It’s true. But it’s not as sinister as it first appears.
Fellow road warrior Tim Steil pointed out this Arizona roads site, which shows a scan from a 1927 Rand McNally atlas. And look on the lower right corner of the page — a swastika on the Arizona highway marker. I included a close-up excerpt of the page.
The Arizona roads site explains:
This was actually taken from a Native American design. It was removed in the 1940s, after it became associated with the Nazis.
There are many reasons for despising the Nazis. One of them includes appropriating an otherwise-harmless symbol of the American Indians and a slew of other cultures and turning it into something that’s associated with death, hatred and bigotry.
Wikipedia has a more clear-headed history of the swastika.
except that it was the jews who made you believe the swastika is a symbol of hate. It was simply a flag from sixty years ago, based on an old german symbol. We forgave the japanese, let’s just move on.
the magic of the swastika is that it was used in neolithic europe and in the americas about the same time. That should be the big story, not some german guys.
Right. Excellent point. Those Jews are so vindictive. Just because an entire system of government exists to wipe out your family and friends doesn’t mean you can demonize the flag they committed those atrocities under. We sort of forgave the Japanese, although you probably dont want to ask someone who fought in the pacific.
Wow, are those same jews who were tortured, murdered, worked or starved to death under that innocent flag, or perhaps their relatives who managed to escape the brutal regime for which it stood, who “made [us] believe the swastika is a symbol of hate”? Pretty crafty of them. Pity the poor, innocent Nazis whose pure and wholesome symbol was so viciously maligned by those wicked jews.
In listing your credentials, “Doctor” Peter Lee, you don’t mention where your D.D. is from, but you’re a prime and blithering example of an education wasted. I’d contact your school and get your money back — that is, if they don’t contact you first to pay you never to mention the affiliation.
Good point Dr. Lee – It’s those Jews who ruined the good swastika! What will they do next – claim that they were victims of centuries of Christian and post-Christian hatred that culminated in a genocide of a third of their number?! And then they’ll create camps, tattoo and starve themselves just for the photo ops. Those crafty Hebrews! Almost amazing that anyone can be creative enough to make this stuff up! Thanks for alerting us that those Jews were up to all this.
^^^ Right, Dr. Goebbels, and never mind the fact that neo-nazis still use the swastika today as their symbol. Never mind the Holocaust within living memory, of the millions upons millions of murders of Jews, non-Jews, Russians, Allies, etc, who had this symbol burned into their brain before they died. We’re not talking about neolithic history. Not all of the surviving Nazi victims have died out yet, so it’s not as easy for you to exhort people to “move on” as it would be for you to rip pages out of a history textbook. And we didn’t “forgive” the Japanese, we avenged ourselves by conquering them unconditionally.
The “Jews … made us believe the swastika is a symbol of hate”? What power these Jews must have! They must control the whole world and all who dwell in it. Lee, D.D., your words reek of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Or, have you been drinking tea and smoking a hookah with Muslims?
It was Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhardt Heydrich, and all the rest who marched in lock step with National Socialists of Germany, they are the ones who taught us, irrevocably, to associate the swastika with hatred, genocide, and gross evil. Before that, we merely saw the swastika as a mark of paganism, which is why Hitler, himself a pagan and a dissenter from Judaeo-Christianity, adopted it.
I’m not a Jew but a Christian. You owe the Jews an abject apology. You write, “We forgave the Japanese, let’s just move on,” and so equate Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews with the Japanese attack on us is monstrous. The Jews did nothing to invite Hitler’s slaughter except be Jews. That you cannot distinguish between genocide and war is truly and astonishingly mind-boggling. So much for education.
And if we should just move on and not be offended by a symbol of hate, are there not other symbols we could get over? Do you feel the same way about the Confederate Flag?
I concur with buzz an Barry R. Winstons comments to the degree that Dr. Lee needs an education in use of reason and logic. Dr. Lee, It’s too bad those mean old Jews make the poor atrocious German murding thug’s symbol of hate get such a bad rapp.
