Wow, and >I< am the one jumping to conclusions? I am not quick to believe anything, but I can still think that painting this crap on a playground is terribly disrespectful, without needing to project who exactly might have done it for what reasons. Maybe it’s like the Trump “satire” getting posted to Facebook, or a complete false-flag operation, and either way it’s still lame.
As a tantrika, I am largely pro-swastika as a symbol for harmony. But context is everything. And the context here is not looking very good.
OTOH - capitulation to attempted intimidation has never been a winning
strategy. It’s not as if some of us haven’t already been shot at just for
existing.
If that’s their expectation - suck it up buttercup. Nagunhappan.
There is a certain irony here, in that the swastika (particularly “backwards” like it is here) is actually a Buddhist symbol. The Nazi “hakenkreuz” swastika faces the other way, and is often turned 45 degrees so it’s on a corner. [edit: oh, I see it’s already been addressed, I should have known.]
Not that it really means anything in this context except that the vandals are clueless on multiple fronts. (I agree, it looks like he tried to draw a swastika and got lost the first time.) My impression is that even though there are a lot of serious hardcore white supremacists out there, there are also a lot of trolls who’ve just glommed on to Nazism as an extension of their assholery – for them drawing a swastika is the non-internet version of linking to goatse.
It is more complicated than that. The Nazi swastika is the orientation most usually associated with Kali, and predates Buddhism by a long time. Kali is the goddess of creation and destruction. The reverse orientation is more associated with Vishnu. Some Indian buildings have the orientations alternating.
Having said this I agree with you - and if the deleted trolley on this thread had stuck to the sensible bit of his first post instead of going off on a complete rant, I would have agreed with him. This looks to me like the work of a 14 year old trying to do a “cool” tag that didn’t come off, and a swastika, to try and look edgy. I could be wrong, but it’s far from the worst I’ve seen.
Even if it’s a dickhole (who arguably may not be a “real” racist) just trolling/courting the masses with a new racist troll tool, I’d posit that the “just ignore it” approach is not the best.
I’d argue that racism shouldn’t be tolerated at any level. Yeah, if this is just some troll kid, then an overreaction just gives him the big flashy attention response that he wants (even if negative). Not ignoring it, but making the statement that whoever did it is a sad little pathetic loser then moving on may be a good approach.
Tolerating this kind of crap on any level normalizes it to some degree, and with our new dear leader, and the people he’s appointing, this is definitely a step in the wrong direction. Already the racist a-holes are emboldened and starting to come out of the woodwork (well, at least more than usual).
I’m holding out hope that it’s going to backfire on them. It’s hard to confront racism when it’s couched in a somewhat abstract debate about law enforcement or poverty. Now, at least, it’s out in the open. They’re showing us what they really stand for, and it’s on display for everyone to see. I don’t want to see anyone be the victim of a hate crime, but every time it happens it advertises the fact that Trump’s movement is a antithetical to basic American values human decency.
Of course, this is all predicated on the notion that Americans are actually capable of learning from their mistakes, and that they won’t just accept hate crimes/speech the way they’ve accepted mass shootings. The worst thing about the moderates who supported Trump is that they suffer the same economic conditions as minorities, but instead of finding common cause, they thew their neighbors under a bus in order to draw specific attention to themselves.
They agreed to kick a Muslim in the face because a grifter with an orange spray tan promised them a job, and hopefully they’re capable of reflecting upon that decision.
Jains in America use three dots instead of their traditional swastika, quite possibly because they spend a large amount of time reflecting on suffering.
