Can we take it back?

When I was cruising around the BME news column the other day, I noticed an entry about a German tattoo artist who runs a studio called Swastika Freakshop. Though the propreitor of the business isn’t a Neo-Nazi or a bigot of any other sort as far as I can tell, it got me thinking about the efforts in the body-mod (or “modern primitive” more specifically) community to “reclaim” the swastika.

(note: BMEzine is fairly graphic, and even in the “clean” sections you get a lot of extreme genital mods and gratuitous nudity, so for discretion sake, I won’t include a direct link. Feel free to look it up on your own if you want too, but don’t say that I didn’t warn you.)

The arguements on both sides of this isssue are numerous, and equally deserving of consideration, but most people get too much of a knee-jerk reaction when they see a swastika to hear both of them.

First the anti-swastika rap. Any indiviual with even a minimal education would make the connection between the infamous swastika and the atrocities commited by the Nazi officials who took part in the Holocaust. No one can overstate the extent to which they dragged the before noble swastika through the mud with these horrible crimes, and many would say that because of this, the swastika is now permenantly tainted as a symbol.

The other school of thought seems to probe a little deeper into the issue. They analyze the roots of the swastika as an ancient symbol in different schools of Buddhism, Hinduism, and several Native American traditions. Some say that even though the swastika does have obscenely negative connotations to the bulk of our society, that it is not past the point of no return. They argue that the swastika, even with its simplicity of shape, holds a great amount of symbolic power that could be used for good in our society if we were to remove the negative sentiment that it is tied to. The people who I have heard this argument from are all fairly well educated, well read, and strongly anti-racist, so I do feel obligated to acknowledge their efforts to undertake such a difficult task as trying to clear the name of the sullied swastika.

I personally adhered to the first school of thought without question up until recently. Even though I have heard several people explain the pro-redemption arguement, seeing the swastika portrayed in certain contexts still ticks me off. In the past, I’ve hung around groups of people who have been tattoo-enthusiasts of sorts, and have therefore seen quite a bit of ink. The swastika is fairly common mark in the BDSM community, biker clubs, and in various gang cultures. I get the feeling that the people who are into kinky sex and hook suspensions who wear the swastika generally don’t do so to tick off minorities, because these people are the ones who put forth the strongest efforts to “take back” the swastika. German swastikas are also fairly common among 1%er biker clubs. While there are definitely some overtly racist bikers, most 1%ers who wear the swastika do so for shock value, and not to propogate ethnic hatred.

But one particular mark that tends to really set me off is a German eagle with a third Reich swatika banner below it, which a lot of the white power gangbangers in Salinas wear as a chest-piece. Members of the Aryan Brotherhood or the lesser known Nazi Lowriders frequently use the swastika, and the negative connotations that come with it, as a terrorist tool. They use it to scare innocent people, and the violent crimes they commit only further denegrate the image of the swastika.

That’s why I say, it’s too soon. Though I can see why some good people have legitimate, honest reasons to wear the swastika, there are still people who want to use it to inspire fear and hate. It might be 50 years, or 500 years for that matter, before people are able to strip the swastika of its fascist ties, but for them to do so, I believe that the world will have to be a much better educated and more tolerant place. Today, there are too many people who don’t know the positive aspects of the image to resurrect its positive aspects.