Swastika Prompts Microsoft Font Recall

Well, the patch is an optional download, so if you feel threated by the presense of the swastika, you're welcome to have it removed.

Personally, as a Jew, I think we'll eventually need to understand that symbols are mostly innocuous until a certain nefarious group adopts them as their own. Their original meaning is tainted, but we shouldn't let that forever destroy the redemption or potential of function that such symbols could hold — we'll have to move on, or else be forever haunted by the past.

We should also be aware that our interpretational context is not the only one in which the swastika occurs. It happens that the swastika, as a sign in a European-American context, is unavoidably associated primarily with Nazism. That isn't likely to change, but does the swastika really need to be rehabilitated in this context? Do we need the swastika for some positive purpose? I don't think so, and I'm perfectly happy to continue to spit on it in this context.

There are, however, intepretational contexts, particularly in Asia, where the swastika has no negative associations. Indeed, it is pretty clear that for the majority of people on the planet the symbol has either positive associations or no associations at all.

What bothers me about Microsoft's decision to remove the swastikas from a Japanese font, is that the majority, positive association of the sign is sacrificed because of the negative association of our particular interpretational context. I don't think the swastika can or should be rehabilitated in the West, but surely we can be intelligent and reasonable enough to recognise that there are other contexts in which the sign is not a 'Nazi symbol', and perhaps international software is one such context.

> That isn't likely to change

Time changes everything.

It seems you enjoy spitting too much.

--

Jesse, a warm "bravo" to you.

hhp

I agree complitely with John's view.

And I love this sentence:
“We continue to work to improve our processes in order to prevent this type of error in the future.”

Time changes everything.

Yes, but in this case it seems most likely that the interpretational context will change before the interpretation within that context. Europeans may forget what the swastika meant, but they are unlikely to reconcile that meaning with other, benign meanings.

It seems you enjoy spitting too much.

It is not a question of enjoyment: I think it is important to vocally and physically oppose the slightest hint of a breath of Nazism. So as a symbol of Nazi ideology, I think the swastika should be spat on, trampled on, torn up and burnt. But this means being able to intelligently identify when the swastika is a symbol of Nazism.

The Anti-defamation League -- who are neither always right nor always wrong -- identify the swastika per se as 'a Nazi symbol'. Any appearance of the swastika in any context is apparently inseperable from its use by the Nazis, as such it should never appear anywhere for any reason. Even the use of the swastika in works by Jewish artists dealing with the Shoah as a theme in their art is contentious. [Martin Mendelsberg spoke about this during his ATypI presentation, showing works he has made that include the swastika.]

I think a bit of semiotic theory is useful: a sign is composed of a signifier and a signified (both conceptual, non material in Saussure's original model). It is only precise to describe the swastika signifier as a Nazi sign when the signified is Nazi. If the signified is Buddhist, for example, it should be pretty obvious that one is not dealing with a Nazi sign. The problem is ignorance: when someone sees the signifier and is unable to correctly interpret the sign, because he does not know what is signified, or misidentifies the signified.

> Yes, but in this case it seems most
> likely that the interpretational
> context will change before

This sounds like rhetorical sleight of hand.

> I think it is important to vocally and physically oppose
> the slightest hint of a breath of Nazism.

And by extensions fascism.
And by supporting the continuing demonization of a symbol by a party who is perpetrating a high degree of fascism itself these days, you are [unwittingly] supporting the very thing you think you're fighting. You become their tool.

You might think that you're reducing the chances of future genocides by keeping something like the Swastika "evil", but when you look under the surface you realize that the same people who are most keen on that also happen to be vehemently opposed to the proper recognition of other genocides, include ones which served to motivate the carrying out of the Holocaust! I wonder why...

If you don't know the dark undercurrents of international political lobbying, you're an innocent being manipulated, just like 90% of North America.

> But this means being able to
> intelligently identify when the
> swastika is a symbol of Nazism.

Exactly. And if you think what's happening with the MS font has anything to do with such impartial objectvity, you're in lala-land. It almost never has anything else to do but with the merciless application of censorship by those in power.

> The problem is ignorance

No, the problem is the manipulation of ignorants to continue the oppression.

--

The Star of David is as offensive to some people (not me) as the Swastika is to Jews. How come it stays in the font? Duh.

hhp

Something that was bugging me when I saw this earlier on MeFi was whether the offending symbol was the symbol linked above(the Navajo also use it, and probably others), or the Nazi kakenkreuz. (To be fair, you *will* notice a few flags with the symbol upright rather than slanted, but they are, by and large, aberrations I was surprised to discover, given just how many flags were around. So let's concede the upright symbol to the Buddhists, etc.)
Anyone paying the smallest amount of attention(which, if they are so offended, they ostensibly are...), will see they are not the same thing. Does anybody actually have a copy of the font in question? I have doubts that Microsoft would let an actual Nazi symbol get into their stuff, and if that's not the case, it's kind of sad that they'd cave to the pressure of some people bitching in clear error, and thus help the continued life of that error.

...
Which is not to say I'm delusional enough to think that this wouldn't have happened anyway, just that if it's the case where the symbol being removed is not the Nazi version, it would've been nice to see some acknowledgement and education regarding this in the MS statement.

Hrant, I see you've checked your comprehension skills at the door again and are reading into my statements a lot of stuff that I neither wrote nor implied. You're so wrapped up in your own thoughts, that you don't even bother to see whether what other people say corresponds to what you think they're saying. And having concluded that your fantasy about their utterances is correct, you proceed to insult them.

And 'dark undercurrents of international political lobbying' smells a lot like anti-semitic euphemism. Who is this 'party' and 'people' who you won't name?

Su, the MS font contains both vertical and angled swastikas.

> let's concede the upright symbol to the Buddhists

They will concede no such thing. No quarter is given.

> it's kind of sad that they'd cave

It's not nearly as sad as it frightening. This is the MS that scoffs at the Justice Department. But they know what the deal is.

--

> smells a lot like anti-semitic euphemism.

Keep smelling whatever helps you sleep at night.

hhp

I was taken back on a recent trip to Ireland to see their artwork and design (pre-Nazi era) to have so much of the interwoven chain like patterns including the swastika all over the place. It was very distracting.

I was thinking about the iconography of the Nazi party and how effective it was. It think of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove where Peter Sellars doesn't even have to lift his right arm all the way up and how instantly recognizable the gesture is.

If the Nazi party would have not used the swastika and only the Iron Cross, it wouldn't have been so effective. There are so many references and meanings of the cross iconography that the symbol wouldn't have been so powerful. It would have had to compete with the thousand years of religious meaning that symbol has taken. The swastika carried relatively no previous definition so the Nazi Party could in fact "brand" themselves with it.

> The swastika carried relatively no previous definition...

Well in fact it depends on the culture. In our strange little country called Latvia, it has always been among mythological signs and is still referred to as a cross of thunder. (being among the higher deities).

However here too it has become so associated w/ the nazis, that any former meanings have faded. Which I think is terribly wrong... Why should we ban something from the history simply because it has at some point been a "logo" for something. This is basically the major stupidity of this worldwide "political correctness"!

Fascinating subject — demonstrating the raw power that [a] design can have. The original post is so linked up I thought I'd point out three details from some of the links which were new to me: The Nazi symbol was actually a swavastika — the symbol turning to the left has a different name and swastika correctly describes only the symbol turning to the right, arms bending left. Secondly, "According to Cabbalistic lore and occult theory, chaotic force can be evoked by reversing the symbol" — implying that the Nazi intention to 'reverse' the design was intentional, and lastly crediting the Nazi design to a dentist named Dr. Friedrich Krohn who was a member of the secret Germanen order.

In a world where pre-Constantine Rome surely banned displays of the cross and where present-day governments are considering banning headscarves at schools, it's important for designers (particularly) to understand the potency of symbols. Banning the symbol simply contributes to the power confered upon it, and doing so here continues the ceding of ownership of an ancient design to it's ugliest users. At the risk of agreeing with Hrant, I'll concede that realistically, time is a factor (and perhaps I mean centuries not decades). The emblem of Roman authority, Fasces — adopted by Mussolini and where the word Fascism comes from — now adorns the U.S. House of Representatives.

Why should we ban something from the history simply because it has at some point been a "logo" for something.