I’ll “move on” when modern neo-Nazi groups stop using the swastika as a symbol of hatred. If it is “simply a flag from sixty years ago, based on an old german symbol”, then why do these hate groups continue to use it today? Why won’t they “move on”?
Hey Ron: Congrats on the shout-out from Taranto & OpinionJournal.com directing people to this article listing Tim S’s citation of Alan Hamilton’s excellent website. You never know when people are going to find useful stuff on your site… đ
Dr.Lee- what a putz you are. The “magic” of the swastica indeed. Assuming your statement “it was used in neolithic europe and in the americas about the same time”, is true, big deal. No sentient human can really believe this is the “big story”. You are either a moron or a Nazi sympathizer or apologist. Either way, your D.D. (I presume doctor of diviinty) is more approproiately a doctor of dumb or doctor of demonics. Please post the school from which you received your degree- The College of Dodo souds about right.
I was at a craft fair in Duluth Georgia over the weekend and there was a booth that had wall upon wall of digitally restored photos (from glass negatives) that most all of them were taken in the local area prior to 1923 or thereabout. The photographer was a railroad buff, based on the number of train photos taken. One of them was of a steam locomotive of the long-defunct Gainesville & North Georgia rail line. Underneath the cab windows, below the name of the railway, was a swastika, enclosed in a thick circle, that looked identical to the Nazi flag (it was a b&w photo, so who knows what the colors were). As this was taken well before the Nazi party came to power or was even a glimmer in Herr Schicklegruber’s eye, I have to believe that it was considered to be merely an Indian good luck symbol for the engine and crew. Still, a bit unsettling to see it on a US locomotive.
D.D. that’s “Dumb Dumb” right?
Dr. Lee, you might also consider the Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and other “untermensch” the Germans considered unworthy of life…the symbol might have meant nothing before Kristallnacht and the Wannsee Conference but it certainly does now.
To think otherwise is pure denial of fact.
“Doctor”. I couldn’t have put it better myself, Barry Winston, this “doctor” really wasted his education. Except in the current climate of anti-Semitism, his views are not all to shocking. Apparently, using his reasoning, a burning cross is not a symbol of hatred and fear by innocent, fun-loving men in white blankets, but something malicious blacks used to appropriate sympathy against those gently, misunderstood KKK guys.
You haven’t told us anything new, “doctor”, but you’ve told us a lot about yourself.
You politicially correct white people need to give Dr. Lee a break. It’s nice to live in the ivory tower in a country that has a national narrative of inclusiveness and being a melting pot, where we all stand together on a hill holding hands singing Kumbaya. But ours is a history of just under 250 years wheras Europe has been dealing with inter-ethnic relations for thousands of years. But there is a long history of financial exploitation and corruption rightly or wrongly attributed to the Jews and retribution periodically flares up in Europe. The most recent example is the fascist turn taken by Vladimir Putin and the Russian government largely the result of public outrage over the looting of Russia’s national assets by the Oligarchs, 90% of which are Jewish. Of course, these are the same people who complained about discrimination against Jews by the Soviet Union. Ask yourselves how much real discrimination do you think there could have been if so many people from the same ethnic group were able to position themselves to grab Russia’s most valuable assets. I’m not saying its right that genocide was attempted against the Jews, it obviously isn’t. But everything happens for a reason.
From these responses I can’t help but feel that these readers are intellectually challenged. Not being able to read and assimilate context lead to
their knee jerk insulting response.
I did not understand that the author approved of Naziism, but merely had a reflective moment on the history and misuse of an old symbol from antiquity.
One of the first rules I learned about debate is that when you have no facts in your favor or are too dumb to utilize them, attack the messenger.
Of course, with a defensive response like that, one will remain ignorant, and that seems to be the case here.
To Dannyk and the other anti-Semites,
it wasn’t the Jews that killed Christ, it was the Puerto Ricans. Just ask Rabbi Lenny Bruce.
