I have a statue in my living room of the Buddha, in the classic earth-touching gesture, with a reverse swastika on his throat.

The symbol was appropriated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

https://www.thebuddhagarden.com/swastikas-buddhist-art.html

The symbol was appropriated, but not by Hitler. It was appropriated by the Christian West to distance itself from Hitler and his bigotry.

This provokes an interesting question then, is it also ok for Christians to use this symbol? I am unfamiliar with its significance in the religion but it appears there was some significance well prior to the nazis, I wonder if it retains any use there still or if it is gone. Nazis had some more direct association with this symbol in Christianity so maybe it is sketchier than the Indian version.

I think that, if you are using it with the best of intentions, and in true honor of its origin, then the symbol belongs to you as much as any.

I own a quilt that my great grandparents brought with them from Germany, which is predominately decorated with hakenkreutzen. They came to the US in the early 1920s, so it was obviously not associated with Naziism.

I’m certainly not going to be throwing it away, and I’ve made a point to show it to my children and explain its significance. But… I’m also not going to be posting photos of it online, or putting it on display in my home. It’s a part of my family’s history that is very easily misinterpreted today, and it’s simply not worth the potential for offense or controversy.

I’ve got a Confederate flag, too, that was allegedly flown over the Arkansas state capitol during the US Civil War. It’s the “first national flag”, which I’m fairly confident most people wouldn’t even associate with the Confederacy without being told what it is. I’m still not going to be displaying it, for much the same reasons.

Your gift is to be remembered for its true meaning, apart from what came.

Keep it, in its purity. Forget the thoughts of others, in its true meaning.

They tried to do the same here in the UK, until a few Hindus complained.

When the Olympics were announced in Tokyo, there was outrage on Reddit about how these Japanese were using the racist swastika as a symbol for their the temples. If course, a few people pointed out that its a religious symbol but they were drowned out by the outrage mob.

Surely context is everything here, no? It’s not the topology of a Swastika that is somehow racist, using a Swastika as a link to the Nazis is. This is generally unambiguous too, in my experience.

I would say a good first-pass filter should apply a strong, but perhaps not overwhelming prior probability to the Swastika being a racist symbol.

Context doesn't matter to the Twitter crowd who canceled this college student for trying to explain the same thing.

[1] https://www.jns.org/opinion/theres-nothing-peaceful-about-th...

[2] https://twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/12860418726710845...