A successful logo is mark of identity, of that is today called branding. A mark used as a logo, if successful, becomes identical in peoples' minds with what it represents: you see the logo, you see the thing itself. That is the aim of every logo designer in the world. The Nazi use of the swastika is a case study in successful branding: in a European context, the sign, whatever its previous usage, has become the identity of the Nazi party, their ideology and actions. As I suggested above, I don't think this is likely to change without massive amnesia, but we should intelligently look at the context of each occurence of the sign and determine what is signified, or what is intended to be signified.

> let's concede the upright symbol to the Buddhists
They will concede no such thing. No quarter is given.

Then they're being willfully stupid, which was my point, and exactly the reason companies that get hounded like this should make some effort to educate, even if they cave in to propagandist pressure.
I see no one campaigning for removal of the zodiac symbols from the Wingdings font. Everybody knows that pagans eat babies. The cross(two of them, even!) should also be removed on the basis of the Crusades. And oh my God, there's a star-and-crescent in there, too. Let's just remove the entire font and deny it ever existed. It's quicker that way.
Better than facing up to the fact that sometimes, misguided groups do bad things while hiding behind symbols that don't entirely belong to them, and that maybe it's a little silly to punish the symbol and the people it was taken from.

So should U+534D & U+5350 be removed from the Unicode Standard?

People keep using the word "Buddhist" here, but I think the swastika appeared way before Buddhism and is more related to the Bönpo religion that Buddhism later supplanted in Tibet and the surrounding regions. (Though not completely; there is still a Bön minority in Tibet.)

Adrian Frutiger's book "The Human and his signs" ("Der Mensch und seine Zeichen") should be banned. It contains a lot of swastikas!
Adam

If you visit India you will see the Swastika all over the place, it is a very popular symbol. The name is dervied from the Sanskrit su + asti meaning 'all is well', it is also considered a symbol of good luck.

For ages, the Swastika has been considered a symbol of well-being and peace in India. It has always been used in decorations for Indian religious ceremonies. According to Hindu tradition, whenever a child has his head shaven for the first time, a swastika is painted on his head.

T.Delan -> a good point here - in fact it is true, that they have this symbol reversed. The actual _swastika_ goes the other way!

Regarding the "logo" part, however... had they invented it themselves - I would not argue. However, since it is a symbol that has been plainly "borrowed" (read - stolen) from the mythology, I don't really think that somebody's malicious usage of it should be a reason to pretend that there has never been a symbol as such!

Tomb stone from 4th century Bosnia

Swastika used as a “good luck” symbol. The orientation of the arms seems to be the same as it is on the Nazi swastika, so I don't think that the orientation is really a definitive indicator. Nazi swastika always rests on the pointed tip while in other context, it usualy rests flat on the edge.

John: The ultimate derivation of the symbol is unimportant. Buddhism is mainly a convenience as it's probably the most well-known usage of it otherwise. The design is simple enough(and even the basis of a tesselation) that you can keep looking further back and keep finding it.

To Emir's comment re: orientation, here's an interesting page examining the occurences of directionality in the symbol historically, which further argues for the need to actually look at the instances in context. This page quotes source material on the flag's origins, and also some information regarding completely unrelated usage of the symbol by a few East European countries for various purposes prior to the Nazi's existence. There's also a bit at the bottom on the first usage of the swastika in an Aryan context.

And as a curiosity, a gallery of swastikas both pro- and non- Nazi, and unrelated.

At the 60th congress of the Universala Esperanto-Asocio, held at Kopenhago in 1975, members received a pocket Eo-Dk phrasebook: a reproduction of one made many years before by the Carlsberg brewery. On the back cover of the booklet was a drawing of the sun - proudly emblazoned with the Carlsberg swastika - shining over the city.

There was some discussion of this topic on the Unicode list this morning, including this comment from Paul Nelson at MS Typography:

This probably would have not been
an issue if it were in a font that
would normally use the character,
like in the SimSun font for Chinese.
The symbol font had neither cultural
context, nor correct Unicode mappings.
I believe that our action was the
right thing to do in this case.

There are no plans to remove the
characters from fonts where there
is cultural context with Unicode
mappings.

In other words, much as I suggested, the issue is one of interpretational context.

Perhaps that's the last thing that needs to be said on this topic?

It most certainly is not, since there are still people using the swastika as a "reverse weapon" to facilitate their crimes against humanity, and many more people under their spell.

Ask yourselves why nobody (I mean no Westerner) complains about the presence of the Star of David in that font. And ask youselves why some non-Jews (like John, and G W Bush) are so one-sided.

hhp

For what it's worth, I was under the impression that the original ‘swastika’ symbol was of Indian origin and a good luck symbol used originally by people of the Hindu faith. As Ramesh says, the name is an amalgam of ‘Su’ and ‘Asati’ (which I think literally translated means good to exist [cite]).

There is some interesting information on that page offering the idea that a possible origin of the symbol could be the blueprint for a fort called Su Vastu (pronounced Swastu). The arrangement apparently makes it very difficult for attacking forces to storm the entrances simultaneously.

Jordan

Hrant, you have no idea how many sides I have.

"Ask yourselves why nobody (I mean no Westerner) complains about the presence of the Star of David in that font."

Umm, because some of us can tell the difference between the religion (Judaism) and the government (Israel)?

Marc, that's a convenient illusion indeed. It's [ab]used as much by Jews as it is by anti-semites.

hhp

Hrant, you'll have to explain that one. What illusion are you referring to? And how is it abused?

Jesse gets a lot of points for making a very good and educated observation, not overshadowed by any kind of bias. All I have to say is that I wish there were more Jewish people who think like you. It is time indeed to move on and deal with issues at hand rather than let ourselves get carried away by a font symbol.

Oh my! :) I need to control myself or I could unwittingly "explode out" all this issue-related ideas (Swastika/Nazism/Blackletter/Terrorism/Fanatism, etc.) I've cooked inside of me in the last few years.
I don't talk anymore of things I'm working on I don't know whenever they'll see the light, because I feel deeply ashamed and I'm in debt with all the people which helped me with my book (and all the ones still waiting for Neoritmo...), but this topic is so dear to my heart.
For now (strange as it may seem), I'm with Hrant along *all* the line. Huh? Have I said that? Yes!
See my Islamicomet™ icon in the Building Letters Chrimbobat , if you have the chance, for a taste of whatever may happen.

Tom Dolan, you wrote:
"The Nazi symbol was actually a swavastika — the symbol turning to the left has a different name and swastika correctly describes only the symbol turning to the right, arms bending left."
Please, if you find it, have a look at the wonderful selection of images from Steven Heller's article "Transfiguring the Swastika" from Baseline magazine n.31, 2000.
From 1872 Type ornaments, to 1920s gilded Greeting cards, to a 1920s deodorant cream, to a 1950s matchbox sporting the Indian elephant-headed deity Ganesh, up to the 1913 Girls' Club brochure (and the beatiful Baum-like illustrated book of Bing-O), the Swastika/Swavastika is used, no matter its direction, in any possible fashion as a sympathetic symbol of good luck and warm wishes.
Heller is a partisan of the "unredeemability" of the Swastika, I discussed with him a lot of time ago, but here his image selection is handy to see the opposite as well.

And if you find an English edition of Zimmermann's excellent and unbiased book on Adolf Hitler's life ("Adolf Hitler. Eine politische Biographie", 1989, I have it in Italian) you'll have additional questions to reflect upon, on why Hitler did not became a peaceful painter instead of a mass-murdering dictator. The swastika turns backwards, turns forwards, and backwards again.
And, to paraphrase the title of the first chapter of Art Spiegelmann's Maus, we are all "bleeding history", so why should we blame a mere graphic symbol?
Stop.

And, of course, a tip of the hat to Jesse B. and my jewish friends. And to the memory of one of my all-time idols, Jacob Kurtzberg a.k.a. Jack Kirby, US citizen and jew of Austrian heritage, king of the American super-hero comics. He fought the Nazis in General Patton's army, a few years after his own comic book creation, Captain America, had kicked Hitler's face in the cover of his first issue.
My first typeface at Emigre, Ottomat, should have been named Tomazooma, as an homage to one of his characters. But Marvel denied us the permission of using the name, like they always denied Jack the mere restitution of his original art (besides any actual recognition for founding aolmost alone their economic empire).

Of course, I forgot to tell, I 'm with Hrant along *all* the line excepts when he offends John Hudson.
I love my John Hudson :)

I've talked too much.
F***** Internet...