And a Good Guy Award goes to all the folks who stand up and speak out against these morons, who claims affiliation with homo sapiens sapiens.
Dr Lee and DannyK, It seems like after all these years you would know it is spelled “joose”
For a minute I was starting to feel the sentiment that maybe we should allow the symbol a comeback, but its power to bring out hatred in people is unabated.
Danny, in response to your argument that “everything happens for a reason”, do you mean to to say that any time there is a horrible atrocity, such as a holocaust or genocide, somehow the people must have done something to make it happen? What did the people who were killed in the World Trade Center do? How about in Rwanda? What do the many victims of senseless murders and killings in our own country everyday do to let this “happen” to them?
Moreover, you fail to account for the many other groups that other posts have brought up besides the Jews, for whom the swastika represented hatred, cruelty and bigotry, the Russians, Poles, those with disabilities, Christians, and babies (many whose births weren’t recorded, but witnessed) and so many others–6,000,000 Jews, but 6,000,000 others. All of these people did something to instigate the hatred they received from the Germans?? Is that what you mean by “everything happens for a reason”? Or perhaps, “everything” happened because of a twisted and corrupt philosophy that one race was better than all of the others, which in order to be disseminated to the thousands of followers of this ideology, needed the Germans’ propaganda and reasons, many blatant smears and lies about why the “untermenschen” were so despicable.
Dannyk says “Iâm not saying its right that genocide was attempted against the Jews, it obviously isnât. But everything happens for a reason.”
It’s a good thing genocide was only attempted against the Jews hey Danny?
If 6 million is an attempt, what is genocide?????
From dictionary.com: genocide is defined as “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” The Jews were not exterminated, so what the Nazis did was not, technically speaking, genocide. The Nazis ATTEMPTED genocide but, thankfully, did not succeed.
Of course, astronauts are not weightless when orbiting the Earth either.
Jeff, genocide occurs whether it is successful or not. The trip is just as atrocious as the final destination. And why would you care to mince words such as this in the first place? I looked the word up—to placate you—and it appears most definitions use the word “attempt” almost every time. Regardless, we can all agree that Dr Pete Lee is a glittering jewel of stupidity.
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Typical, predictable, boring response from the “let’s hold hands and sing Kumbaya crowd.” We have a 250 year history, a healthy economy and no scores to settle with our neighbors. Live among different peoples in tight confines for 3,000 years and tell me if there will or won’t be bad blood. No, I am NOT saying it was okay to whack the Jews en masse. Furthermore, European governments, especially those in non-Anglo-Saxon countries, have a history of corruption. Again, the Jews have been whining for the last 40 years about how much they were discriminated against in the Soviet Union? How can you be discriminated against if you have positioned yourself to scoop up all the assets while the Christian masses suffer? This led to a fascistic turn by Putin and the Russian government to correct these evils. If you know anything about Germany, they were in essentially the same situation, so in my mind this is truly history repeating itself.
Put another way, its almost like what happens when the Feds decide to clamp down on abuses in the securities industry, which happens every 10 years or so. People slop at the trough, get greedy and someone has to come in and correct the abuses. Really the same thing except in Europe they are more brutal about correcting abuses in the system.
Personally what the Nazi’s did was horrific and unforgivable. Although the swastika is a symbol that was used in Buddism and Hinduism. It has not always been associated with haterd and cruelty contray to what many people claim. The fact is symbols hold different meanings depending on the experiences/culture of the observer. Which raises the question, “Does the swastika symbol truly represent evil?” or should we reiterate and say “Those that kill others out of haterd and cruelty (and hide behind symbols) are evil?”
Now that does not mean we should forget the history behind the swastika. The Holocaust did happen for numerous reasons BUT we learned from the Holocaust. That does NOT (I repeat DOES NOT) mean that I am glad it happened but we have to learn from it so genocide does not happen again. My heart goes out to the lives lost during Hitler’s evil regime.
