danielle Berrin
23 minutes ago

... It had taken 13 hours of deliberation by the Charleston lawmaking body to come to a final vote. In a telling testament to the power of symbols, arguments careened back and forth between the righteous and self-righteous, between those who regard the flag as a symbol of heritage and those who see it as a symbol of oppression ...

The day after the flag was lowered and laid to rest, another fraught and contentious symbol was seen soaring through the sky: the 3,000-year-old swastika.

The non-profit organization, ProSwastika Alliance, which “revere<s> a non-Nazi related swastika as a religious symbol” was celebrating their annual “Swastika Rehabilitation Day” by flying banners with swastikas through the skies of New York and Chicago. The group’s aim is to reclaim the ancient symbol, considered by many Asian countries and Eastern religions – China, Japan and India, Hinduism and Buddhism, among them – as a sign of auspiciousness and luck. That damned Hitler ruined everything ...

while I appreciate the effort to strip Hitler of everything that meant anything to him, I will never be able to glance upon the swastika, whether in a synagogue, at a courthouse, or on Jackie Kennedy’s Native American dress, without seeing it through the eyes of my ancestors for whom it was a Symbol of Hate ...

http://www.jewishjournal.com/hollywoodjew/item/the_confederate_flag_the_swastika_and_the_problem_of_symbols

[Igel]

1. I sympathize.

Slightly.

For many who've come to associate Islam with terrorist killers, the symbols of Islam signify hate. For others, they do not indicate this.

I think of the Soviet and Chinese flags as indicating nothing but hate and oppression. For others, they do not indicate this.

Do we ban everything some people find offensive?

Do we ban everything a majority finds offensive? Do we take a vote every few years? Do we tell them what the symbols mean to others, so they vote not based on what they find offensive but based upon what some people say (many?) others find offensive?

Now, even the swastika itself comes in different garbs. I'm unaware of any Asian or NA prerequisite that the swastika come in the "traditional" red, black, and white that the Nazis preferred for their flag, so perhaps a bit of common sense can prevail (in US politics, though? common sense?).

Last winter there was wrapping paper which, it was pointed out, had a pattern which, if you focused just on particular sections, contained swastikas. At some point it's obsessive to the point of neurotic, as we engage in McCarthyesque searches for things that offend us, and make political power plays to coerce people into accepting our sensitivities and what we find offensive as absolute truth. Tolerance is hard. And arguing with hate can be hard if we can't simplistically assume that everything that bears a symbol that can show hate is bearing a symbol that *must* show hate. Having a one-to-one relationship between form and substance makes the job of judging others much easier, because then we can do so entirely on form and ignore the substance. It's also easier to deceive ourselves, because all we have to do is avoid the form of hate, those particular signs and symbols and we can make ourselves out to be as pure as the driven snow. Spew all the hate you want, just make sure you take the right stand against a symbol, esp. somebody else's symbol.

I found this cartoon to be ironic: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026968255 . While the cartoon intends us to accept that eventually the one true interpretation will be taught to those idiots who miss the truth, I saw it and laughed because it can also be no less clearly interpreted to claim that whose for whom the one true interpretation must be accepted are "essentialistly" confusing themselves with God while denying the kinds of thought that allows for deconstruction of race as a social phenomenon and its reimagining as a trait of institutions and not individuals. (As is often the case, Xians and others often create God in their own image, their own pokejez/"pocket Jesus" or pokego/pocket god. It's also damned hard to keep straight when you start making claims that completely undermine assumptions at the root of other important claims.)