How you feel about the swastika is very much a question of acculturation. I've been a Buddhist for 35 years now and, in addition, have an adoptive relationship in a Hindu family. I see the symbol in a religious context all the time and find all the hoo-ha above almost comical.

...Almost, but not quite. I have a German friend who had to join the Hitler Youth at age 14, just before World War 2 ended. When he was over visiting some years back, I took him to a Hindu wedding without reflecting that he might need some warning about what he was likely to see. Sure enough, he let out a gasp when he caught sight of the wedding canopy studded with swastikas and wanted to know what in hell that was supposed to mean. It seems that the young Aryans of Germany had not been told about the Indian use (and perhaps origin) of the symbol.

It was only when witnessing his astonishment that I realised how used I had got to the context in which I usually encountered it and how unquestioning its acceptance had become. I live in Birmingham, UK, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe, with a very large Asian population. Even my generation can't afford to cling onto white-centred, old-fashioned notions here. You accept difference; you accept that folk from elsewhere have different notions.

You do not censor another's cultural iconography because it has personal associations that make you (in your ignorance) cringe!

Mb

You do not censor another's cultural iconography because it has personal associations that make you (in your ignorance) cringe!

I agree entirely, but when the same graphic mark is used in different cultures to symbolise very different things it becomes important to estbablish cultural context whenever the mark appears. This serves two purposes: it helps educate people about the cultures in question and how the mark is understood and employed within those cultures, and it avoids cross-cultural confusion. Your German friend was shocked and surprised to see the swastika in the context of a Hindu wedding because he was unaware that this context existed; but presumably you were able to explain the context to him in light of everything else he saw at the wedding. Imagine how much more shocked, surprised and confused he would have been if he were simply walking down the street and saw the swastika on a wall with no obvious context. MS Typography have explained that their concern over the Bookshelf 7 font is that it did not provide adequate context for the character, whereas their CJK Asian fonts do provide such context. A blackletter font including a swastika would also provide definitive context, albeit of a very different kind. One can debate whether it is best, when faced with ambiguous context, to err on the side of caution as MS has done in this case.

There are, however, intepretational contexts, particularly in Asia, where the swastika has no negative associations. Indeed, it is pretty clear that for the majority of people on the planet the symbol has either positive associations or no associations at all. (emphasis added)

I'd like to give Asians more credit than that. Even so (apologies for the tangent), I don't quite know what to make of these items, which are in a whole 'nother realm from the Micros***t imbroglio:

Nazi-themed Restaurant in Taipei.

Nazi Bar in Seoul

The Coca-Cola Swastika Robot

Nazi Chic Sold in Hong Kong Boutique (original news source has "gone missing")

To me, as a Jew, if it is a continuing positive symbol for eastern cultures, I have no problems with their continuing to use it.

However, for western cultures I think it is forever tainted by its association with Nazism. Though I am in favor of people knowing its origins as a good luck symbol, I don't think there is any circumstance, at least at this point in history, in which the use of a swastika can successfully retain any meaning other than recalling its use by Hitler.

The mark is recognizable regardless of which way it rotates -- if you were to ask any random sample of adults which way Hitler used it, my guess is that only 50% would return the correct answer.

So my overall feeling is that I don't see why any westerner would want to use it for positive purposes completely unrelated to Nazism, and even if they did, I severely doubt they'd be successful at it.

As for why the star of David should be included: is the cross included? Is the crescent moon? If one is, the others should be as well. Each represents a religion that has no monopoly on the inspiration of either violence or beauty in its name.

Microsoft changed its mind about part of its software and made a decision. It is Microsoft's decision to make. Conscientious or empty gesture, who is losing or gaining anything from this? Who cares if it's gone? It's not like the damn thing is hard to draw if you really need one.

O, to have one's every fart and snore scrutinized like Microsoft.

> it is forever tainted

1) Nothing is forever, habeebi.
2) Who benefits most from the continued exposure of the swastika, as exemplified by this MS case? Duh.

> I don't see why any westerner would
> want to use it for positive purposes

1) Because the world would be a better place if US foreign policy was not so pro-Jewish? It's good to support the friends you've chosen to make, but not at the expense of the world community. We only have this one Earth.
2) Because the world already has too much hate emanating towards and from Jews? This policy of antagonism (which has been in place since the Holocaust, so it's not so old as to be engrained, I hope) which results in things like MS sheepishly pulling reverse-swastikas from fonts, it cannot be a good long-term policy. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. You are dying by the sword. What are you going to do about it? Nuke everybody?

> Each represents a religion that has ....

How convenient.
So let me get this straight: a symbol which was used for millenia by various -still very much living- cultures to denote an inherently positive thing (except maybe to devil worshipers), but which was subsequently flipped in both direction and meaning by some crazied political party trying to recover its fatherland from criminal Allied policies after WWI, a party which subsequenty disappeared for all intents are purposes, cannot be allowed to regain its positivism in the West*; but a symbol that belongs only to Judaism and Israel (it's on the flag, in case you persist in believing that Israel is a secular democracy**), and symbolizes nothing but theft and death to millions of people is just fine. There is no qualitative difference between the swastika (especially a reverse one! let's not encourage ignorance, at least) and the Star of David. They should both be in a font, which is a tool to communicate -and discuss, not censor- all aspects of Life.

* Although Easterners can use it fine, I guess you're saying?! Such a fruitful us-versus-them attitude you have (even though you're probably too innocent to realize it). And of course people like me who are in between are totally irrelevant...

** Nevermind the "small" things like now disallowing marriage between Israeli Arabs and Jews...

--

> who is losing or gaining anything from this?

You must have a thick fog surrounding you at all times. Who do you think gains clout by getting MS to deliver a groveling apology?! Conversely, you should ask who gains/loses what by simply ignoring a reserve swastika in some geeky font? Nothing, nobody. So it's more useful to some people when it's given yet another public flogging. Your cherished blackletter is no different a case, my friend.

And in fact this is a great litmus test with MS: the big bad scofflaw demonstrating very well that it knows not to mess with the real boss.

hhp

>disallowing marriage between Israeli Arabs and Jews...

Your comment is irrelevant to the discussion, but I don't want it to stand uncorrected. As I understand it, all marriages in current Israeli law are religious - Jewish, Muslim, Christian etc. This makes marriages between couples where one doesn't want to convert to the other's religion extremely difficult within Israel. However, marriages contracted outside Israel are recognized within, and this is common. I don't approve of the current situation, but your statement is not correct.

Your more general claims about the Jews and Israel are malicious and untrue, but it would be pointless to argue them here.

Oh, man ... I almost hate to step into this pile, but it is germain, as typography is all about symbols. I'm not really up on the history of genocide, so I did a quick, unscientific search. It seems that if you are talking sheer numbers, Stalin is #1 on the list ... yet the hammer & sickle does not rouse the ire like the swastica. Pol Pot did the most damage in terms of percentage of population, but a red scarf is not demonized ... unless you are hangin' in the wrong part of the hood.

The above comments are, I guess of necessity, eurocentric. Or more accurately, west coast white guy -centric. All symbols are products of their context: If I were to open a restaurant in Oregon with that name of "The Happy Yankee", with lots of US flags posted on the wall, I might do OK; if I were to use the same motif in a restaurant in the Gaza Strip, I doubt I'd survive the week.

So is the US Flag a positive symbol, or a negative one? It depends on who you ask.

Several years ago I wanted to buy a book by Rudyard Kipling for my dad. I couldn't afford a 1st edition, but at least I could get him an older, leather-bound one. I pulled an likely candidate from the shelf at the bookstore, and was surpised and disgusted to find swasticas printed in all four corners of the cover. I new the book had nothing to do with naziism, because the publication date was in the 1920s ... but I still couldn't bring myself to buy the book. That symbol signified evil to me, and it ruined my appreciation of a fine book.

Jay Fraser

> As I understand it ....

You understand it wrong. Or you simply avoid exposure to news sources which might introduce even a modicum of doubt in your black fortress.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3111727.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3152651.stm

hhp

However, for western cultures I think it is forever tainted by its association with Nazism.
-- Yes it is.

Though I am in favor of people knowing its origins as a good luck symbol, I don't think there is any circumstance, at least at this point in history, in which the use of a swastika can successfully retain any meaning other than recalling its use by Hitler.
--In your mind that might be true. In reality it is not. If it was there before Hitler, it should be there after him. After all there was a purpose for its creation.

