The swastika is actually Asian: Destroying the white supremacist brand
The swastika has been used for 3,000 years as a symbol of peace and to this day, it is still used throughout Asia as a symbol of positivity, harmony & good luck.
I was horrified.
The swastika was about 30 centimetres wide. It was a glaring red, with singular dots placed between the angled arms. It was painted underneath the statue of a large, reclining Buddha. His eyes closed, a slight smile on his face; all peace and tranquillity. We were in a Buddhist temple.
I was about eleven years old and this statue was on the border between Thailand and Malaysia.
I asked my mum whether Germans had invaded Malaysia and my mum explained that the swastika in Buddhist temples were used as a symbol of peace, harmony, luck — only good things. And she pointedly noted that the swastika pre-dated Hitler’s use by millennia. I took that in, but still, the overwhelming meaning of the swastika was still inexorably linked to Nazis; to the horror of the Holocaust. Even with my own Malaysian-Chinese heritage, I wasn’t aware of any “other” meaning as we weren’t religious. I had not previously been exposed to swastika as anything other than a symbol of the horrors of supremacists in WW2.
I had grown up on a diet of mostly Western media, and by that age, I’d watched movies which tackled the history of the Jewish experience. Movies like Sophie’s Choice to Fiddler on the Roof. I had read Anne Frank’s diary. My parents had educated my siblings and I about the Holocaust, about the persecution and pogroms before that, and my father even hinted that modern-day racism still bred such beliefs. They felt that it was important for us, even though we had no Jewish connection, to remember the horror of Nazi Germany, to ensure it never happened again. To forget history was to let it happen again. Perhaps it would be us, next.
We moved to Australia in 1988. And as my family was not particularly religious, we visited no other Buddhist temples. So the next time I was to see the swastika publicly was when Pauline Hanson ran for Australian Parliament, and won. The people who brandished this symbol revelled in its power.
However, the more I travelled in Asia, the more I saw the swastika used benignly, innocently and with positive and peaceful intent.
In Japan, it can be found in Buddhist temples, and is used on maps to mark their location.
In China, it is a repeated motif carved into the roof and the elaborate embellishments in the Forbidden City in Beijing.
It is found on statues of Kuan Yin (the Goddess of Mercy) in Malaysia.
It is painted on cars in India and Nepal as a good luck symbol to avoid accidents.
The Balinese use it as a symbol of goodwill, as a way of asking blessing from the gods. Some are even named “Svastika”.
And the swastika even adorns temple grounds, homes and prayer beads in Tibet. In fact, the symbol has an ancient and peaceful history throughout the world.
Hitler’s hijacking of it is one of the best examples of plagiarised branding in the world. Every documentary on the Holocaust, every racist rally, every inept vandalism by Neo-Nazis, uses the swastika as its calling card. The repetition of the swastika in our media constantly links it to hate and supremacists.
But by focusing on “our” Western narrative, are we by default, letting Hitler’s legacy continue in a more insidious way?
Through an understandable collective trauma, we in the West have — by divorcing ourselves from its past — passively given full ownership of the ancient swastika to racists.
And even worse, we have made ourselves just as ignorant as those who use it for hate.
We expunge its history and its positive heritage across thousands of years, multitudes of countries, cultures and religions. We wipe out the rich and positive, powerful symbolism it had throughout the world, and still has in Asia. Ironically, in keeping to such a Eurocentric view, we are ignorant to any other existence or meaning other than our ethnocentric narrative. It’s as if our global history has been whitewashed by Hitler’s racism, decades after the Holocaust.
As well as that — we also give this powerful symbol an aura of fear that supremacists love.
As anyone in marketing will tell you, a symbol has power and myth when we give it meaning. It can define and unite a group. It provides a recognised history and narrative which can build on a reputation. A flag or a logo is an example of this. And right now, we, in the West, collectively agree that the meaning of the swastika symbol is hate.
The swastika is seen solely as a powerful brand for supremacists.
But should it be?
The swastika is not theirs. It never was.
If it were to become common knowledge that this symbol comes from, and is constantly used in Asia, many would laugh at the utter stupidity and absurdity of a racist using an Asian symbol to espouse hate.
It’s as ridiculous and hilarious as Dave Chapelle’s “white is right” sketch.
In marketing, the power of a brand can be destroyed by showing its failure to deliver on its core promise. In this case, the exclusivity of the swastika to supremacists.
By taking away the supremacist myth behind the swastika, you denounce its potency as owned by Nazis (it has more real links to a rickshaw driver in Mumbai than a white racist in Philadelphia), you reveal its weaknesses (the stupidity of those who use an Asian symbol to demonstrate racial superiority), and with that clarity of knowledge, you gaze back at it without fear, because you know what it is, and what it is NOT.
For a very tiny period in human history, the swastika was used by the worst of humanity. And those who use it now seek to have us bow before it in fear and awe, solely focusing on that tiny part of history. Let’s not give them what they want.
A symbol only has power if we all agree on what it means. And if we all agree that the swastika is a symbol of good, with a longer history & a living culture aligned more with “Namaste” than “Seig Heil”, we remove its power and reveal the dank idiocy of those who use it.
Look, I know this is a complicated discussion to navigate which I may have done clumsily, and I don’t want to diminish the horror of the Holocaust. My aim in raising this is to educate, share and erode the power of supremacists by taking away their brand. (Since Trump’s win, racists have already started using the swastika as their calling card).
Think of this: If every time a swastika is spray-painted on a window, instead of hurrying to wash it off, instead of reacting with fear and horror, if we stopped, laid flowers and blossoms, lit candles, gathered to burn incense and arranged an altar with prayers for peace, we would diminish the power of supremacists. I’m not suggesting we don’t condemn it’s use — we definitely should, but knowledge and truth can trump hate.
Our reactions feed their power. Refuse to follow their expectations. Empower yourself with history and truth.
If we accept the swastika’s reality in Asia, if we refer to its true origins of peace, we deny power to supremacists by refusing to give them the identity they want. We empower ourselves and destabilise the abuse of this symbol.
Millions of (mostly yellow and brown) people around the world still actively use the swastika. These are the real owners of the swastika.
Let’s share this knowledge of a living swastika symbol that is, to this day, used by millions across Asia for positive intent.
In this age of social media where knowledge can be shared with a click of a button, where information can denounce and erode power, it would be a shame to silently ignore the swastika’s living Asian roots, and to let supremacists continue to abuse and trade on a symbol which was never theirs.
#ReclaimTheSwastika
Note: I originally wrote a version of this post with a more detailed history on the Swastika in The Big Smoke.
