Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

[LizzieMaine]

I think the most interesting point made by the researcher in the linked interview is that so many of the relevant records that would clear up some of the questions raised seem to have been conveniently destroyed, so in many cases the truth can never be known. But yes, I do agree Finland was in a unique position among the nations caught up in the war. One can make a case that they don't bear the same degree of collaborationist guilt as does Vichy France -- but one can also make a case that their hands are not as squeaky clean as they'd prefer to believe.

I think it's also important to remember that anti-Semitism was not an exclusively German thing -- most of Europe in the 1930s was marinating in it, and it was likewise epidemic in the US, as the slightest review of Fr. Coughlin's literature and broadcasts will document. There were a great many people in the US between 1939 and 1941 who wanted to push the US into the Axis camp, and the Lindbergh/America First crowd did their best to accomplish that. During this period you could walk down streets in Irish and German ethnic neighborhoods in the Northeast and see the swastika flag openly flown.

 

[DocCasualty]

I think it's also important to remember that anti-Semitism was not an exclusively German thing -- most of Europe in the 1930s was marinating in it, and it was likewise epidemic in the US, as the slightest review of Fr. Coughlin's literature and broadcasts will document. There were a great many people in the US between 1939 and 1941 who wanted to push the US into the Axis camp, and the Lindbergh/America First crowd did their best to accomplish that. During this period you could walk down streets in Irish and German ethnic neighborhoods in the Northeast and see the swastika flag openly flown.

I almost missed this second paragraph. Yes, all very true. In all honesty, this has followed God's Chosen People throughout history. I think the major diffenece is that Nazi Germany was not just anti-Semitic, they developed and implemented a policy to exterminate the Jews. Very few outside of Germany knew how far the Nazis would take it. It's one thing to push a group of people out of your country (yes, a horrible thing on its own) for whatever senseless reasons one concocts, yet avowed extermination is a magnitude of horror beyond that.

 

[MisterCairo]

American Indians did use the swastika, however -- it was so common that it became, in the early years of the 20th Century a generic "Indian symbol" used on toys and trinkets of various types.

Cultural appropriation. Nothing new under the sun.

Still the wrong Indians, though. It is an Indian symbol, not an American Indian (lord, Columbus was an idiot...) symbol, notwithstanding their "adoption" of it...

 

[Fading Fast]

Amongst all the horrors the Nazi brought to the world one of the minor ones is destroying our ability to use the swastika for (my uneducated guess) another hundred-plus years as it is a fantastic symbol.

Cultural appropriation. Nothing new under the sun.

Still the wrong Indians, though. It is an Indian symbol, not an American Indian (lord, Columbus was an idiot...) symbol, notwithstanding their "adoption" of it...

But since the swastika goes back some 5000 years and has been part of many cultures, has every culture that used it since the first been guilty of "cultural appropriation?"

My point, sincerely, is not to pick on your well-meaning post (your thoughtfulness comes through loud and clear in all your posts), but to question the current vogue (applied much harder to certain cultures and groups than others) to accuse any cross cultural usage as "appropriation."

Very few symbols, ideas, traditions, etc., are sui generis - the same holds for authors, musicians, inventors, etc. - so if we put a hard line in the sand on all of this, a lot of next-generation work / evolution will stop.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As far as the swastika goes, I imagine the simplicity of the design suggests that it could very well have airisen simultaneously in multiple cultures. It's simply a slight modification of the X, which is perhaps the most basic glyph of all. Crosses in various forms were in use for millenia before anyone ever heard of Christianity, and there are still cultures that use them without any connection to Christian beliefs of any kind.

On the other hand, dopey bourgies who help themselves to uniquely Native American artifiacts or symbolism because it's all New Agey and trendy to do so are appropriating in the worst kind of way. If you want to spend time in a "Sweat Lodge," dingleberry, spend a couple hours on a hot day cleaning out your aluminum garden shed.

 

[MisterCairo]

Amongst all the horrors the Nazi brought to the world one of the minor ones is destroying our ability to use the swastika for (my uneducated guess) another hundred-plus years as it is a fantastic symbol.


But since the swastika goes back some 5000 years and has been part of many cultures, has every culture that used it since the first been guilty of "cultural appropriation?"

My point, sincerely, is not to pick on your well-meaning post (your thoughtfulness comes through loud and clear in all your posts), but to question the current vogue (applied much harder to certain cultures and groups than others) to accuse any cross cultural usage as "appropriation."

Very few symbols, ideas, traditions, etc., are sui generis - the same holds for authors, musicians, inventors, etc. - so if we put a hard line in the sand on all of this, a lot of next-generation work / evolution will stop.

Another example of sarcasm and satire not coming through in a post.

I despise, I say again, DESPISE, the current trends of over sensitivity regarding "appropriation". Indeed, my post had intended to demonstrate the very idea that this modern obsession is over something that has been going on for, as you note, millennia.

As for the Swastika, as an Anglo-Indian (I hate to have to keep raising this point, but Indians are natives of India - Columbus was an idiot), I must state that it comes from the cultures of the Indian sub-continent, according to the historians more properly the Indus valley region, and in any case, it does not become an "American Indian" symbol because that group adopted it within, lets face it, living memory, and plastered it on nicknacks for sale to tourists.

