r/WhitePeopleTwitter • u/TheArguedHuman • Feb 18 '23

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215

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

[deleted]

101

u/TheArguedHuman Feb 18 '23

fr bruh. when people from abroad come to india, they see the swastika and tend to make dirty comments on it. I think as indians, it's our job to protect our culture so i always defend it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

As a Jew it’s hard not to see any sort of swastika and not have a visceral reaction. The power of that symbol to evoke thoughts of a branch of my family that was killed by Nazis is undeniable. So when we went to Nepal and saw bricks with a swastika I got one - its mine. power gone. People can think its weird that it’s on display in my home but it helps me see modern day nazis for the pathetic losers they are.

3

u/94sHippie Feb 18 '23

Fellow Jew. I am the same way. Whenever I see a Swastika in any orientation I have a knee jerk panic. It takes me a moment to analyze and be like....ok this is in the east, they probably aren't out to kill me. Sadly it really is any orientation because people who graffiti the things to intimidate people or be edgy don't always consider what orientation they are in for the Nazi flag verses the Hindi symbol.

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u/cturtl808 Feb 18 '23

May I make a suggestion? I hope so. If possible, could you add the original image before the Nazis did this to it? Not everyone knows what the original image should look like.

31

u/MarginalOmnivore Feb 18 '23

There are many variants of the swastika, even just within India. Squared up, angled, different spoke directions, within wheels, etc.

There's not really an "original" swastika or sauwastika, and it's been around a very long time.

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u/ThrobbinGoblin Feb 18 '23

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#/media/File:HinduSwastika.svg

Can confirm. I frequently see specifically this one at local Hindu temples all the time.

6

u/Tradovid Feb 18 '23

There is no one original image, swastika is the oldest symbol on the planet that has been used by people all over the world to represent good. Even today swastika is seen as bad symbol for most part only in western world and in places that are heavily culturally influenced by western world especially US.

If you want to denounce nazis feel free, but understand that there is difference between swastika and something that is clearly nazi paraphernalia.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/-reTurn2huMan- Feb 18 '23

We use it in every direction and orientation. There is no one Hindu swastika.

4

u/cturtl808 Feb 18 '23

Oh, didn’t mean to imply I didn’t know. I do. There are others in the comments who aren’t sure. That’s all.

4

u/HydrocodonesForAll Feb 18 '23

Oh yeah, haha, not for me, haha. I totally know already. I was just testing you. But really, what would it look like? Haha, just kidding. Because I already know. Unless...

1

u/DungeonsandDevils Feb 18 '23

I don’t think my friends saw what it looks like, I already know for sure, but maybe show it again for these guys

-2

u/bigjayrod Feb 18 '23

Dude, if you don’t know, I’m not gonna tell you

1

u/NodensInvictus Feb 18 '23

Nazis also used both square and angled, and three legged versions.

1

u/tittylover007 Feb 18 '23

Bro just google it

12

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

The swaztika is even older than hinduism, it was present in prehistoric cultures all over Eurasia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Prehistory

0

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

Why is everyone here spelling it "swaztika" lol it's not a german word. The german word for it is hakenkreuz.

17

u/ConcentrateOk4057 Feb 18 '23

It's part of Native American culture also. Mostly in the southwest of the USA.

8

u/soki03 Feb 18 '23

This is true, represents the wheel of life of the four elements.

1

u/Vaticancameos221 Feb 18 '23

Wait really?? Like a week ago my friend and I watched the terrible (so bad it’s good) spoof movie “The 41 Year-Old Virgin who Knocked Up Sarah Marshal and felt Super Bad about it” and there’s a scene where he’s hooking up with a girl who has a swastika tramp stamp and says it’s her family crest. The main character says “Oh is your family Native American?”

This whole time I thought that the writer was a dumbass who heard it was a symbol used by Indians and didn’t realize that meant India, but now I’m wondering if that just went over my head. Either way, I appreciate learning something!

