

Swastikas and context - kaptain
http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=635

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aniket_ray
To be fair, Swastika is considered very auspicious by Hindus.

Here in India, you'll see Swastikas everywhere. Till I grew up and read about
Nazis, I never even knew that there was anything negative about the symbol.
It's just a symmetric symbol and I don't see any reason for blocking that
symbol.

The author might not agree with the political views of the Nazis but that is
frankly not a reason to ban a symbol. To use the author's words, no one in the
educated world would consider the Swastika as a purely Nazi symbol. Then, why
block it for people who have other sentiments attached?

PS: Personally, I don't have any affinity to the swastika or any other symbol.
My point is that its just a symmetric shape. Some people have positive
feelings, some have negative, others have none at all. As a service provider,
your duty is to cater to consumers without letting your personal preference
mix.

~~~
mrcharles
When I was a kid, I came up with a swastika design all by myself. At maybe 6
or 7 years of age. I knew nothing about WW2, and had had no exposure to it in
any form.

I carved it on a block of wood because I liked the shape of it. My father saw
it and sat me down and told me that it was a symbol that had come to represent
an awful lot of Bad Shit(TM).

It is a symbol that you simply can't disassociate from the context it is known
for. In India, that context may be different. In the western world, it is not.

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prat
"no educated human on the planet looks at the swastika symbol on a video game
service in the year we make contact and says oh, that symbol has nothing at
all in any way to do with global genocide of an entire race and, even if it
did, one should totally and reasonably ignore that because it’s a symbol that
was stolen or coop-ted from religions."

Really? no educated human? Well I guess I am an exception or at least was
until I came to the US - because you see, I am educated and likely more highly
educated than the author.

The author, most likely never having stepped outside the US, has no idea of
the diversity of world sensitivities and cultures.

Does the author, for example, know of the Khmer Rouge symbol? I am educated
and I didn't until I googled it..
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/79176.stm>

So stop using the word "planet" for the west .

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train_robber
I don't know, the article seemed so badly reasoned from my perspective - a
very narrow Western view. In my country (and in my religion) the Swastika is
seen everywhere and it is no way used in relation to the Nazis at all.
Ironically, the fact that it is such a hated symbol, I learned from the
Internet. Maybe he's being reasonable because the target audience is indeed
Western. Hmm. But from my seat, I find this really lame.

~~~
thwarted
He really should have put the TL;DR at the top. He could have worded the
entire piece as "You may think our policy is capricious and arbitrary but the
internet is filled with a lot of jerks. We hope to be consistent in our
rulings; you'll just have to deal with it, as we don't want to spend our time
dealing with lame issues. And this is a lame issue."

~~~
akkartik
What _is_ the point of putting the tl;dr at the bottom, or the middle, or
anywhere but _the very top_?

~~~
thwarted
I assume to get people to read the piece. TL;DR at the top is kind of like an
Executive Summary, and if I saw something labeled an Executive Summary at the
top, or even looked like one, I'd skip the whole thing.

I think the key is to make the entire piece short enough but not too long so
that it's quick to read and the TL;DR can be used as a good way to describe
the entire piece in other contexts.

~~~
akkartik
_"TL;DR can be used as a good way to describe the entire piece in other
contexts."_

Absolutely. Perhaps we just shouldn't be using tl;dr within a piece. There's
other words for short forms: abstract, summary, conclusion.

Signed, your friendly tl;dr nazi

~~~
thwarted
Yeah, but I think tl;dr has a certain, _not necessarily all_ negative,
connotation. Labeling it as "abstract", "summary" or even "conclusion" maybe
would lessen the chances of it being quoted.

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ajays
So if the Nazis had instead used the Holy Cross as their symbol, everyone (in
the west) would be OK with banning it from churches and all forms of public
display?

~~~
ugh
I don’t think so. Context matters in this case, too. The swastika was a unique
symbol in the west, the Nazis had it completely for themselves. If they had
used a cross they would be just another of the many, many organizations in the
west using a cross as their symbol. (Christians in general, KKK, Red Cross, …)
They would never be able to claim complete ownership of the symbol. They
wouldn’t be able to define or redefine the symbol, they would just add another
entry in the dictionary under “Cross”.

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armandososa
I found it hypocritical coming from an industry that very often relies on the
entertainment values of random acts of violence.

"Look, in this game you can shoot people on the face as long as you don't wear
any swastikas or call people 'fags' becaus then _that_ would be wrong."

~~~
ig1
Different people are offended by different things, there's nothing
hypocritical about not being offend by game violence while being offended by a
swastika.

Some people are offended by nudity, gambling, pigs, swearing etc. There's no
rule saying that if your not offended by one thing you can't be offended by
anything. It's simply an arbitrary personal choice.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_Different people are offended by different things_

