https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/11/30/does-this-haircut-make-me-look-like-a-nazi
This is the "Fashy" hairstyle popular with Nazis. Not the same as American military "high and tight." I would advice against it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2018 05:51PM by anybody.

Could't even if I wanted since I'm bald on top.

I respect symbols because think they can communicate may things. But in this case the symbol didn't have meaning until we gave it meaning.

Problems arise, though, when people respect symbols more than the things they symbolize.

But the Nazis ruined it for everybody.

That is true. The swastika, turned right or left, is an ancient Indo-European (Aryan) symbol of the sun, circling through the sky; and secondarily as the cycle of birth and rebirth. You find it all over Buddhist temples, in conjunction with the Greek Key, and in early gentile Christianity, in which it was largely interchangeable with the cross.

Hitler stole the symbol because he wanted to appropriate the Aryan heritage, and he succeeded to the point where a tribal name (Aryan) become a universal sign of evil. But you still see the swastika in places in Asia and elsewhere where the German shadow did not fall.

That would make sense. Tibetan Buddhism is idiosyncratic in the extreme and very much into ancient symbolism.

In Yorkshire there is a stone carved with a more "organic" swastika dating from the Neolithic pediod.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=YqDjYu4f&id=816A17ADDD0BC508803D37A700652B62642B772B&thid=OIP.YqDjYu4fSbhEzPAmbKg5HAHaE1&mediaurl=http%3a%2f%2fukra.jalbum.net%2fbrac%2fEngland%2fYorkshire%2fWest%2520Yorkshire%2fSwastika%2520Stone%2520-Ilkley%2520Moor%2fswastika.00.2.jpg&exph=522&expw=800&q=ilkley+swastika+stone&simid=608021488944483168&selectedIndex=4

Just thought someone might be interested.

I am definitely interested. I'm not sure whether that is the standard swastika, likewise when it dated to (Indo-European or earlier), etc. But it's a piece of information I'll tuck away and hope to be able to integrate later.

Thanks!

Shaffer Hotel, Mountainair, NM
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gumprecht/42257116461

https://breadcity.org/2009/06/23/navajo-swastika-basketball/

https://nativeamericanjewelrytips.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/native-american-symbol-whirling-log-swastika/

That raises a very interesting question: is the swastika one of those images, in a Jungian sense, that arises spontaneously in many different cultures?

It generally means the sun, a circle rolling through the heavens. I don't know if that is universal, but it is common to a lot of different peoples and places.

Yeah, I'm not entirely convinced. The Wiki article relies heavily on Guenon, who was something of a spiritualist and also longer on theory than on hard evidence. And some of his stuff--like the treatment of Yin and Yang as parallel to the swastika as representing the heavens and the sun--is not at all the academic consensus.

You may be right that the swastika initially represented the cosmos or the northern extreme, but I think that article goes a lot farther than is warranted.

Nobody even thinks twice about it. That's really what needs to be done worldwide. Just reclaim the symbol for their original meanings and positive purposes. It's ridiculous that about 15 years of misuse by the National Socialist German Workers Party is allowed to rob the world of a symbol that had only positive connotations for millenniums.

I'm not sure how one would go about doing that. Even in Asia it isn't a particularly salient symbol; most people just don't care. The fact is that ancient symbols generally don't garner much attention either way, again because people don't care.

I can't imagine a movement that would be powerful enough to counter what the Nazis did to the swastika. . .

In fact it is often used on maps to indicate where Buddhist temples are located. It is used on street signs to show directions to Buddhist temples.

https://japantoday.com/category/features/group-urges-changing-buddhist-temple-mark-on-maps-to-avoid-nazi-connotations

As can be seen in the above-linked article, it does occasionally come under fire from people (usually only westerners) who either only know it as the symbol of the National Socialist German Workers Party or from people who are worried about misunderstandings that may arise as a result of such people's ignorance about the history of the symbol. In other words, some people want to get rid of a symbol that has been used for more than a thousand years because...get this...they are afraid that society's most ignorant and least curious people will be mistakenly offended by it.

I think the first comment in the linked article has it right. It's only difficult because of ignorance. If you don't give into ignorance and simply use it in its original context repeatedly, the Nazi connotation falls away and becomes footnote.