The mark is recognizable regardless of which way it rotates -- if you were to ask any random sample of adults which way Hitler used it, my guess is that only 50% would return the correct answer.
-- In the western world of course they'd say that. We see it every day, in movies made about it, books, news, stories..etc etc..the propaganda is incredible.

So my overall feeling is that I don't see why any westerner would want to use it for positive purposes completely unrelated to Nazism, and even if they did, I severely doubt they'd be successful at it.
-- Now how did you come to that conclusion? It could be used in relation to nazism, but why would it be automatically evil? it could be for a shcool project or research purposes, where you can illustrate your work better by using the symbol. Also the western world is made up of people from many different cultures and races who might use the Swastika for their own purposes, because they don't care a bit who else used it. Hitler hasn't hurt Jews only, but many other sovereign nations and people. Everyone else seems to have moved on and stopped whining. It's time you did the same

Hrant, try reading the articles you cite, which don't concern Jewish-Arab marriage. They relate to a different issue: non-Israeli Arabs gaining Israeli citizenship and residency by marriage to Israeli Arabs.

Israeli Arabs (20% of Israel's citizens) and Jews can marry each other and live in Israel, both before and after the new law.

The defenders of the new law denying citizenship to the non-Israeli spouse say that 100,000 Arabs have gained residency since '93 and that a number are terrorists who have used marriage as a ruse to get residency; those Jews who voted against it say it is a fundamental denial of Israeli Arab rights.

Whatever one thinks of it, it is an ugly wartime measure. But in your eagerness to malign Jews and Israel, you have completely muddled the issue, and got it quite wrong.

There are critical uses as well — check out this state-sponsored billboard currently up in and around Havana.

I keep agreeing with Hrant, but mostly on my adversitiy towards the "unredeemability" of things. I don't know most of the political and cultural issues Hrant addresses. I just find a good idea to challenge preconceptions, in any given situations, and to have a better in-depth understanding of things.
This does not involve respect or lack of respect, just because of Nazism worldwide and enormous impact. Each person, culture or nation, may find offensive given graphic devices, but this is not a reason for not using them if your intentions is to get them rid of negative associations.
On my part I feel a strong challenge, not only towards the issue of Swastika, but towards any "demonization" of a person, a people, a cathegory of persons.

Cheshire Dave wrote "my overall feeling is that I don’t see why any westerner would want to use it for positive purposes completely unrelated to Nazism, and even if they did, I severely doubt they’d be successful at it."
To answer him I can say I wish to use it because I always liked it, no matter if I wish to evocate a negative or positive meaning. Who says I wish to use it just unrelated to Nazism? You are right, I may be unsuccessful in using it, but it largely depends on how you design it. Making it black, in a white circle, inside a red flag, would make it difficult to rework. Think of it with gilded, flowery terminals, with graceful, soft parts, covered with leaves, or in an Art Nouveau interpretation. Try it rounded, with "chocolaty" Oz Cooper terminals. And inversely try a star of David, a Judeo-Christian cross, an Half-moon, even a FontFont logo, in black and white, within a circle, inside a red flag. How would they feel to each one of us?
I like to play with associations, surely not for disrespect, but as a device to discuss on a graphic level, to learn mutual respect.
I am ashamed by what my country (Italy) did in its alliance with Nazism, but this does not prevent me from liking the swastika or the blackletter.

And on the rotation: I think this is an illusionary issue, I've already said it. The symbol was widely used in both directions, so Hitler could have hardly turned it counterclockwise or whatever because it had no given direction in the first place.
Life is what we make of it.
God bless you all.

L, you didn't read my post carefully, even the things you quoted of mine, so I feel no need to respond.

Hrant, I do understand your very strong feelings about the Star of David being on the flag and how some people might associate it with Israeli atrocities as I associate the Nazi swastika with the Holocaust.

Just so you know, however, the symbol on the Israeli flag is not the traditional Star of David: it's been flipped and rotated as well. (OK, bad joke -- but this conversation needs a tiny bit of levity added.)

I will say this, however: don't confuse "pro-Jewish" with "pro-Israel" when talking of the US government's interests. They are most definitely not the same thing, habeebi: I am strongly pro-Jewish; I am also strongly opposed to many Israeli policies, especially as regards Palestinians.

Finally, I never said how I felt about the symbol's inclusion in/exclusion from the font. I'm torn. I'm not in favor of censorship, but it's also important to note that not everything that gets excluded is so because of censorship.

Hrant is right, of course, that forever is a long time -- I was being somewhat hyperbolic there. And Claudio, if you want to redeem the swastika for the West (and for Hrant, who's caught in the middle), I wish you good luck and godspeed. You will forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

The problem for me is that most Americans, if I may generalize in that way, don't have a comprehensive view of the swastika, i.e., don't know its history before Hitler. (Speaking of things being tainted, try finding someone with that surname these days -- there are about three in California and none in several other states, and the name isn't even banned here as it is in Germany.) I agree with Hrant that we should encourage a deeper knowledge of the symbol. Perhaps if the font included the symbol(s) as well as a text file that explains the context. That's a clunky and unlikely solution, but perhaps the best given a difficult situation.

And yes, I know that's an U.S.-centric view, but that's where I live and where I feel (barely) qualified to make any such generalizations, so I beg your collective forgiveness.

If, as you say, Microsoft is groveling before the international Zionist conspirablabla, they'd have also changed what happens when you type "NYC" in Wingdings. (Remember that old chestnut?)

And to clarify my position on this MS decision: I don't give a crap. I think it's just another empty PR gesture by a corporation because some individual somewhere with too much time on his hands complained. As soon as others with too much time on their hands saw it, they wanted their concessions too.

William, you are a fascism apologist.

--

> I am also strongly opposed to many Israeli policies

Which makes you part of a small and silent minority, among the citizenry of the only remaining superpower.

> Americans ... don't have a comprehensive view of the swastika

Yes, but that's not the real problem. Ignorance is unavoidable to some extent (nobody can know everything); it's when ignorace is used like putty to shape unwitting support for criminal policies (both foreign and domestic), that's certainly something very bad.

--

> international Zionist conspirablabla

Yeah, just throw it in with UFO stories - that'll make Palestinians die less.

> some individual somewhere with too much time on his hands complained.

Is that how you think these things work?! Did you seriously get yourself to believe that MS cares about some lone bored nut or something? Do you have any idea why Political Action Committees get all that funding? Do you think your politicians work in a vacuum? This is just pain ridiculous.

It sounds like you should just keep to your Fox News after all.

hhp

1. MS license a font for inclusion with Office 2003 (presumably for backwards compatibility with some non-standard 8-bit phonetic character set, since the font is not Unicode encoded). The font is checked in to Office 2003 without much attention.

2. After Office 2003 ships, a customer contacts MS regarding the presence of 2 swastikas in the font. Note that MS do not say whether this notification consitituted a complaint, only that it was from an individual customer.

3. MS review the situation, decide that they really don't want to have to deal with the potential complaints that they might receive if they do nothing, that the font does not need the swastikas, and that the font does not provide adequate context to make clear that the swastikas are Asian characters (i.e. they are not Unicode encoded as CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-534D and CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-5350). MS decides to remove the swastikas from the font in new copies of Office 2003, and to offer an optional tool to remove the font from current installations for people who feel strongly enough to do so. If any Office 2003 users do want access to a swastika character, MS continue to ship multiple fonts that do contain these characters in an obvious Asian text processing context, so charges of censorship are just plain stupid.

4. Having made the decision and prepared the optional tool, MS then contact the Anti-Defamation League to inform them of what they are doing, presumably to forestall any complaints from other users that they have not done enough or should have handled the situation differently. The ADL commend MS on their response, and everyone issues simultaneous press-releases.

If Hrant is inclined to ask me whether I really believe that this is how it happened, I'll save him the trouble: yes, I see no reason not to believe it. Now Hrant can proceed directly to the bit where he calls me naïve.