 

[DocCasualty]

Amongst all the horrors the Nazi brought to the world one of the minor ones is destroying our ability to use the swastika

As well as the "toothbrush" moustache and the Roman salute. Interestingly enough the toothbrush moustache style was intoduced to Germany by visiting Americans.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Indeed -- the "Bellamy Salute," a slight variation of the Roman, was being used in pledge-of-allegience ceremonies in the US long before the Italian Fascisti or the Nazis were ever heard of. It wasn't abolished in the US until 1942.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I've attended gatherings in Christian churches of a couple-three varieties where I witnessed the congregants make a gesture which, to my admittedly untrained eye, is indistinguishable from the one above.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The stiff-arm salute was abolished in the US at a time when the whole idea of compulsory flag saluting was drawing fire from civil-liberties groups, in the wake of high profile court cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses, who consider such ceremonies to be idolatry. As far back as 1935, editorials were criticizing the Bellamy Salute for its similary to Fascist/Nazi salutes, and going on to suggest that there should be no place for compulsory saluting of any kind in the US. By the early forties, the issue was white-hot, with Witnesses and their supporters being mobbed and beaten by "patriots" all over the US, and the Bellamy Salute was fast becoming untenable. Its elimination preceded by a few months a Supreme Court ruling declaring all compulsory flag salute laws unconstitutional, a ruling which remains in force today.

The same groups who were mobbing Witnesses, burning their halls, and expelling their children from school are, of course, precisely the same groups who led the way during the Red Scare. There's always a new target.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The stiff-arm salute was abolished in the US at a time when the whole idea of compulsory flag saluting was drawing fire from civil-liberties groups, in the wake of high profile court cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses, who consider such ceremonies to be idolatry. As far back as 1935, editorials were criticizing the Bellamy Salute for its similary to Fascist/Nazi salutes, and going on to suggest that there should be no place for compulsory saluting of any kind in the US. By the early forties, the issue was white-hot, with Witnesses and their supporters being mobbed and beaten by "patriots" all over the US, and the Bellamy Salute was fast becoming untenable. Its elimination preceded by a few months a Supreme Court ruling declaring all compulsory flag salute laws unconstitutional, a ruling which remains in force today.

The same groups who were mobbing Witnesses, burning their halls, and expelling their children from school are, of course, precisely the same groups who led the way during the Red Scare. There's always a new target.

How amazed many of those same "patriots" must have been when they discovered (if they ever did) that their beloved Pledge was originally written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Socialist. (Large case "S?" Small case "s?")

And we all know that as a nod to McCarthyism, that same Pledge was amended for the third time in 1954 to include the words, "under God." I for one refuse to utter those two words as I can't see the Almighty reveling in anything that can be traced to McCarthyism, and because I also think that if pledging allegiance to the flag without questionable exercises in ceremonial deism was good enough to get this nation through 2 world wars, it's good enough for me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Bellamy was a member of the "Christian Socialist" movement of the late 19th Century, a loosely-organized belief system that held to the idea that a socialist economic and political structure best fit the example laid out by the early Christians. They existed in parallel to the labor-based Socialist movment that later branched into the Socialist Party, the CPUSA, the Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Workers Party. While all of these movements held to certain common core beliefs, the "Christian Socialist" movement and labor socialism weren't directly connected.

What "Christian Socialism" did lead to was the religious Social Gospel movement of the early 20th Century. The Methodist Social Creed, as contained in the Book of Discipline from 1908 forward, is directly derived from Christian Socialist principles, as are similar "social creeds" in other denominations. A variety of Christian socialism (small s) is still an active movement today -- and there is even a "Christian Communist" movement built around the rejection of the influence on Christianity of the capitalist ethos, which Christian Communists believe is a perversion of Christ's teachings introduced via Calvinism. Most Christian Communists take a pragmatic view of Marxism -- while they believe his observations on the interaction of labor and capital are generally correct, they don't promote his beliefs as dogma -- and most tend to reject Leninism.

 

[Stearmen]

it does not become an "American Indian" symbol because that group adopted it within, lets face it, living memory, and plastered it on nicknacks for sale to tourists.

I am not sure where you got that from? Different forms of the Swastika go way back in North America. They have been found in Mississippian mounds dating 800 CE and Southeastern Ceremonial Complex dating from 1200 CE. The Navajo's used a version as a religious symbol long before the white man arrived, as did the Hopi's. They can be found in petroglyphs throughout the Southwest, Pueblo ruins and Anasazi alike. One thing that is true, only in recent history has it become the universal Indian Good Luck Symbol.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I am not sure where you got that from? Different forms of the Swastika go way back in North America. They have been found in Mississippian mounds dating 800 CE and Southeastern Ceremonial Complex dating from 1200 CE. The Navajo's used a version as a religious symbol long before the white man arrived, as did the Hopi's. They can be found in petroglyphs throughout the Southwest, Pueblo ruins and Anasazi alike. One thing that is true, only in recent history has it become the universal Indian Good Luck Symbol.