Seriously, how stupid does a person have to be to go to a place like Japan, Taiwan or Korea, see swastikas used on maps to indicate where Buddhist temples are located...and jump to the conclusion that this means that the country is full of Nazis? At some point, modern societies need to step back from catering to the lowest common denominator of ignorance and find a middle ground where people in society are expected to meet minimum standards of inquiry, learning, study and self-examination, rather than acting out/speaking out on the basis of poorly understood conditioned responses. It does involve a shift in the burden of thinking in society. But a necessary one, in my view.

I can tell you exactly how steadfastly refusing to give up the non-Nazi uses can work.

I've been to Japan many times. The first time I went there, I would see the swastika signs and my only response was "whoa! that's the Nazi sign." It only meant one thing to me. It was the symbol of the bad guys shown extensively in Hollywood WWII movies and Holocaust movies. Nothing more. Nothing less. After time, however, I learned more. I realized that the symbol wasn't created by the Nazis and is not owned by the Nazis anymore than the crescent is owned by certain terrist groups.

Now, I see it and my first thought is to wonder if I can get some good temple food at that Buddhist temple.

(Incidentally, the symbol used by the National Socialist German Workers Party "spins" in the opposite direction of the traditional Buddhist swastika and is usually tilted--as well as being combined with the red, white and black color scheme. So there are identifiable distinctions.)

I spend a lot of time in Asia, too, and know how the swastika is used in the Buddhist countries.

I don't think, however, that their patterns of usage can affect the interpretation of the swastika in the West. Why? Because the West went through Naziism and no place in Asia did. Westerners cannot forget what Hitler did. Those atrocities are vastly more important to the modern Western world than the meaning of the swastika in Celtic Europe in the millennia before World War Two.

In fact, I don't think re-interpreting the imagery would be healthy in Europe and America. The Holocaust should never be forgotten and the swastika, for better or worse, is intimately intertwined with that horror.

History does that. It alters the meanings of symbols, and an understandable desire to retrieve past meanings usually doesn't work.

I believe it is definitely misguided to seek to impose western sensibilities elsewhere or to assume that the rest of the world has to snap to attention and cater to those sensibilities.

I guess it's a point that can be debated as to whether the symbol should be reclaimed in western societies and restored to more positive meanings or whether it should continue to be used as a political symbol of atrocities that should be avoided.

Among symbols that I'm also offended by to some extent are the red star of Bolshevism, a symbol that was inextricably connected to mass murder on the scale of hundreds of millions, but which is often cheerfully used as a symbol of political defiance to "the Man" throughout western countries. Along with that I have problems with the Che Guevara t-shirts and posters that are so loved on college campuses, given the fact that Che was a homicidal maniac who killed innocents for pleasure and on the off chance that some of them potentially could be political enemies.

To a large extent, what is considered taboo in western societies is determined by movies and pop culture, which is where most people in western societies get their notions of history. Movies and pop culture do not focus on the atrocities committed under the red star. Therefore, nobody in the west really cares that much about it.

I think that's right. Symbols are defined by culture and experience. They are organic, not amenable to conscious definition.

It is also easier to try to sustain symbolism (flags, for example) than to resurrect past meanings. And in the case of the swastika, the WWII experience may be worth sustaining since it keeps people focused on the struggle against ethnicity-based evil.

So the swastika may rightly be interpreted in different ways in the West and in Buddhist Asia. History and culture have given the image radically different meanings, both of which may have value in its context.

More cutting edge political commentary from the WAPO.

You mean, the Washington ComPost? ;)

Maybe I am wrong, but I still really like the haircut. I am now more informed, thanks to anybody, but still really like the haircut!

Very much appreciate jacob and olderelder's POV in this thread.

I don't want ANY hair. I'll just keep on shaving my head.

I got a hair cut once - I'll never do that again. It bled forever - but it grew back!

M@t

But every other hipster in NYC has the same haircut.

Here’s some music to get that haircut by.

Lots of cool hipster haircuts in this video.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3UWTRnzKXG8&layout=tablet&client=mv-google&skipcontrinter=1

...better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT9QZBGyXjU

Not buying it. I see that style all over the place and I've never heard it referred to as "Hitler Youth."

It would be like trying to read something into a crew cut.

I usually like the WashPost but it's sourcing is thin (its rival NYTimes) and in the end is just stupid.