Interesting article. I think the salient point is that the Swastika continues to be used as a symbol by white supremacy groups today. If it was just historical it could be reclaimed but it’s still in use.
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After the war Aldo Raine wanted nothing more than to get back to his old cushy job as chief medical officer at the Swastika Acres retirement home, but fate sometimes has a funny way of playing tricks on you! Starring Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine, Christoph Waltz as Hans ‘The Slipper thief’ Landa, and the biggest kookiest bunch of lovable nazis who all coincidentally have swastikas cut into their foreheads!
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Why don’t they name the subdivision “Strange Lack of Pines”?
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Procrastination Acres?
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I do know the name of my subdivision, it is on the sign as we pull in to the neighborhood. also, everyone calls the neighborhood by name.
I can also tell you that if i was buying a house, where i was going to live for 40 years, and raise my kids, and grow old with my neighbors, i would sure as heck do more than cast a “side-eyed look” while signing my deed.
the fact that this has lasted so long just means that all the people that did notice it while signing their deeds just shrugged and said, well that’s odd, but not odd enough for me to care that my house resides in a neighborhood that shares a name with a symbol meant to represent the slaughtering of people based on their religious beliefs, sexual preference, ability, or skin color.
i agree it is not as visible as some stupid football team with a racist mascot, but i am not a big fan of just shrugging and being fine with offensive stuff just because it is not right out in the open. sometimes the hidden racism is the most dangerous.
Like I said, most neighborhoods, especially older ones, don’t have a sign. None of the areas I used to live in had signs. All those subdivisions have names and if you go to the court house to look up your deed paper work, you can see it and the surrounding area’s names as well as all the property lines. It’s rather interesting how it’s all mapped out.
But most likely no one actually called that area “Swastika Acres”, and thus the fact it showed up on a deed only that they never looked at, I could see why no one bothered to change it until now. Especially when you learn the area was developed in the early 1900s when the swastika was considered good luck as well as a common art deco motif. Going through my grandpa old tools, I found a company that used it as a logo, and it went out of business in the 1910s. Clearly within those contexts, it has nothing to do with the Nazi symbol.
Should they change it? Sure. But I can’t get too excited no one bothered to until now.
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He borrowed the toothbrush moustache style from a famous German race car driver of the early 20th century. You have to wonder what current athlete’s or celebrity’s harmless fashion statement will become a future symbol of genocidal fascism.
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one last comment and then we can agree to disagree.
Think of something you identify yourself as, like your religion, or your skin color, something about you that is important to you.
Now, think about 1/3 of people that also identify with this, your people, being murdered.
pick a symbol and make it the symbol that represents the people and ideology that want nothing but to wipe your kind from the planet.
now, name your neighborhood after that symbol. probably doesn’t give you nice warm and fuzzy feelings.
this exercise might be difficult if you and your people have never experienced anything like this. but as a Jewish person this is what I feel when i hear about Nazis and Swastikas. Any association with them, no matter how small or trivial it may seem to you, is not something i want in any part of my life.
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Though I think it only became the Hitler mustache in retrospect. In the 40s it was such a common style that lots of people sported it, and continued doing so well into the 50s. I think only after it got out of fashion people started to really (solely) associate it with Hitler.
He had the mustache because it was ‘the common man in the street’ mustache, after all.
It would be interesting to know if people already called it a Hitler mustache in the early 50s when it was still a quite common style.
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