Danny,
Forgive me if I am wrong, but isn’t Putin in bed with organized crime (AKA – Oligarchs)? If that is the case, then your story is misleading.
https://www.smu.edu/ecenter/discourse/ruth.htm
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB119137825763247310.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Bill Clinton made the mistake of welcoming Mr. Putin into the G-8, and Western leaders lack the will to expel him now. But his current maneuvering to retain power should make clear beyond doubt that Mr. Putin has ransacked the hopes the world once had for post-Soviet Russian democracy. He is reviving Russian authoritarianism, and the world’s democracies need to prepare for its consequences.
Jim
Heavy-handed though he is, Putin is a patriot in the eyes of Russians. If you look at how Putin came to power, it was in an era of rampant corruption when the average Russian was struggling to make ends meet. The population at large was aghast at the looting of government assets –their assets– that took place in the name of nationalizing industries. In Russia, it was pretty blatant who was ending up with the nation’s best assets. Likewise, if you look at Germany in the 1930’s, a similar phenomenon took place where the average German wasn’t doing very well and hadn’t been for a considerable period of time. Although I don’t think there was such blatant corruption as in Russia, the Jews were still seen to be moneyed and were considered to have obtained their wealth at the expense of others. I’m not saying that was the case in Germany, just the perception (although I do believe that was the case in Russia). Again, you can’t fight 3,000 years of historic patterns that have been established …… both in terms of prejudice and in terms of actuall behavior of the various tribes that constitute Europe. Life is not a movie … there was always more to this Holocaust stuff than just the simplistic stuff about Jews being wiped off the face of the earth. Yes it was horrible, no question about it. But if you also look at some of the behavior, you can also see what precipitated a rather unfortunate reaction by the Germans.
When traveling around India, I came across swastika’s left right and centre. I realised it’s ancient significance, and that there are 2 of them. One moves left and one right. One reveals the material universe the other the spiritual. There is nothing evil about it and it is also considered a sign of good luck. Pity certain religious fundamentalists esp in the US and reaching it’s tentacles into a still free Europe have mis-appropriated this ancient symbol so that, just like the Nazi’s logic, it is now `Verbotten’ in other peoples cultures and lands
When will this religious myopia that thinks it has a superior right to it’s false history be exposed for the lies religion peddles and uses for it’s crux other people’s ancient heritages to bolster itself with deliberate misinterpretations of culture and history.
But that would mean blowing the religious delusion away.
“23. holydogwater – October 3, 2007
Jeff, genocide occurs whether it is successful or not. The trip is just as atrocious as the final destination. And why would you care to mince words such as this in the first place? I looked the word upâto placate youâand it appears most definitions use the word âattemptâ almost every time. Regardless, we can all agree that Dr Pete Lee is a glittering jewel of stupidity.”
I was answering this question :
“If 6 million is an attempt, what is genocide?????”
I will disagree with one thing you wrote, calling Dr. Lee stupid is insulting to stupid people everywhere. I would say his intelligence ranks somewhere below that of a stinking pile of camel dung.
By the way, this was the only definition with the word (or form of the word) attempt in it:
“The deliberate destruction of an entire race or nation. The Holocaust conducted by the Nazis in Germany and the Rwandan genocide are examples of attempts at genocide.”
I used dictionary.com and m-w.com.
At any rate, the holocaust was, quite possibly, the most evil act ever perpetrated by man. I am not trying to diminish the scope of what happened. I just get tired of the daily slaughter of the English language…
I was wondering why this old bridge from the 1920’s or 30’s has three swastikas on each side. It is just outside of Yuma, Az crossing The All American Cannal. Know I know.
The 1936 patent drawings for Frank Redford’s wigwam motel design showed swastikas near the tops of the wigwams: https://www.thelope.com/2007/02/wigwam-anniversary.html
I don’t know if any of the wigwams ever actually displayed the swastika, though the ones in Rialto certainly would not have as that motel was built after WWII. I don’t know, offhand, the building date of the one in Holbrook, but I believe it was also post-war.
