What does this badge make you think of? ( Non-Nazi Swastika usage).

My first thought on seeing it was that it should be for a unit that has 777 in it's title. Why, what is it supposed to look like?

 

Does it make you think it has any Fascist conotations?

I did have an idea that that is what you were getting at. I don't however agree. As you have pointed out, this badge dates from the 1st World War, a few years before the rise of facisum [in a PM]. More to the point, most of the emblems and runes used by Fascists groups in the last century adopted symbols that were in use for many of thousands of years before their adoption. They were used for far from sinister uses for all that time, luck, health, fertility and religious meanings.

To see a symbol and automatically associate it with facisum overtones rather than assuming that there may be another historical meaning, is in my opinion putting the cart before the horse and perpetuating that lobsided perspective of perfectly innocent symbolisum.

 

Personally the badge reminds me of the Legs of Mannanan (Isle of Man). What is it Owen?

 

Isle Of Man emblem?

 

looks like a swastica to me...

 

But it could be mistaken for this.
http://www.waffen-ss.no/SS-Freiwilligen-Panzer-Grenadier-Division-Langemarck.htm



"Looks like" but it's not. Just because a symbol is similar or looks like, doesn't mean it has the same meaning. To do so plays into the hands of the people who want certain symbols to have the meaning of recent years rather than the meaning of the many years that the symbol was used before.

If you see a five pointed star what does it mean? Without colour it could be the red star of communism or the white star of the Unted Stated of America. Both valid but also at different ends of the spectrum.

By saying "It's similar" or "It looks like" you are just perpetuating the pedjudice. Sort yourselves out!

 

Owen knows what it is, you know what it is, I know what it is however if it is worn and construed as looking like something else that is offensive.

There was a chap on the "DiggerHistory" forum in Australia calling for the cross to be banned as a symbol on medals as it is repugnant to Muslims.

PP is right inasmuch as they meant/represented something totally different 100 to a 1,000 years ago however that was then.

The minorities have the loudest voice these days.

 

This web page is worth a read....

http://history1900s.about.com/cs/swastika/a/swastikahistory.htm

After reading that you'll know that for a very short time in history it has had negetive meaning and for the rest of recorded history it has meant very much the positive.

That said, and as has been pointed out on other threads, how can a society that removes pictures of pigs in order not to offend another 'alien' culture, even try to appreciate that the swastika's bad press should only a 'blip' on the time line of history. That bad reputation is only perpetuated by society's own ignorance.

 

The Hammer & Sickle was very much in evidence in last year's Moscow 60 (well, 61) years Victory Parade, together with plenty Hero of the Soviet Union gold stars, Orders of Lenin, Orders of the Red Banner, etc etc.

Together with Putin retaining the 1943 National Anthem (even if with yet another version of the lyrics, desovietised and russified instead) this is no surprise at all.