No, naive isn't it. But you don't have enough gray in your outlook: never any self-doubt, never an admission of weakness (even though you have many, just like me), nor any expression of the conundrums of life. Unless you're faced with something that hits you over the head and simply leaves no room for escape at all, you take gray areas and choose to believe the most convenient version of the possible turths pertaining to them. You favor stability over discovery. Great for a general, lousy for a concerned world citizen.

hhp

As a fellow European, I agree with Claudio Piccinini's relaxed and more cosmopolitan stance. I think he makes a preceptive point when he emphasises that it is the packaging as much as the sign itself that adds to the baleful gut-feeling you get round Nazi symbolism. That's why so many neo-Nazi groups go for the suggestive red flag/white circle/black symbol for their standards. The star of David, suitably treated, could indeed be made to suggest a Nazi tendency if given that context. When Christianity was banned in 16th century Japan, those who held out went underground and reoriented the Buddhist swastika to suggest the cross. A marvellous example of redefinition.

I was amused to notice when following one of the links above, that one of the neo-Nazi symbols on the suggestive red flag/white circle background is a rune. New Age folk (almost by definition assumed to be natural supporters of the Anti-Nazi League) have largely reclaimed runes which, at one time, the Nazis also exploited as part of 'volkische kultur'. That standard, therefore, impeccably in the Nazi idiom, is partly undone by the new context runes have been given. It is possible, you see, to purify the waters previously muddied by political contact...and without having to wait 'for ever'.

It is largely because of its ongoing demonization that the symbol continues to be used for shock value. I remember the poet Andrei Voznesensky turning up at the 1988 Rotterdam Poetry International and calling a seminar to announce news that obviously horrified him. The teenage sons of senior party officials (oh!!!) had just paraded thru Moscow in Nazi uniforms, wearing iron crosses and swastikas and...wait for it...proclaiming at the top of their voices that Stalin was right and it was time to get back to firm government. Now there's another mixed message to ponder. It could be that the kids didn't know their history, but I find that hard to believe. I don't mind betting they knew it only too well and were just going in for a spot of really effective hell-raising.

As for Claudio's suggestions for redeeming the swastika by giving it a kitsch treatment, I agree there too. Back in the 'glorious 60s' (ech!) I was constantly affronted by the facile gestures of Flower Power and decided that Cactus Power was what the age demanded. & for symbol, the wavery, spiked outline of the organ-pipe cactus bent to suggest...you've got it! Now it was that generation who voted in radicals of the Right like Reagan and Thatcher, so I don't think the satire was too far from the mark.

Sorry, Claudio, it was a long time ago. By all means let us now have chocolate swastikas to crunch, let us make a trellis of them and train roses across it, let us advance into the future inventively and leave behind the old codgers who won't let go of their spite suffering unrelieved the bad breath of each other's endless monolog.

Hrant, I'm not choosing to believe the 'most convenient version'; I'm choosing to believe what has been related to me by the people involved, rather than making up stuff. There's a difference between acknowledging genuine grey areas and manufacturing them through obfuscation and misrepresentation,

> New Age folk (almost by definition assumed to be
> natural supporters of the Anti-Nazi League) have
> largely reclaimed runes

You remind me of something very interesting and relevant. The VW Beetle -the ultimate peacenik, anti-fascist symbol- was actually a Hitler pet project originally. But I guess there was money to be made by its redemption, so nodoby minded that one? There's not much money to be made in fonts, much less individual characters!

hhp

Actually, I know people who still refuse to buy VWs because of that. I, however, loved my VW Rabbit until it died.

Ecch, Hrant, could you please get off it? Unless you quickly come up with some seriously incontrovertible evidence of this Jew conspiracy, you're going to look no more credible than the people who complained about the thing in the first place.

John isn't being naive, or whatever else you want to call him, he's simply presenting the more-likely-than-your-story Occam's Razor version of events. Do you seriously think that "Pressure From The Jewish Lobby" is closer to the truth than MS just saying "We really don't want to get into this."?

That said, while it's nice they brought up the language context thing, I still think they could've gone a bit further into educating people as to why the glyph is there. The general populace don't(and shouldn't have to) care about Unicode characters and language encoding, and it leaves opening for them to think that it's meaningless technobabble to get them to drop it. They need to specifically have it explained to them how and why this is not a Nazi thing, from any reasonable viewpoint.

Seeing as this thread has taken a couple tangents already, I'm not going to hesitate to take it on one more: Volkswagen, as cited above, is indeed an interesting example. The 'rehabilitation' of the VW Beetle in America was accomplished by legendary adman Bill Bernbach, VP of Grey Advertising, a Jewish exec at the 'Jewish' agency, in an advertising world of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants. Bernbach went on to found DDB Inc (he's the B), who's clients were a who's who of Jewish department stores and Catskills resorts. No one knows why DDB took on VW as a client, and the political subject is one that Bernbach refused to address publicly. Most analysts suspect the "taint" was part of the attraction to the project, and if DDB could demonstrate that they could sell VW Beetles to Jews, then they could sell anything. It's been widely recounted that Bernbach's strategy was to cast the Beetle as a wily combination of the schlemiel (the bumbler) and the mensch (the good heart). His ultimate triumph was to make Mercedes Benz equate with 'German' car, and the Beetle be the Jewish car, cast as the Yiddish "little man" — the self-effacing worrier, always trying to get it right, the conscientious friend who will not desert you in times of need. Remember to measure DDB's triumph against an era of American automotive design and advertising that was over the top with chrome and jet-style tail fins. It took 20 years, but by 1969 the VW makeover was complete.

>As a fellow European, I agree with Claudio Piccinini's relaxed and more cosmopolitan stance.

As a Jew, I am much happier with Jacques Chirac's stance forthrightly condemning anti-Semitic violence. Maybe he is no longer a 'European' or a 'Concerned world citizen.' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3275519.stm

A few contemporary items:
Al Quaeda synagogues attacks in Turkey; the attacks on synagogues in France; vigorous and active Palistinian organizations like Hamas whose declared goal is the killing of Jews and elimination of Israel as a Jewish state; The applause of Muslim leaders for the speech of Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, who ascribed much of the problems of the Muslim world to the Jews, a small group who 'rule the world by proxy.' against whom 'we' must ‘counter attack’.

The demonization and ridiculuous exaggeration of the power of Jews is part of a campaign of incitement to violence. Use of the swastika, in its Nazi association, is a regular part of this campaign of hate and violence. It is most often used as a label on Jews to say they are as bad as the Nazis - a tactic of incitement to violence.

A number of posters here seem to think that the use of the swastika as a tool of hatred is something in the past. Unfortunately, it is not. The Microsoft decision is a very small matter, as John Butler says. But I am happy that Microsoft is aware that the swastika is, in the West still, alas, a tool of hatred and violence. May the day soon come when it is not.

> May the day soon come when it is not.

The question is whether the MS decision brings this day closer, or pushes it further away. Certainly, realistically, it may be just a question of [a great deal of] time — I'd venture to say none of us will live to see the day — but this ancient symbol of energy and vitality deserves a better fate than to be forever associated with its most ignominious appropriator. As a typical Microsoft product lasts only about 2.5 years perhaps their decision here is the correct one. ; )

Interesting comments. The Jewish posters protect their interests, others try to give thei own opinions. I do not understand all the fuss about the symbol being removed from the font list, if it has been around since before Hitler. It only offends a group of people. The Jews. And the rest of the world should care why again? There's too many nations, cultures and people getting offended day in and day out so why should we make exceptions? How much longer do we have to feel sorry for the Jewish people? Everyone has apologized from muslims to christians, and those who did the crimes have paid for it, are paying for it, others that have nothing to do with it will keep paying the Jewish people for the faults of Hitler. I feel sorry for those who lost their lives in concentration camps, wheather they were Jewish or not, I feel sorry for those who lived to see the horrors, but I do not feel a damn bit for the young generation of Jews that was born in a different world, yet they take their cause as if they lived the concentration camps. My grandfathers died in a communist jail cell. Yes I hate communism, but I have moved on. My family suffered for 5 decades under the communist rule, but I have moved on. I feel sorry about my family members that suffered from excile camps to jail etc, but I am of a generation that didn't fully experience the wrath of communism, and my kid one day will most likely not even hear about it beyond some school history books. My point is that despite the loss of life, the world has given the Jews the ability to recuperate beyond anyone's imagination. They wealth and power they have is unimaginable and second only to maybe the Anglo-Saxons, but not for long. So my question is, is a typographical symbol included in a word proccessing application, which I didn't even know was there until this article so threatening to them? Should I be scared next time I see a red star that communism is taking over or should I not pay attention? In my opinion: It's good being Jewish right now. Stop complaining.