The Falun Emblem is the symbol of Falun Dafa. As described by Master Li Hongzhi in “Zhuan Falun”, “The Law Wheel of the Buddha School, the Yin-Yang of the Tao School, and the ten-directional world are all reflected in the Falun -the Law-Wheel.” “The configuration of Falun is a miniature of the universe and has its own form of existence and process of evolution in each of the other spaces. Therefore, I call it a world.” “Falun Dafa is practiced according to the evolution principle of the Universe. Therefore what we cultivate is Great Law and Great Tao. ” The swastika symbol represents the Buddha School and it has also been a symbol of good fortune in China and many other cultures. The Taiji or (Yin-Yang) symbols represent the Tao School.
Historical Notes on the Swastika Note: The following material is NOT part of the Falun Dafa Teachings. It only explains some historical facts about the swastika. The Swastika did NOT originate as a Nazi symbol of hatred. SWASTIKA is derived from the Sanskrit word: SVASTIKAH, which means ‘being fortunate’. See the SWASTIKA for what it REALLY IS: an ancient symbol of good luck, prosperity, and long life, used in ancient cultures such as India and China, where it is the central symbol of the FALUN Law Wheel. To give you an idea of how long the Swastika has been a symbol in China, look at an illustration of comets painted on silk about 2300 years ago: The silk was discovered during the 1970s at Mawangdui, near Changsa, in Number Three Tomb. There were 29 comets illustrated on the silk, of which the last 4 are shown above. As you can see, the last comet, on the far left, is illustrated by a Swastika. Sagan and Druyan, in their book “Comet” (Random House 1985), p. 186, say “The twenty-ninth comet is called ‘Di-Xing’, ‘the long-tailed pheasant star’.” As a comet form, the Swastika looks like a spinning comet from which jets are erupting, like Comet Hale-Bopp. Here are some more details about the history of the swastika: The English and German word SWASTIKA is derived from the Sanskrit word: SVASTIKAH, which means ‘being fortunate’. The first part of the word, SVASTI-, can be divided into two parts: SU- ‘good; well’, and -ASTI- ‘is’. The -ASTIKAH part just means ‘being’. The word is associated with auspicious things in India – – because it means ‘auspicious’. In India, both clockwise and counterclockwise swastikas were used, with different meanings. Since the swastika is a simple symbol, it has been used, perhaps independently, by many human societies. One of the oldest known swastikas was painted on a paleolithic cave at least 10,000 years ago. About 2000 years ago, when Buddhism was brought to China from India, the Chinese also borrowed the swastika and its sense of auspiciousness. In China, the swastika is considered to be a Chinese character with the reading of WAN (in Mandarin). It is also thought to be equivalent to another Chinese character with the same pronunciation, which means ‘ten thousand; a large number; all’. The swastika symbol has been used for thousands of years among practically every group of humans on the planet. It was known to Germanic tribes as the “Cross of Thor”, and it is interesting that the Nazis did not use that term, which is consistent with German history, but instead preferred to “steal” the Indian term “swastika”. As the “Cross of Thor”, the symbol was even brought to England by Scandinavian settlers in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, long before Hitler. Even more interesting, the sign has been found on Jewish temples from 2000 years ago in Palestine, so Hitler was (inadvertently?) “stealing” a Jewish symbol as well as an Indian one. In the Americas, the swastika was used by Native Americans in North, Central, and South America. According to Joe Hofler, who also refers to Dr. Kumbari of the museum of Urimqi in Xinjiang, China, the Indo-Aryans of the Germanic branch traveled into Europe around 2000 BC and brought with them the “swastika” symbol (sun disk) of their religious art at that time as shown by excavations of Kurgan graves on the steppes of Russia and Indo-Aryan graves in Xinjiang, China. If you look at the outer circle of the Falun Dafa symbol, you will see that there are 4 swastikas (of Buddhas’ School origin) and 4 Taiji, or Yin-Yang, symbols (of Taoist origin). The Taiji are not black and white, as those colors are a very low level manifestation. Of the 4 Taiji, 2 are red and black (from the Tao as generally regarded) and 2 are red and blue (from the School of the Primordial Great Tao, which includes the Rare Cultivation Way). If you look at all the swastikas of the Falun Dafa symbol, you will see that their arms all point counterclockwise. However, since the Falun Dafa can be seen from above and below, as well as the 8 directions indicated on its outer circle by the 4 Taiji and 4 swastikas, the Falun Dafa swastikas can be perceived to be rotating either clockwise or counterclockwise: “When Falun rotates clockwise, it can automatically absorb energy from the universe. While rotating counterclockwise, it can give off energy.” (Read Zhuan Falun for details) http://WWW.NINECOMMENTARIES.COM http://WWW.FALUNINFO.NET
NOTE: TO SEE THE COMETS and FAlUN SYMBOL VISIT:https://www.myspace.com/goldenlotusblossom
42 million Christians were killed in WW2 but you don’t hear them whining about it 60 years later.