And it goes back thousands of years prior to that in Africa, Europe, and the Mediterranean. The oldest known example, at least according to the interwebs, is from the Ukraine and is approximately 12,000 years old. It's true it was a well known symbol in India, but the idea that Native Americans somehow stole for commercial exploitation is a strange one.

 

[Edward]

I think it's also important to remember that anti-Semitism was not an exclusively German thing -- most of Europe in the 1930s was marinating in it, and it was likewise epidemic in the US, as the slightest review of Fr. Coughlin's literature and broadcasts will document. There were a great many people in the US between 1939 and 1941 who wanted to push the US into the Axis camp, and the Lindbergh/America First crowd did their best to accomplish that. During this period you could walk down streets in Irish and German ethnic neighborhoods in the Northeast and see the swastika flag openly flown.

Indeed. Anti-Semitism was fairly rife all across Europe - Hitler "merely" exploited, in the most terrible of ways, a pre-existing prejudice. It's why large parts of political discourse in my own lifetime scare me, because history shows us how such attitudes can be exploited.

There is also the view that one reason the European post-war powers were so keen on creating the State of Israel was because they wanted the Jews out of Europe. Conjecture, of course, though I would think we are mistaken if we always ascribe pure ideals to the Allied side simply because the enemy they beat war far worse.

Amongst all the horrors the Nazi brought to the world one of the minor ones is destroying our ability to use the swastika for (my uneducated guess) another hundred-plus years as it is a fantastic symbol.

There have been various people over the years who have tried to 'reclaim' it, but I can't see that catching on in Europe, somehow. Maybe not ever. Crusader imagery is still questionable in its use, and that's been around a lot longer than Naziism....

As far as the swastika goes, I imagine the simplicity of the design suggests that it could very well have airisen simultaneously in multiple cultures. It's simply a slight modification of the X, which is perhaps the most basic glyph of all. Crosses in various forms were in use for millenia before anyone ever heard of Christianity, and there are still cultures that use them without any connection to Christian beliefs of any kind.

It seems likely, given its apparent occurrence in cultures which couldn't have known of each other at the time. Not unlike the appearance of pyramid structures in South America and Ancient Egypt, separately.

The other one that fascinates me is the vampire: there's a version of the vampire in every culture the world over, and they all predate contact with each other.

On the other hand, dopey bourgies who help themselves to uniquely Native American artifiacts or symbolism because it's all New Agey and trendy to do so are appropriating in the worst kind of way. If you want to spend time in a "Sweat Lodge," dingleberry, spend a couple hours on a hot day cleaning out your aluminum garden shed.

Jinkies, yes. Back in the nineties when I was at university, there was a brief fashion for white, Western girls to wear bindis, which I found to be distasteful at best.

The stiff-arm salute was abolished in the US at a time when the whole idea of compulsory flag saluting was drawing fire from civil-liberties groups, in the wake of high profile court cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses, who consider such ceremonies to be idolatry. As far back as 1935, editorials were criticizing the Bellamy Salute for its similary to Fascist/Nazi salutes, and going on to suggest that there should be no place for compulsory saluting of any kind in the US. By the early forties, the issue was white-hot, with Witnesses and their supporters being mobbed and beaten by "patriots" all over the US, and the Bellamy Salute was fast becoming untenable. Its elimination preceded by a few months a Supreme Court ruling declaring all compulsory flag salute laws unconstitutional, a ruling which remains in force today.

The same groups who were mobbing Witnesses, burning their halls, and expelling their children from school are, of course, precisely the same groups who led the way during the Red Scare. There's always a new target.

It wasn't used in the UK as such, though the English national soccer team provoked controversy in 1938 when, under instructions from the Foreign Office and the FA, they gave the Nazi salute before a game against Germany in Berlin. Always perils and pitfalls when you pollute politics with sport!

Bellamy was a member of the "Christian Socialist" movement of the late 19th Century, a loosely-organized belief system that held to the idea that a socialist economic and political structure best fit the example laid out by the early Christians. They existed in parallel to the labor-based Socialist movment that later branched into the Socialist Party, the CPUSA, the Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Workers Party. While all of these movements held to certain common core beliefs, the "Christian Socialist" movement and labor socialism weren't directly connected.

What "Christian Socialism" did lead to was the religious Social Gospel movement of the early 20th Century. The Methodist Social Creed, as contained in the Book of Discipline from 1908 forward, is directly derived from Christian Socialist principles, as are similar "social creeds" in other denominations. A variety of Christian socialism (small s) is still an active movement today -- and there is even a "Christian Communist" movement built around the rejection of the influence on Christianity of the capitalist ethos, which Christian Communists believe is a perversion of Christ's teachings introduced via Calvinism. Most Christian Communists take a pragmatic view of Marxism -- while they believe his observations on the interaction of labor and capital are generally correct, they don't promote his beliefs as dogma -- and most tend to reject Leninism.

Historically an important movement in the UK, too. For all some secularists don't care to hear it, the British labour movement owes far more to Methodism than it ever did Marx.