The Jewish Protection League just put out a communiqué announcing that the swastika is no longer a Jew-specific symbol of hate, so everybody can just chill the hell out about the swastikas everywhere, because the chances are good that the swastika in question is not even about you, if you are Jewish. But it might be about you if you are literally anything else, including Mexican or gay or Turkish or 16th Century English settlers in America or black people or cops or the Chinese or, in Russia, anybody but very white Slavic Russians. It is also commonly used as a symbol of hate against the turtle, itself a symbol of hate (in nature). Who knew that the Internet habit of calling everybody else “Hitler” would somehow spread to illiterate neck-tattooed fucktards who somehow managed to get a can of spray paint or at least a Sharpie ™? Is this because everybody’s got the iPhones now?
The swastika now shows up so often as a generic symbol of hatred that the Anti-Defamation League, in its annual tally of hate crimes against Jews, will no longer automatically count its appearance as an act of anti-Semitism.
“The swastika has morphed into a universal symbol of hate,” said Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy organization. “Today it’s used as an epithet against African-Americans, Hispanics and gays, as well as Jews, because it is a symbol which frightens.”
“Frightens” is kind of an inaccurate word, because nobody has been “frightened” by swastika graffiti since about 1978, but whatever. The bigger point is that you need a trash-culture forensics specialist to figure out what, if anything, the modern idiot intends when he scrawls a (usually backwards) swastika, often seconds after marking the same surface with his gang name (“George”) and prepaid cell-phone number. These are just three things the guy can kind of convey through crude lines and shapes!
But unlike the New York Times, which will literally reprint any press release you send it — after adding the names of seven or eight reporters and bureaus to the top, along with a headline like, “On Walls, New Questions About an Old Symbol” — here at Wonkette World Headquarters we actually investigate things, using Google News.
So here’s today’s batch of “Oh Noes they putted a swastika somewhere” articles from the world’s news media:
- In a goofy twist, some actual German people in Canada somewhere have been annoyed by swastikas painted on their car and some building (their house?) in their neighborhood. [CBC News]
- Meanwhile, in a completely different part of Canada, Chinese people are upset because swastikas have apparently been used as an anti-Chinese symbol. [Richmond Province]
- Authorities in an eastern section of Russia have banned the entirety of YouTube, because of a YouTube video featuring Russian skinheads waving swastika signs and threatening ethnic minorities in Russia. (Also Russia doesn’t want any YouTube or blogs or Internet, period, because people use it to criticize the police-state kleptocracy.) [AFP]
- And in Warsaw, some troublemaker “artist” put up a banner of a hot & sexy naked Mickey Mouse, with her (?) buttocks rising provocatively in the sky, beneath a giant swastika because why not? [Christian Science Monitor]
- Most shocking of all was the use of a swastika in anti-turtle graffiti in some park in Nebraska, the midwestern state known for its simmering anti-animal hate crimes, “from the swastika on the oversized fake turtle in a park under construction in Antelope Valley to the panda somebody painted on an Antelope Valley wall last winter.” What? [Lincoln Journal Star]
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Well, pandas are the hatiest hate symbol of all.
Oh crap. You know that graphic is going show up at the next Tea Bagger rally.
Glenn Beck just shat himself.
This may derail pending legislation in Lincoln changing the state name to “Nebraswastika” and making the skinhead the state bird.
Now I have a good small talk topic for that ADL gala tonight.
You know who else has been hated-on by Teh Swastika? Anybody who has ever flown in or out of or lives near the Denver airport, apparently.
http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Denver_Airport.html#
I loved the Jewish Protection League booth at Comic-Con.
At long last! We can finally all agree on something! All of us – Caucasians, Canooks, Chineses, Latinos, browns, blacks, whites and chartreuses – have found common ground: we all hate each other; everybody hates everyone else, regardless of race, creed or color. We are united in our hatred and distrust of one another. The democratization of bigotry and fucktardery is truly a wonderful thing.
Anti-Turtle? Clearly people trying to stop the power of The One Alvin Greene.