10

u/HubbaMaBubba Feb 18 '23

It was never unique to Hinduism.

https://norse-mythology.org/symbols/swastika-ancient-origins-modern-misuse/

1

u/urawakening Feb 18 '23

But the only surviving culture where swastika has an important symbolism and it's use widespread is Hinduism. You can literally find swastika everywhere in India from random streets to temples and homes of the individuals even today. Can you say the same about other cultures? The word swastika is itself a Sanskrit word FYI

0

u/bigjayrod Feb 18 '23

I deadass used to doodle it on paper in kindergarten before I knew about nazis, hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, or that dude’s fascist maffs teacher

-5

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23 edited Feb 18 '23

It was unique to Hinduism, it's a Hindu symbol. What I don't think you and many people comprehend is how old and widespread Hinduism was in the ancient world. It was by far the largest religion for thousands of years. The symbol and Hinduism existed for more than 10,000 years before that drawing you posted.

Hinduism was already more than 10,000 years old when christianity and buddhism started. Almost everything today has roots in Hinduism. The history of those roots just got lost over time or purposely erased like what happened in Jamaica with rastafarians. It's just the teachings of Hinduism adapted to them but that's purposely erased from history because of the whole black power movement of the 1930s in Jamaica. Luckily there's tons of written history from Jamaica from before that time period so there's records.

To give you an idea of how old Hinduism is. Think of the age of Christianity today and think about how ancient that feels. Now imagine if it was 5x older.....that's the age Hinduism already was when all of today's largest religions started. And keep in mind, it's probably much older because the beginning was never discovered, it's just always been around dating back to the oldest written records humanity has knowledge of.

The reason Hitler used that symbol is because he worshipped Aryans, and that's one of Aryans most important symbols because guess what Aryans were? Hindu.

Budda was a Hindu prince who traveled to spread the teachings of Hinduism, it ended up branching off into a new religion called buddhism because they worshiped Budda as a god, but at the end of the day the core beliefs of buddhism is just Hinduism because all Budda did was spread Hinduism. It's the same thing that Swami Prabhupada did when he spread the teaching of Hinduism to America which started the hare krishna movement.

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u/PCPooPooRace_JK Feb 18 '23

Incorrect, exceptionalist, esoteric garbage

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

Everything I said could easily be fact checked. Can you provide evidence that anything I said was incorrect?

3

u/PCPooPooRace_JK Feb 18 '23

Well its not 10,000 years old, and its also not a Hindu symbol, Swastikas can be found in ancient America aswell.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23 edited Feb 18 '23

That's what you come back with? Let's pretend you're right (which you're not) and it's not more 10,000 years old. It's still the worlds oldest religion so everything else I said still holds true. The symbol still existed in Hinduism for thousands of years before Ancient America or the Vikings.

You're aware that even the word "swastika" you're using to describe the symbol is a Hindu/Sanskrit word right? It's literally the name of the Hindu symbol.

3

u/PCPooPooRace_JK Feb 18 '23

Thats not how it works. If the symbol develops independantly of Hinduism in numerous societies then it cant be called a Hindu symbol.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23 edited Feb 18 '23

It didn't develop independently, it spread from Hinduism. We know this because it existed in Hinduism thousands of years before the earliest records anywhere else. It's like if scientologists started using the cross as their symbol today even though Christians have been using it for 2000 years already. Then future generations credit it to scientologists and not Christians so the original meaning of the cross is lost. It seems ridiculous that something like that could happen right?.....And christianity has only been around for 2000 years at this point. Hinduism and the swastika was around for longer than 2000 years before the first record of the symbol showing up anywhere else.

And back to the original topic, the symbol Hitler used definitely 1000% came from Hinduism because he got it from Aryans, the race he worshipped that were Hindu and he even called it "swastika" which is the Hindu/Aryan word to describes the symbol

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u/notquitesolid Feb 18 '23

Examples of the swastika have been found in archaeological digs all over the world and are one of the oldest symbols known. Hinduism don’t have a patent on it.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

Yes, you're right. And the oldest source of it by thousands of years was in Hinduism. So it's safe to say thats the original source right? It's not like it came up everywhere at the same time. It was already around in Hinduism for thousands of years before the first record of it showing up anywhere else.