> A number of posters here seem to think
> that the use of the swastika as a tool
> of hatred is something in the past.

No it's not. It's used by Jews all the time, like in this MS case.

The few drunk skinheads pose a infinitely small threat to the world than the rogue state of Israel.

> May the day soon come when it is not.

What a load of ballony.

--

> How much longer do we have to feel sorry for the Jewish people?

Until the populace of the only remaining superpower snaps out of the hypnosis. Damn voting peons.

My father's family perished at the hands of the Turks. My grandfather escaped from a concentration camp by bartering his dentistry tools. But the Axis of Evil (US, Israel, Turkey*) thrives. Interesting, that one: the three big religions united against justice.

* I'm not counting the UK since it's practically a US state.

hhp

> if DDB could demonstrate that they
> could sell VW Beetles to Jews,
> then they could sell anything.

Indicating that Money is the real god. Constant whining about the swastika is really just a means to attain heaven.

The poor people of Israel are being used as cannon fodder to make the rich richer. Just like in the US. It's a damn shame democracy only makes things worse, not better.

hhp

The Jewish posters protect their interests, others try to give their own opinions.

Excuse me? I thought everyone was 'giving their own opinion': how come you ascribe this extra agenda to the Jewish posters of protecting their interests? The posters to this discussion who have identified themselves as Jewish have voiced a variety of opinions: they have not even agreed with each other, let alone collectively 'protected their interest'.

I do not understand all the fuss about the symbol being removed from the font list, if it has been around since before Hitler. It only offends a group of people. The Jews.

I'm not Jewish and the Nazi swastika offends me (see comments above re. interpretational context to understand what I mean by 'Nazi swastika'). I am not personally offended by the swasktikas in the MS Bookshelf 7 symbol font, because I understand that they lack interpretational context: they are not obviously included as Nazi symbols, which is enough for me, but nor are they obviously not, and this lack of context is cited by MS in their decision to remove the characters.

In my opinion: It's good being Jewish right now.

What's so good? In Israel they've spent 55 years fighting for their survival, and in the past five years, the world's media have recorded the largest growth in antisemitism since the 1930s. That's not my opinion: that's documented fact. This antisemitism is being deliberately fostered, e.g. by the publication, mass-distribution and televisastion of The protocols of the elders of Zion. I think it is probably quite an alarming time for the average Jewish person, especially those who disagree with the policies of the Israeli government but who are still the targets of antisemitism that pretends to be motivated by sympathy for the Palestinians.

> What's so good?

You can get away with murder.

hhp

Martin, you're ignoring the fact that it's been "good being Jewish right now" at many points throughout our history, and yet, invariably, our fortunes have tragically reversed. The Holocaust is only the most recent example. Believe me, I count my blessings that my life is as good as it is right now, because I'm pretty damned sure the other shoe will drop once again. Maybe not in my lifetime, maybe not in my country, but I'm sure it will happen.

So let the swastika return to its former meaning; our future persecution will probably take place under a different banner entirely, emblazoned with a symbol we either haven't seen yet or, like the swastika before Hitler, one we'd never guess would be used against us.

Further to my last comment, you can begin to understand perhaps why antisemitism is not the result of Israeli policy but a contributing factor to it and one of the barriers to peace in the Middle East. The more Jews feel targeted as Jews, the more likely they are to support men like Ariel Sharon. This is borne out by Israeli election results: the more attacks on civilians in Israel, the more descration of Jewish cemeteries and attacks on synagogues in other countries, the better the hardliners do in the polls. Not suprisingly, Jewish people want to feel secure and protected -- who doesn't? -- and if they do not feel secure and protected they will continue to elect war criminals like Sharon to fight for them.

Hrant, seriously. Just walk away.

> our future persecution will probably ...

Let's work on the present first, shall we - after all, that's where the future comes from. The Palestinians are being opressed right now.

> Jewish people want to feel secure and protected

Then stop opressing others.

--

The good news is that Israeli Jews are much more sensible than US Jews, the latter being more than ready to use the former as cannon fodder. You try living nextdoor to people who you make miserable, and hence make you miserable in turn: you'll quickly realize it's not worth it. The problem is that mass media is on the side of the cannon-packers, and it's very good at keeping dissent in line.

hhp

Then stop opressing others.

Now who is refusing to recognise grey areas or the conundrums of life?

The idea that animosity toward Israel is as a result of Israeli oppression of others is historically indefensible. When the Arab armies attacked the nascent Israeli territory in 1948 -- when newly arrived Holocaust survivors from Europe were given shovels to defend themselves with because there were not enough guns --, was that in response to Israeli oppression?

If Israel stops oppressing others -- and you have no disagreement from me that the Palestinians in the occupied territories are oppressed --, will the Arab states and Iran recognise Israel's right to exist? Or is the very existence of Israel an act of oppression? Will the Arab states and Iran give up on their stated goal of destroying Israel and pushing the Jews into the sea? They've been defeated militarily so many times that they are unlikely to risk open war with Israel again, but will they stop funding terrorism? Will they stop promoting antisemitism in their government controlled media? Most importantly, perhaps, will the oil-rich Arab states show some real sympathy for the Palestinians and start trying to improve the lives of ordinary people instead of encouraging them to kill themselves in suicide attacks? You talk about Israeli Jews being cannon fodder for rich, North American Jews, but the Palestinians are being used as pawns by the Arab states to pursue a war that they have already lost repeatedly.

A lasting peace will only come from serious commitment on both sides and, as France and Germany have shown since WWII, from mutual prosperity. That is going to need mutual recognition, and a final end to the Arab aim of destroying Israel. You can't demand peace for yourself if you don't actually want peace and your hope is still to kill your enemy. Israel indeed needs to learn that there are responsibilities that come with victory, one of which is mercy, but the Arab states and the PLO need to admit that they've been defeated and sue for peace in a genuine way, not as a cynical tactic to postpone the next battle.

> will the Arab states and Iran
> recognise Israel's right to exist?

The Beirut agreement of this year said yes - for the first time. It's telling that Israel totally ignored it, even though it is such an important potential turning point.

There will always be radicals -on both sides- who don't want compromise, but the bulk of any population just want to live a normal life. When you stop opressing everybody in a given population, support for radicals goes down to manageable levels. The fallacy is believing that the average Arab wants Israel to stop existing - this is simply not true - it's a figment of the imagination - Jewish persecution syndrome. Even Arabs who like that idea know that's not a real possibility, especially now with the USSR gone - they just want Israel to stop taking advantage of its mindshare hold among the citizenry of the US to kill them and keep stealing land.

hhp

The Beirut agreement of this year said yes - for the first time. It's telling that Israel totally ignored it, even though it is such an important potential turning point.

I don't think Israeli's ignored it: they just don't believe it yet. Arafat has repeatedly sworn off terrorism, but his faction continues to be directly implicated in attack after attack. The Arab states that agreed to recognise Israel in the Beirut agreement continue to fund Arafat, Hamas, etc.

I sincerely hope that Israelis can come to believe and trust the statement of the Beirut agreement, but you can see why they are sceptical.

There will always be radicals -on both sides- who don't want compromise, but the bulk of any population just want to live a normal life.

On this last point, even you and I agree. But the radicals are running the show on all sides, and in the Arab states the 'bulk of the population' is being encouraged to blame an international Zionist conspiracy for all their problems -- even domestic problems very obviously caused by the corruption of their own leadership. That doesn't look like genuine commitment to peace to me, and it certainly doesn't look that way to the Israelis who respond by electing men like Sharon.

Red and green make brown.

Aaah, yes, the wonderul Foreign Policy. Second only to the Jerusalem Post in objectivity. Just with a nice neutral- and authoritative*-sounding name, plus bigger words for the literate among the highly brainwashable peons.

* Certainly, Americans have always been experts in foreign policy. And I'm a lead acrobat in Cirque du Soleil.

hhp

Sadly, many of these posts illustrate that the symbol has lost none of its power to inspire hatred. Very sad.

And exactly who is most responsible for not letting it fade away as such?

hhp

Not the answer you want, Hrant, but probably accurate is in this article:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=132
from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which combats hate groups.

According to it the connection between current anti-Israel use of the swastika and the Nazis goes back to the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. I believe it has merged with Al Quaeda.

