Are swastikas ok here?

[AwesomeNova]

4 hours ago, Zephyr said:

Snippy snip

Zephyr, I think you are missing something important here: context. No symbol exists in a vacuum, especially the swastika. If someone creates a nation with a southeast Asian, Buddhist theme, including the swastika as a religious symbol is fine. It’s not being used as a hate symbol. However, if the symbol is there with no context or is paired with Nazi imagery, then it’s safe to say that it’s used as a hate symbol and must be taken down. 

If you haven’t noticed, Politics and War is made by and American, played by people in the West. In the West, the swastika is used as a symbol of hate and Nazism, so if a Norwegian paints it on the side of their car, they’re not doing it because they’re pagan. They’re doing it because they’re a Nazi and want to show their affiliation. The swastika has been so tainted by Nazi appropriation of it that it’s unusable as a religious symbol.

I know the more positive meaning of it, but please look at how the symbol is being used. A Buddhist themed nation can use it. Everyone else can’t.

 

 

[Guest Zephyr]

15 minutes ago, AwesomeNova said:

Zephyr, I think you are missing something important here: context. No symbol exists in a vacuum, especially the swastika. If someone creates a nation with a southeast Asian, Buddhist theme, including the swastika as a religious symbol is fine. It’s not being used as a hate symbol. However, if the symbol is there with no context or is paired with Nazi imagery, then it’s safe to say that it’s used as a hate symbol and must be taken down. 

If you haven’t noticed, Politics and War is made by and American, played by people in the West. In the West, the swastika is used as a symbol of hate and Nazism, so if a Norwegian paints it on the side of their car, they’re not doing it because they’re pagan. They’re doing it because they’re a Nazi and want to show their affiliation. The swastika has been so tainted by Nazi appropriation of it that it’s unusable as a religious symbol.

I know the more positive meaning of it, but please look at how the symbol is being used. A Buddhist themed nation can use it. Everyone else can’t.

I'm not sure what you think we're in disagreement about, I mentioned context in my past two posts. Your post reflects my own sentiments on swastikas in the modern day.

[AwesomeNova]

18 minutes ago, Zephyr said:

I'm not sure what you think we're in disagreement about, I mentioned context in my past two posts. Your post reflects my own sentiments on swastikas in the modern day.

Oh, I didn’t realize that. Maybe I and Hime-sama reacted because, at least in the US where I live, fascism is on the rise during a crisis and get a little trigger happy when someone seemingly defends something like a swastika. I don’t want bigotry to be unchallenged.

[katashimon13]

On 9/20/2020 at 10:08 PM, Hime-sama said:

Your attempt to straw man and portray the swastika as a positive symbol is actually vile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

literally was and is still used as a positive symbol but yes the actual nazisim described itc is bad

when we forget history blah blah blah

rawr

[Jangles]

On 9/22/2020 at 7:54 PM, AwesomeNova said:

Zephyr, I think you are missing something important here: context. No symbol exists in a vacuum, especially the swastika. If someone creates a nation with a southeast Asian, Buddhist theme, including the swastika as a religious symbol is fine. It’s not being used as a hate symbol. However, if the symbol is there with no context or is paired with Nazi imagery, then it’s safe to say that it’s used as a hate symbol and must be taken down. 

If you haven’t noticed, Politics and War is made by and American, played by people in the West. In the West, the swastika is used as a symbol of hate and Nazism, so if a Norwegian paints it on the side of their car, they’re not doing it because they’re pagan. They’re doing it because they’re a Nazi and want to show their affiliation. The swastika has been so tainted by Nazi appropriation of it that it’s unusable as a religious symbol.

I know the more positive meaning of it, but please look at how the symbol is being used. A Buddhist themed nation can use it. Everyone else can’t.