Put 2 copper (generating) plates on a copper (motor) ring and assemble them to form a hollow disk. Insert a loose fitting copper (armature) swastika and seal the unit. Next, hit it with a bolt of lightning. The entire unit will become electromagnetically charged simutaneously, the armature will repel off the bottom and start spinning in a direction opposite the way the arms are pointing, riding on electromaglev bearings.
As the elecromagnetically charged swastika spins, it will generate electricity in the upper and lower plates which will go to the (motor) ring and keep the armature spinning.
Dr. Peter Lee, as an Indian-American I have more right than you to be angry that Hitler stole a harmless symbol that adorned Hindu temples even before Columbus, and gave it an evil name. But belittling Jewish suffering and outrage will do no good. It’s not really the swastika that makes anyone’s blood boil, but the venom and death threat implicit in it.
As for “we forgave the Japanese,” that’s officially so, but I’m not so sure about honestly so. Japan and the US suddenly needed each other against the Soviet Union, and that was really why bitter enemies suddenly became so co-operative.
I can’t believe that I’ve missed this fascinating thread for three full years! Perhaps it’s not to late to point out that Mr. Lee’s degree (D.D.) is an honorary Doctorate of Divinity. It is not an earned academic degree. DD degrees are routinely given out by degree-granting religious schools all over the country annually to people who have distinguished themselves in some way — even if the schools themselves are not accredited to offer academic doctoral degrees!
Those who have such degrees never used the abbreviation to imply an earned degree or a level of education or expertise. Anyone who uses D.D. after his name to suggest his academic credentials is highly suspect. It’s purely honorary.
Oh, yes, there is an exception. You can also purchase DD degrees from some California post office box, but I’ll leave it up to others to google for it.
I should say Arizona has forgiven the Japs. Our state flag looks like the Jap rising sun. See https://www.50states.com/azflag.htm
I find it really ironic that the Nazis expropriated this symbol from the Navajo Nation when Adolf Hitler was positively dazzled by the Anglo-Saxon’s wiping out of the Native North Americans and their culture.
Just move on??
Not playing devilâs advocate or trying to start/contribute an argument – curious as to thoughts about whether itâs fact or perception that Jews tended to dominate in finance industries. Werenât Christians discouraged or forbidden from being in occupations that charged interest on borrowed money, and might that occupational vacuum tend to be filled by minority, and possibly oppressed, non-Christians? If so, Iâm not suggesting this was an absolute reason, but at least a significant factor.
Whoâs to say todayâs perception of the symbol is âmisuse?â What if the Navaho symbol for âgood luckâ came from a modification of an earlier meaning? Or what if something similar happened with respect to the Persian idea that it represented âinfinityâ or âcontinuous creationâ when Zoroastrianism was being practiced? I wouldnât think todayâs Western link of the symbol to Nazism, hate and so on is a misuse as much as it is now another meaning in the symbolâs changing etymology.
Even if it is a misuse, that seems largely irrelevant. It means what it means and when, and thereâs no questioning that it provokes a visceral reaction to an extremely large population, post Mein Kampf.