This is of course pointless. One day a man decided he would kill Alvin Greene and so he began to run after him. Alvin never changed his slow walk but no matter how fast the killer ran Alvin just went further and further away. You can not catch The Turtle with hate.
“But unlike the New York Times, which will literally reprint any press release you send it — after adding the names of seven or eight reporters and bureaus to the top, along with a headline like, “On Walls, New Questions About an Old Symbol”…”
See, Ken, this is why you need to post more often. Awesome.
[re=628493]populucious[/re]: What about elephants?
“… because it is a symbol which frightens.” I think that newspaper just didn’t have room to spell out “engenders contempt.” Pitiable, maybe. Scary? Nah.
This is off-topic, but:
I just sent my friend in Kabul a birthday card.
The return address is “Julian Assange/Editor-In-Chief/Wikileaks.com/P.O. Box 4080/University of Melbourne/Victoria 3052/Australia.”
The contents are a note thanking my friend for “NOT sending the 82,351 documents, in .pdf format . . . ,” etc.
God, I am SUCH an ASSHOLE.
[re=628508]HedonismBot[/re]:
“and EVERYONE hates the Jews!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY
[Mark Russell wasn't good enough to carry Tom Lehrer's jockstrap.]
Never did understood skinheads and whatnot picking Nazis as their tough-guy icon. Didn’t the Nazis get stomped? Wouldn’t the real tough guys be like the 101st Airborne or the Red Army?
Hell, if the Nazis would have held on a couple more months, they would have gotten flatted by a bunch of nerds armed with Marchant calculators. I guess “neo-physicist” doesn’t have the same ring.
Russian skinheads brandishing swastikas — good fucking gravy, if their grandparents could see them now. This is what happens when you skip history class to go smoke meth with your idiot friends.
Don’t forget KKKatie in San Francisco. The Krazy Kooky Kid was just arrested after trying to paint swastikas on an actual black guy. I’m almost confident that could be true.
Besides, everyone knows Hilter was a liberal, just like the ACLU and healthcare.
[re=628517]Malketeer[/re]: In virtually every engagement in which there was anything close to numerical parity between the Wehrmacht and the opposition (the Red Army; the Brits; the U.S.), the Wehrmacht kicked the Allies’ ass.
In the first Winter of the Russian campaign, in front of Moscow, the Wehrmacht fought like few armies in history. The Red Army ultimately beat them, but it was not able to do so until it had an overwhelming numerical and logistical advantage, e.g., Operation Uranus at Stalingrad.
[Nb. A word to the wise: Never leave your flanks protected by lightly armed Romanians. Even against the Russians.]
The 101 Airborne (a light infantry division at best) was up against second- to third-rate troops in Normandy (some of whom were Russian volunteers!); and were largely by-passed at Bastogne.
Sure, sure, they were Nazi ASSHOLES (about which I am expert. The ASSHOLE part, that is.) But militarily, they were better.
That said, the typical Wehrmacht Feldwebel would have shot the typical US Skinhead while resting between shoving the next load of Juden into the ditch in front of the MG 42.
So there is a Common Ground to be found, after all.
Colonel-General Neilist von Neilist
Watching That Stratego Board In A YMCA Near You
[re=628557]Neilist[/re]: Then why was Model able to checkmate Zhukov in Operation Mars?
Shows what I know. I read the headline and thought, oh, finally the Japanese Buddhists can finally go about their ancient Dharma worship without getting harassed.
“The bigger point is that you need a trash-culture forensics specialist to figure out what, if anything, the modern idiot intends when he scrawls a (usually backwards) swastika…”
Charles Manson is the tragically misunderstood ur-moran of modern American idiots.
You see?
Affirmative Action WORKS.
From the swastika
On the oversized fake turtle
In a park under construction
In Antelope Valley
Oo the panda somebody painted on an Antelope Valley wall last winter
Huh, I thought it was “To the shores of Tripoli”, but it’s been a while since I played saxophone in the marching band.