According to the article the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem went to Cairo in the late forties, along with many other pro-Nazis. I would guess that the use of swastikas to label Israel as evil originated in the Egyptian press in the 50's, but I don't know this for a fact.

Oooh, the Evil Al Queda. It's all their fault - all of it! What a convenient scapegoat. Don't try to distract us - I will prevent it every time.

Repeat: Who is responsible for the continued presence of the swastika as a symbol of hate in the psyche of the citizenry of the remaining superpower? You are - because it works to your benefit*. Muslim Brotherhood blah blah blah 80 years ago is tertiary - and you know it. Go spin some cluster bombs.

* As I've said before, this is no sin itself. The sin in abusing the great position of power you're already in to kill and steal - even if you choose to think it's self-defence. You cannot gain security this way - only more misery. You have to learn to live with others.

hhp

Here is a good bet as to who is most responsible (from the above cited article):

"Johannes von Leers, one of the Third Reich's most prolific Jew-baiters, ... converted to Islam and changed his name to Omar Amin after he took up residence in Cairo in 1955.

"Formerly Goebbels' right-hand man, Amin became a top official in the Egyptian Information Ministry, which employed several European fascists who churned out hate literature and anti-Jewish broadcasts."

The more you look at individuals, the less you will see the big picture. Bush and Osama aren't the real problem (and neither are Jews). In the end, the essential problem is materialism.

hhp

Who is responsible for the continued presence of the swastika as a symbol of hate in the psyche of the citizenry of the remaining superpower?

Is this a trick question or just a stupid one? Who is responsible? -- anyone whose ever seen a single documentary or read a single book about WWII for whom there is no alternative meaning for the symbol. Seriously, no one is doing hard work to maintain the swastika as a symbol of hate in peoples' psyches, because for most people in Europe and North America that's simply what it is: their only association with the symbol is as the Nazi logo. Sure, if you're Buddhist or Hindu or have a particular interest in mediaeval Baltic culture, etc. you will have additional associations for the swastika, but most people in Europe and North America have only one association: Nazism. You don't need a Jewish conspiracy to maintain that: all you need is a modicum of knowledge about the past 80 years of European history.

Hrant, you asked who was responsible, i.e. what person or persions, and then when William starts naming people like Amin (and I would add Alois Brunner, the Nazi mass-murderer whom Syria sheltered and appointed advisor to their intelligence services) you suddenly don't want to talk about people any more and retreat to an abstraction.

...yes ladies and gentlemen, the razor-tongued Armenian is on the ropes ...his arguments are becoming more and more incoherent ...yes, he's down for a mandatory eight count ...but wait! one referee says the Jew and the Englishman have illegally double-teamed him ...now pandemonium breaks out as the referees argue the rules, and the crowd joins in ...What excitement here at the WWF (World Word-Wrestling Federation) ...But wait, the Armenian rises...

I'd like to underline a thing: I wasn't suggesting a "kitsch" tratment in ANY WAY. I hate kitsch and find it unrespectful in any given form.
What I was simply suggesting was a change of perspective within our community of designer, not using a pink swastika for a chocolate bar. I'm not a lobotomized US citizen, for now.
And of course I know the terrain is tricky because I'd never want to any way offend even a single Hebrew person.

But, as with any "image recovery" or conceptual design thing, the risk will always be there. Just think of the bailamme poor Jonathan Barnbrook caused when he named his typeface Manson. A while after the Emigre first release, a wave of Manson paranoia raised in the US: Time magazine incidentally did at the time an article talking about Guns'n'Roses album "The Spaghetti Incident" (which included a song written by Charles Manson) and Emigre turned from famous to famigerate, accused to "cash on sufferig". This, of course, was crazy. Rudy changed the name, and in the end even Jon agreed, understanding how reality can be twisted and bended at will by journalistic sensationalism.

So, don't start using Swastikas to sell your chewing-gums, condoms, cellular phones, and whatever crap US culture has to offer today.

Hey, I can't believe it. Even with my far-off-topic post, I'm paradoxically bringing back to the topic this post. Oh, shouldn't we talk of the visual use of the Swastika? This is not a History thread, after all. Okay talking about Nazism, Holocaust, WW2, whatever, but let's not get too off-topic. What do you say?

Thank you for your reply, Chesire Dave, anyway. We need balanced people, and I talk too much.

> no one is doing hard work

Bull.

People believe what you tell them, and lobby groups get tons of funding to skew democracies their way - this isn't CONSPIRACY, it's old news.

People would forget the bad tangent in the lineage of the swastika much sooner if the constant public flogging wasn't so useful to the Jewish lobby.

It's really pretty simple, and no amount of spin will change reality. Spin will only cause more misery until the tables are turned, and people like William get burried in the rubble of their fortresses. Then we Armenians will sadly say: you should have supported the other small peoples of the world, not try to dominate them.

Armenians are also an ancient, highly dispersed, rich global minority who are strongly resistant to assimilation. Why are we not hated? Think about it.

hhp

Armenians are also an ancient, highly dispersed, rich global minority who are strongly resistant to assimilation. Why are we not hated? Think about it.

Armenians are Christians (both Orthodox and Catholic). They have not been subject to almost 2000 years worth of prejudice, blood libel, and religious bigotry. As Benjamin Disraeli sardonically put it 'Nineteen centuries of Christian love have taken a toll'. Blaming antisemitism on Jews -- 'people hate them, so they must be guilty of something' -- is illogical and ahistorical. Jewish political influence is a recent phenomenon (post-dating the Jewish Emancipation of 1848 in most European countries), the existence and actions of the Israeli state even more so. If you are going to lay the blame for antisemitism on these things, how do you explain the hatred of poor, disenfranchised Jews both now and in the past?

Armenians were subjected to something much worse than the Holocaust: after 600 years of being good Turkish citizens, we were not only reduced to almost half our population, our legally owned ancestral lands were taken from us. The Jews gained not only land, but a country as a result of the [necessary] backlash against the Holocaust - and I have no problem with that - Jews need a place to live just like everybody else. But most significantly, Europeans are still paying the price (both in stigma and in Euros) for the Holocaust, while the Armenian Genocide has yet to be properly recognized - even though Hitler actually used it as "successful precedent" to push the Holocaust forward. More power to the Jews for all that - that's not the issue. The main problem is that they've become a reincarnation of the Nazis. A lesser problem (to most of the world if not to Armenians) is that the Jewish lobby and well as the Israeli government spend an inordinate amount of effort to prevent proper recognition of the Armenian Genocide. What does that say? You can't explain it through some sort of a geopolitical and certainly not a spiritual bond between Israel and Turkey - there's something very nasty behind that "little" detail.

--

As for religion, it's always been the layman's excuse - it's used to hide the true motivation behind persecution: materialism.

--

Of course I'm not blaming Jews for anti-semitism - that's like saying they "deserved" the Holocaust. I'm in fact interested neither in blame nor in what people "deserve" - that gets too metaphysical. I'm interested in reducing misery, and I simply think the deep -and esentially misplaced- persecution sydrome among Jews causes them to adopt an antagonistic stance. History is one thing, but the present is another. And I don't even have a problem with Jews currently having a disproportionate amount of influence - it's what they're doing with it that's destructive, not least to themselves. They need to back off: with their powerful army, nuclear arsenal (estimated at 200 warheads) and support of the big bad US, they can really be safe and prosperous within their legal borders. Of course the reality is not that simple: like how do you get those loonie Settlers to come back to earth? The people of Israel have to put their foot down, and put the radicals in line.

Maybe their belief that they're the "Chosen People" makes them feel like they can -or maybe even have to- do this. If so, such religious fundamentalism is just not gonna cut it, not when you can no longer get away with wholesale race extermination - like the Manifest Destiny crap that makes the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, and even Stalin's massacres seem secondary. Deep down, the annihilation of Native Americans is the single most significant stigma the world is facing, since the remaining superpower still lives in denial of it, and that makes it an immature, dangerous juvenile. No wonder Americans support the proxy opression of Palestinians: it makes them feel better about their own past. Like a crazed despot killing more innocents to forget about the previous ones.

More introspection is needed, not more bullets.

hhp

Let's hope MS doesn't decide the letter "K" is offensive to decendents of slaves and offers a ptch to remove it from all fonts!

The swastika is used in the manga Blade of the Immortal (a story based in fuedal Japan, long before Hitler's grandparents were born) from Dark Horse WITH a disclaimer exlpaining the origin/meaning of it and the title has contiued publishing monthly without so much as one objection.