 

 

Old post I know, but if I see a nation with Reich or Volk in its name paired with armanen runes or a swastika with a red and black flag he's obviously a Nazi. But if I see a swastika stylized like this

and maybe his nation name is "Illyria" I'm going to assume he's into classical antiquity and is basing his nation theme on the ancient Balkans. And honestly I think that would be a pretty cool nation theme. The stylization and the context matters a lot.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Jangles

[Bird Shorten]

The original poster is literally describing a Nazi flag, the swastika is being used in a Nazi context. The use of the white disc and red background with the swastika is in no way, shape, or form being used for non-Nazi purposes. There is literally no reason to be debating whether or not the swastika should be ok to use in P&W as it's explicitly prohibited in this context. All of the people here arguing to normalize the swastika seem to be either unable to read the context, or seem to possess some suspect ulterior motives. 

like bruh

[Jangles]

3 hours ago, Bird Shorten said:

The original poster is literally describing a Nazi flag, the swastika is being used in a Nazi context. The use of the white disc and red background with the swastika is in no way, shape, or form being used for non-Nazi purposes. There is literally no reason to be debating whether or not the swastika should be ok to use in P&W as it's explicitly prohibited in this context. All of the people here arguing to normalize the swastika seem to be either unable to read the context, or seem to possess some suspect ulterior motives. 

like bruh

It was settled in like the first 2 posts that Nazi flags are against the rules. And the discussion continued to the title of the thread "are swastikas banned" which nobody should think so. Yeah totally ulterior motives burhh. Religious freedom. Let the people worship their wheat god.

[dtc justice]

Don't get confused with the ancient symbol and the nazi one, they do face different directions. If one is using the nation one specifically then they have poor intentions.

[Jangles]

Swastikas were stylized in different ways. The Nazi one is something you'll see often on ancient artifacts and was also used by the 45th Infantry Division. If you're actually interested in an explanation of why swastikas are all over the place and why they died so quick in the west... and because I have nothing else to do... Short version is that as the western world began learning about the comparative method in linguistics they were able to link together and trace back the origins of all Indo-European languages such as Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Farsi, and English to a common proto language.

This started snowballing into scientific racism and every nation began making claims that they were the homeland of the Proto-Indo-European people who spoke this language. I wont get into Germany's claim to stardom too much but Germany was the home of the Corded Ware Culture thousands of years ago, and German intellectuals of course believed the Corded Ware people to be these mystifying Proto-Indo-Europeans or "Aryans". Recent findings show that the German homeland hypothesis is almost certainly not true.

The swastika comes into play as it was so common in almost every Indo-European religion: carved into stones, important religious sites, and displayed on ancient artifacts. It was the symbol of Zeus, Thor, Indra, Taranis, and Jupiter; a symbol of good weather, good fortune, good crops, power, peace, and lightning. The "comparative method" was half-haphazardly applied to the swastika, in much the same way it was applied to "Aryan", and the dissemination of the swastika across so many Indo-European cultures lead the racist academics of the time to assert that the swastika must have been an original symbol of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. An ancient symbol of a master race. Of course, the Nazis jumped on board.

After WW2 and the Holocaust any mention of PIE would result in an academic 's findings being ignored, entertaining the possibility of an ancient European invasion of India lost you any credibility, and good luck paying for a study like that... After all, what are you trying to prove? There must be an ulterior motive. Pop-culture gorged themselves on crazy theories of a totally equal and feminist neolithic European society where warfare was a rare exception to a utopian norm. That ancient people were less violent than they are today. PIE was taken out of school curriculum. Linguists and archaeologists were forced to change words and obfuscate their findings as much as possible to make it more palatable towards a demographic always ready to label them racist. In one broad swoop anything and everything associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans became taboo in academia and pop-culture including the swastika. The swastika is symbolic of this historical whitewashing and anti-intellectualism. It's an attempt to try and shoe horn massive historical stigma into one symbol never minding the billions of people still worshiping religions that value the symbol or the historical value it may have to us. Anyways anybody who seriously entertains the idea of outright banning the swastika is guilty of anti-intellectualism and bigotry against billions of people. I don't support banning the hammer and sickle but I know that there's a giant hypocrisy here in what symbols are chosen to be suppressed.

[Chief Wiggum]

Taking the bait like this...

Anyway, swastikas bad. Police good. Thread locked.

Have a nice day.