In Dharmic religions the swastika is the symbol for eternal harmony. Yin and yang I guess.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re saying that I can intimidate all of the browns, blacks, Jews, gheys, and various and sundry unter-menschen in my neighborhood with one easy symbol? Thanks, Wonkette! Now I won’t have to write “wetback” on my hand so I remember how to spell it!
Is the Jewish Protection League like the Justice League but, you know, more nebbishy?
P.S. I can say this because I’m a Jew. And even if I weren’t I have Jewish friends, ergo, I cannot be an anti-Semite.
[re=628565]Darkness[/re]: I thought, finally the Navajos would have their symbol of harmony back.
They had to stop weaving it into rugs, of course, around 1940ish.
Dont know about the spraypaint medium.
[re=628493]populucious[/re]: hey…
[re=628635]Rajul[/re]: We have a secret handshake and The Hebrew Hammer is our leader.
[re=628557]Neilist[/re]:
<iThe 101 Airborne (a light infantry division at best) was up against second- to third-rate troops in Normandy (some of whom were Russian volunteers!); and were largely by-passed at Bastogne.
Oh! You just better stand down on that BS my man. That’s the US fuckin’ Army your talking about there and nobody gets away with slandering Uncle Sams bastard nephews.
The reason the 101st was a light infantry Div is because they were airborne and they don’t make parachutes for tanks.
Bastogne was also on the German axis of advance, right in the gun sights of 9th Panzer Army group, if I’m not mistaken. They never bypassed Bastogne, the only all weather roads on the entire front ran through the town, their forward edge of battle ground to a halt thirty clicks west of Bastogne because they couldn’t move petrol up to the tanks. The weather cleared, the Army Air Corp pulverized the German armor and the entire sorry effort slunk back across the original engagement line.
And the 101st STILL held Bastogne.
That’s some serious Bullshit your chatting, Neillist, I’m going to chalk it up to the cheap Australian beer talking.
Little known fact: the swastika was originally meant as a life-like sketch of a panda’s anus. You can look it up!
[re=628712]dijetlo[/re]: Thanks, dijetlo. I would only add that the 101st was not alone at Bastogne, but even with the other Allied troops in the Bulge, the Nazos had pronounced numerical superiority and way more armor on hand. The Germans also threw in the very best troops they could drag in from every theater and put them up against Allied force who–with the exception of the 101st, were either green or resting-up-from-being-mauled, understrength divisions. And the citizen soldier GIs whupped their Nazi butts.
And what the Russians proved on the Eastern front was, don’t invade Russia, period. Napoleon illustrated that little lesson very well — the Russians beat him exactly the way they beat Hitler (who thought he was smarter than Napoleon): give ground until the meat grinder is at full capacity, then send in the peasants aflame with bloody rage and nothing left to lose.
Of course, there’s that other factor, which I learned on the Daily Show: The Nazis were gay, thus vicious but shortsighted killers.
Fun fact: very white people in Russia often get suspected of being crypto-Estonians or some other Finnic ethnicity and affectionately called a variety of unsavory names. So it’s not enough to be white; you have to be the right shade of white. Not too white, not too dark. The sweet spot’s around 86.7%.
[re=628594]weejee[/re]: Quite true. The suburb where I grew up was 65% Jewish and the remaining 35% consisted of about a dozen different groups vying for the title of Largest Ethnic Minority, including a large South Asian contingent. More than one Indian mom had peach or mint green guest towel sets embroidered with ecru swastikas. They were usually a hostess gift from an Aunt Lakshmi or Grandmother Patel, and were only put out for the same when they visited, but every now and then a daughter would have a sleepover party and one of the Jewish girls would come across the towels in the linen closet. Fortunately, most Jewish moms in our town knew that pastel swastikas embroidered on the household linens of respected Indian matrons have nothing to do with Nazis or Jewish people, and many were sufficiently well-read that they could explain the swastika’s ancient origins to their scandalized daughters.
I was going to blame Bill Gates but I can go with Steve Jobs.
I don’t believe this. Why would Foxman ever give up anything related to his golden goose? Especially the swastika? Is he retiring? Perhaps he discovered he has a brain tumor (ala Lee Atwater) and wants to make amends by recognizing other people’s suffering.
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