>let's not get too off-topic
My comments on history are in direct response to Hrant's false and defamatory statements on the Jewish people. If Hrant stops falsely and grossly maligning us, I will stop objecting.

>Stop complaining.
Jews tried not complaining. The past strategy of survival in an often hostile Europe was to keep our heads down, and move when things got too bad. The Holocaust taught us that this was not adequate. When people repeat anti-Semitic lies in an international forum that I participate in, I will complain. When they don’t, I won’t.

> …they've become a reincarnation of the Nazis. … you can no longer get away with wholesale race extermination.

Hrant, you mix reasonable points with horrendous slander. This is an echo of anti-Semitic lies. The Israelis are not trying to exterminate anybody. If they were dedicated to ‘exterminating’ Palestinians, God forbid, they would have exploded an atomic weapon in Nablus. They have killed about 3,000 and have had 1,000 killed. This is not genocide, and insinuating this is deeply wrong, and an incitement to further violence.

What is going on is an ugly, brutal civil war. Especially as you are not a party to the conflict, your one-sided compassion is really a sin. Palestinian blood and Jewish blood are the same color and the suffering on both sides is real, horrible and lamentable, and deserving of compassion.

In my own view, the Jewish occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been a horrible mistake enforced at times by brutal and even immoral means. And a lot of Jewish Israelis have said the same. This does not change the reality of a history of Arab aggression against Israel. The basic facts of the story are simple. After the Nazis wiped out nearly half of the world Jewish population, the United Nations approved a Jewish state as a refuge for Jews in British Palestine. The Jews accepted the partition between Jewish and Arab areas but Arab countries did not. They have waged a fifty year war declaring they would drive Jews into the sea. Whenever Arabs have finally been willing to make peace, the Israelis have concluded peace treaties, in particular with Egypt and Jordan.

Israel was even willing to bring back Arafat, their sworn enemy, in 1993 when he seemed willing to make peace. And the parties were near peace in 2000. Then when the truculent Sharon went to strut around the Temple Mount – rude, but perfectly peaceful – Arafat took the pretext to start a new campaign of murder in the market places, festival halls, nightclubs and universities of Israel.

We, the whole world, need peace between the Israelis and Arabs. Any even modestly fair person will see that there are rights and wrongs on both sides. One-sided false and malicious statements against Israel are not going to help bring peace.

"Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu v’al kol yisrael." May He who makes peace in the heavens, bring peace to us and to Israel.

Chanukah, 2003/5764

> you are not a party to the conflict

My building was pillaged by Palestinians and phosphor-bombed by Jews. My parents still live in that building. I'm much more a part of this than you are - your only interest is validation of your hermetic faith. Justifying fascism, rape and theft is your only recourse on that path. REPENT.

I'm not one-sided. As I've said before, Jews need a safe and prosperous home, and the legal borders of Israel are the most harmonious (or least discordant) place for that. But get over your persecution syndrome, so that you can live as part of the World, on your land.

--

"Dzour nsdink, shidag khosink."
Let's sit crooked, but talk straight:

Now that you have the US in your puppet strings, the Arabs cannot hurt you as much as you're hurting them. Pull back to your legal borders and then you have a chance. Don't push the world into more hatred. Learn your place in reality, over and above your place in your Book. Abandon your delusions of Greater Israel, or die in infamy.

The same goes for fundamentalists of any religion. The World comes before the illusions you choose to believe. Have the balls to submit to REALITY.

hhp

Hrant, did you read William's message, or were you too busy composing your response in your head to pay attention to what he wrote? Your reply looks plain batty in response to William's consideration of Irael's errors and sins ('occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been a horrible mistake enforced at times by brutal and even immoral means'). It hardly looks to me as if William has 'delusions of Greater Israel'.

Pardon me if I'm much less interested in William than in the false sense of victimization he conveys, and the issues I bring up which he distracts from.

BTW, is it a coincidence that both of you are highly religious? I don't think so. It's funny, you're constantly asking me to "prove" things, while your entire foundation is unprovable!

hhp

Hrant, I wouldn't mind you personal insults so much if you would actually stand your ground for once, but as soon as someone starts presenting counter-evidence you drop your line of argument and then accuse the other person of distraction. Do you really think that the readers of Typographic are stupid enough to be taken in by such pathetic tactics?

Since you are not interested in either the people you are conversing with or what they actually say, I'm going to stop now. You can mouth your increasingly overblown and silly rhetoric into the void of your own interests. You don't deserve conversation.

Deserve, shmeserve.
People are dying and all you (plural) are interested in is expressing and resolving the formalities of your faiths, for which there can never be any evidence at all. Systems, you're killing for systems. You make a system and it helps you stay focused. Nevermind that it all falls apart in the context of other people, people living on the same planet now, not 2000 years ago.

hhp

The pathetic irony of you blabbering about killing is that William and I wouldn't be taking you to task if you were not making outrageous statements that incite hate. Neither William nor I have advocated killing anyone, and only you have been making hateful and vicious statements about whole groups of people. Now, having failed in every other line of discussion, you fall back on insulting our religion, which neither of us have appealed to. But perhaps you're not talking to us -- perhaps you really imagine that you are addressing the massed hordes of Jews and Catholics -- but no, there's just William and me here. So are you engaging in discussion with us or not?

The only thing that my religion has to do with this discussion is that it gives me a sad familiarity with the methods and content of antisemitic discourse. The double standards, the perennial suspicion, the ingrained and ignorant prejudice: these are all ancient and familiar. If there is anything positive to be made of this heritage it is the ability to identify antisemitism. Not for the first time in this discussion, I find myself wondering whether you simply lack the perspective to see your comments in the larger context in which I see them.

I am not insulting your religion, or William's ethnicity. I am insulting your (plural) fundamentalism. People should be free to believe what they wish - but not at the expense of the World balance. It's all about Balance, not Truth. This is what you as descendants of the Romans lost from the Greeks: pragmatism. Being human comes before being Jewish, Muslim, even atheist; sometimes you have to tolerate -even embrace- a god you don't believe in, because religion should be a means, not an end. Are you strong enough to admit the untenability of individualism?

I am not anti-semitic. You (plural) are anti-humanity. There is no humanity without compromise, and you and William are not ready for compromise, for a very simple reason: you don't need to be. Fortunately, the innocent Jews being blown up do need to compromise, and they realize this. Which is why I have faith not in something long-dead people once wrote down in self-importance, but in the ability of Jews "on the ground" to put their current antagonism, paranoia and persecution syndrome behind them, and remove from power their owners who pack them in cannons.

--

The first step in your own healing John is to simply admit that the West -with its total dedication to materialism- is ruining the world. I think you can do this because you're spiritual yourself - just don't lose sight of the whole.

hhp

Hrant, what I'm objecting to at the moment is the fact that you don't actually seem to be talking to William and me: you are talking to some imaginary entity representing 'the West'. I don't think either William or I are fundamentalists, and I certainly don't think either of us have said anything in this discussion that suggested unwillingness to compromise, except unwillingness to compromise with hatred. We've both acknowledged that the Palestinians are being treated terribly (although I've also noted that they are treated terribly by their Arab brothers as well as by the Israelis), and that Israel has made many mistakes and acted immorally. Both of us have expressed a desire for a lasting peace and mutual prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians; and we both acknowledge that this means a negotiated settlement, i.e. a compromise. Unlike you, however, we make an effort to understand why this compromise is difficult for the people who have to make it. Antisemitism, deliberately fostered by the Arab governments, is one of the things making compromise difficult, because it understandably makes it difficult for the Israelis to trust the Arab states and the Palestinian Authority. As I said earlier, antisemitism is not caused by the situation in the Middle East: it is one of the factors in the situation.

Now, are you willing to compromise? Do you acknowledge that the Arab states share in the responsibility for the situation in the Middle East? That antisemitism pre-exists the state of Israel and has been utilised by the enemies of Israel?

As for materialism, I think it is a very great evil: probably a much greater evil than you think it is, because it not only is ruining the world but also tempts many millions of people away from God. I strongly dislike materialism and its playmate, capitalism, not least because they are responsible for Protestantism and the erosion of Catholic economic and social teaching. Remember, the pre-capitalist West was the Catholic West: with its own set of problems and its own sins,