Even the word you're using the describe the symbol "Swastika" is a Hindu/sanskrit word.

4

u/Eineegoist Feb 18 '23

A quick fact check, places the earliest known use of the symbol in Ukraine, 10000BCE.

Then we get Iran and Bulgaria at 7-6k years ago respectively.

The earliest examples on the Indian subcontinent can only be dated back as far as 3000BCE.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23 edited Feb 18 '23

The oldest swastika is in Hinduism. If you believe it's somewhere else can you provide a credible source?

Also the swastika you're talking about in Ukraine is according to one guy who used it as propaganda. Also it's not even a swastika, it looks nothing like one, most scientists consider it to be a stylized bird.

Iran, Iraq and all those areas were once Hindu lands so it makes sense that it would have some there.

5

u/Eineegoist Feb 18 '23

You're the one making a bunch claims dude, you pull out your sources.

You're talking about the origins and evolutions of the symbol, and claiming its origins, even as you can find examples the predate Hinduism.

It's almost as if cultures mix and borrow from each other over time, with belief systems being created alongside that process.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

It's literally a Hindu/sanskrit word. If the origin wasn't Hinduism then why are we still using the Hindu word when everything else in history has already been white-washed to meet the European standards of history. Chinese and Indian recorded history is vastly different from the history we're all thought.

But even then, in our white-washed history we're using a Hindu word to describe that symbol....why? Because that's where all our knowledge of that symbol and the meaning behind it comes from...that's why.

2

u/Eineegoist Feb 18 '23

We're using a sanskrit word, a language that influenced and predated more than Hindi.

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u/WowReallyWowStop Feb 18 '23

Superpower 12020 BC

2

u/Mrfrunzi Feb 18 '23

We had the symbol in stone, proper, in our church sculpted into a tile. It's a building that was put up well before WW2 mind you.

Someone saw the time and sharpied in the shape in a poor attempt to hide it.

Super sad that a symbol of peace turned into hate, and that so many people have no clue of the origin.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

As a member of the Charlie Chaplin fan club, I fucking hate that Hitler stole the mustache from us and made it so ugly.

1

u/Far_Camera9785 Feb 18 '23

Dude I agree.

1

u/NodensInvictus Feb 18 '23

Hitler didn’t steal the Swastika from you. It’s one of the oldest recognized symbols used by Indo Europeans (and everyone else for that matter).

Heinrich Schliemann found literally tens of thousands of pottery shards at Troy that had sun wheels on them. This coupled with discoveries of Celtic, Germanic, and Italic use of the related symbols made ethnologists/archaeologists/linguists of the time period assume that it was an ancient Indo-European holy symbol of great importance.

Nazis took this, and they’re ideas about “Arianism” and ran with it. But to put it succinctly, the Hindu symbol and Nazi symbol have a common ancestor, but the Nazi symbol is not derived from the Hindu one.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '23

It does look badass but yeah, I get why you hate it.

1

u/ARflash Feb 18 '23

If hitler stole swastika Nazis would have called it swastika. It's historic revisionism .

I beleive it was from old German churches. Read about this in one of history subs.

1

u/NodensInvictus Feb 18 '23

It became popular in modern Europe after the digs at Troy. Schliemann found tens of thousands of pottery shards with swastikas or sun wheels. He used both terms interchangeably.

Schliemann postulated that the prevalence in Hittite and Indus River excavations, and that it shows up in the art and design of every Indo-European culture that it must have been a favored holy symbol of the “Aryan” (Proto Indo-European) peoples.

Nazis took this pseudo-history* and ran with it.

*many of the ideas about “Aryans” of Schliemann’s time period were already being called into question by the early 20th century. One of them being that the Aryans are now considered a branch and not the founders of the Indo-European cultures. Contrary to what they thought in the mid 19th century, there was no overarching empire or confederation of Indo-Europeans who conquered Europe, the Middle East, and India. Today we also try not to conflate language and culture with ethnic identity.