Certainly true, but this makes the whole exercise futile. How can one try to
prevent their platform from becoming a medium for offensive speech, when every
viewer can potentially be offended by different, orthogonal, thresholds?

~~~
ig1
They make an arbitrary judgement call about what is acceptable to the majority
of their user-base.

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writetoalok
Lets look at this guys arguments closely, shall we.

>It’s not political correctness, it’s fundamental respect.

It is narrow mindedness. And when you say its respect for some, it is
disrespect for others ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Hinduism> ). So
your context is too narrow. In your high seat of judging other people, your
views are shallow.

>If you think the swastika symbol should be re-evaluated by societies all over
the Earth, I think that’s great.

Good, you agree. But it seems you don't give a shit if it is.

>Your Xbox LIVE profile or in game logo, which doesn’t have the context to
explain your goal, is probably not the right place to do that.

Care to explain why? No. And what is the purpose of the LIVE profile or in
game logo? And what if the Swastika actually has entirely different meaning in
other places? Oh, places like these: <http://www.xbox.com/en-IN/live>

>And by the way, that doesn't just go for the Swastika, it applies to many
other symbols as well that my team does indeed take action on when we see it.

Bother to list some? No. And how do you judge what to act upon? Is there an
objective criterion? Or is the subjective criterion explained or listed
somewhere?

>Context.

Is unexplained, subjective, narrow minded, dogmatic, force-fed

>Yes we can have the discussion in other venues about the double meaning of
various terms, something my team does everyday.

Ah you want to show that you are considerate and well reasoned person. But
that belies your shallow views and blind beliefs.

>But for many topics, its kind of a no-brainer.

And this shows me your sheeple traits. No-brain-uh

> _Context_

 _Whatever_

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Be-The-Water
There are many theories on this, its pretty well know that the swastika pre-
dates Hitler by thousands of years. But some people think that he chose it
because of something called the "Aryan Invasion" of India, of which some
believe that one of the original ancient religious books now adopted by Hindus
was written by the Aryans. There is evidence of the symbol not just in ancient
Indian civilizations, but in ancient European as well and is thought to be
carried through to India. But no one knows for sure, and no one knows exactly
why Nazi/Hitler chose it.

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notahacker
Its an avatar for a war game series originally themed on WWII

Now sure, sometimes you can have an angular black swastika in a white circle
on a red background in an entirely innocent context, even in Europe in the mid
20th century [http://www.askaboutireland.ie/aai-
files/assets/libraries/dub...](http://www.askaboutireland.ie/aai-
files/assets/libraries/dublin-city-public-libraries/reading-
room/transport/dartry-laundry-van-in-swastika-livery.jpg)

But in a Western wargame? Sure, I'm sure most people wanting swastika avatars
are kids trying to be controversial rather than active neo-Nazis promoting an
ideology of hate, but I'd be reasonably confident none of them are doing it
because it's an auspicious symbol in Hinduism.

Irrespective of whether permitting people to use Nazi symbols actually offends
anyone playing a game where the objective is to shoot people, I'm not
convinced there's a legitimate freedom-of-speech argument to be made about the
avatars a private company chooses to bar from their services. I think
censoring a few show-offs is probably an acceptable price to pay for the
freedom to operate their services in Germany and it's legal intolerance of
Nazi references. Perhaps the counterculture kids can pick hammer-and-sickles
or Che Guevara instead....

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ax0n
First Amendment doesn't carry any weight on private territory. Business owners
can boot rowdy loiterers. pg can ban people from here. I can squash trolls on
my servers, and XBL can enforce arbitrary rules at will. You can have your
freedom of expression, but you cannot graffiti it onto the side of my car.

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CWuestefeld
_It’s not political correctness, it’s fundamental respect._

I think that's the battle cry of all those who enforce PC behavior.

 _UH OH! OUT COMES THE INTERNET PUNDITS! <g> ... Most of them are just
contrarians. They would never dare to wear a swastika openly, but they love to
argue about how the world has "misunderstood" this symbol._

The way I read this is as a criticism of people who do not hold a particular
belief, but are defending the rights of others who do hold it. This seems
completely contrary to the ideal attitude of "I may not agree with what you
have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

~~~
ajscherer
What right are you talking about here? There is no right to use a privately
owned service in a way that scares off paying customers, much like you don't
have the right to spray paint a swastika on your neighbor's house.

The right to free speech means that the government can't punish you for your
speech. It doesn't make it illegal for someone to do otherwise legal things
(such as banning an xbox live account) in retaliation for your speech.

I don't understand why so many people view the first amendment as a guarantee
that one's self expression will never have negative consequences.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_There is no right to use a privately owned service in a way that scares off
paying customers, much like you don't have the right to spray paint a swastika
on your neighbor's house._

This is perfectly correct, and I never claimed otherwise.

As far as I can see, this part of the discussion was purely abstract, about
whether the negative associations of the swastika so overwhelm other uses as
to render the latter irrelevant.

Indeed, the whole discussion would be irrelevant given your context. That is,
in a conversation about how a property owner chooses to allow their property
to be used, the only relevant point, legally and morally, is "this is how I
choose to allow my property to be used". There need be no further explanation.

Since the whole thing is dilatory in that context, the only meaningful
interpretation is as an abstract discussion of why one might want to make such
a distinction. In such a discussion, the idea of tolerating the thoughts of
others -- not just those who might claim offense at seeing such speech, but
also those who would like to profess their beliefs -- certainly has a place.

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SmokenJoe
I am amused by his attempt to correct his info on the history but continuous
to be belligerent. Note the symbol in question was the most pervasive
religious symbol ever before it was adopted by a political party. If you
beleve the cross was adapted from it then all the more respect. Of you remove
one religious symbol than ban them all. I dot want to waste my time with this
kind of thing but don't make it into am popularity contest. This should be
about the game not ego.

PS thismis ome of the first web sites in months I could not read on my web pad
due to bugs. What do you guys think this reveled?

~~~
thwarted
It's unfortunate that by hiding the symbol because it might offend and
increase support issues (the latter of these I actually find to be a legit
reason), it doesn't help strip the symbol of its offensive connotation to
westerners. It ends up further retarding progress in reducing ignorance.

If the Nazis used a big capital N as their logo, no one would consider the
letter N to be offensive. The main reason it has such strong Nazi association
is because that symbol is used in few other contexts in western culture, it's
relatively rare (which may be a strong reason why it was chosen by the Nazis,
it had little modern western cultural baggage, so they could define it). In
contrast, one of the major western religion symbols is the t-shaped cross.

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axod
People who get offended by geometric shapes have way too much time on their
hands.

~~~
jpr
Are there shapes that are non-geometric?

~~~
axod
clouds :/

