Talk:Swastika

Images

@JMF I don't understand why, if it is thought that the images are too numerous, that images crucial to the history of the swastika and its historical interpretation should be removed while miscellaneous images of this or that swastika in use in this or that context should be retained without any sources. It would be better to remove the existing overabundance. Please restore the Buddha footprints cited by Schliemann and Wilson. The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 23:30, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

We recently went through a huge pruning of images. If you want to add an image, gain consensus first. The Buddha's footprint image contains one small low-contrast swastika which is difficult to see through all the decorative carvings. The German potsherds lithograph is also troublesome because there is no obvious swastika—the reader isn't helped by this image. Binksternet (talk) 00:01, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

First, I don't own this article, I am just relaying previous consensus. Nor am I making any qualitative judgement about the particular picture that you want to add, simply that there are already just too many images (and that is after a big clear out last year – see Talk:Swastika/Archive 8#Still overloaded with images). As I said then, think of the average reader using a mobile phone screen on a limited downloads contract. Each image has to pass the "a picture is worth a thousand words" test and be indispensable for the adjacent text to make sense. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:14, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

@Binksternet, @JMF the images of the potsherds from Germany and the Buddha's footprints from Amaravati are both necessary for the article because they illustrate the way in which Schliemann made the connection between archaeologists' artefacts in Germany and the orientalists' artefacts in India, giving the Indian name to what he accepted was a pan-Aryan symbol. The reader is very much helped by the image, because it reveals that Schliemann had a very broad definition of what he was calling "swastika".

Unlike the footprints (which in fact have three swastikas on each foot, please look again!), the Bishop's Island potsherds were not published by Schliemann, so the public was presumably more accepting of his (quite tenuous) conclusion about its being the same as the Indian swastika portrayed on the Buddha footprints. The accompanying text (I hope) makes it clear that Schliemann's opinion of the Bishop's Island potsherd was crucial in forming his and his contemporaries' view on the symbol, a fact which is amply attested by secondary sources.

As I say above, the best thing would be to remove less relevant images, rather than refuse to accept images which are of eminent importance to understanding how the swastika's scholarly interpretation in the 19th century led to its being classed not only as an Aryan symbol, but as the Aryan symbol. I found that discussion of the 19th-century view of the swastika sorely lacking, and I have added a whole section which the article (worryingly) managed to completely ignore thitherto. Many of the images belong (and are indeed repeated at) the separate article on the 20th-century use of the swastika, and should be removed to there. The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 00:58, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree about the importance of telling the reader that Schliemann made a leap of logic to connect Germanic and Indo-Persian symbols. This can be described to satisfaction in prose. Unclear images don't advance the argument. Binksternet (talk) 01:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm a bit more sympathetic because a few months ago I identified the narrative weakness in the article that described how the the Nazis identified the swastika as representing their Aryan supremacy. Not that I expected any intellectual rigour in how they got there but we at least needed to say how it happened. TwfiC has resolved that issue, thank you. But to earn a place in the article, in effect to show that they are more important than the images that must be deleted to make way for them, they really must be critical to understanding what the text is saying. That is not obvious, especially when the image quality is so poor. Could it go in Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:41, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I am a little confused: @Binksternet says an image is "unclear"; @JMF says "the image quality is so poor". Which image is being talked about here? None of them seem bad to me. Are you referring to File:Las huellas de Buda, British Museum.jpg, or to File:Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 3.1871, Taf. VI (cropped).png? If it's the Amaravati footprints, would File:Buddha footprint from Amaravati.jpg be better? If it's the potsherds image, would a cropped image of the relevant pot bottom be better? Neither of these images has anything to do with the early 20th-century West, and are necessarily part of the 19th-century scholarly and popular interpretation of the swastika, so relegating them to an irrelevant article (Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century) is not suitable.

Binksternet has removed the illustration of the swastika from Schliemann's house, even though it is explicitly mentioned in the text, is of obvious relevance to the subject generally, and is clearly of more historical importance than the three (!) illustrations of the Finnish military's swastikas, the banal image of the Latvian Air Force roundel (it's just a red swastika …), and the swathes of wholly unsourced text which simply lists appearances of swastika motifs in various commercial and sporting contexts, all of which belongs in Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century and not in this main article. There are, for instance, two photographs of North American sports teams, neither of which can possibly be more important than the images of Schliemann's house, or the images of the objects Schliemann and his contemporaries used to interpret the swastika.

To this end, I want to include a gallery in the 19th century section displaying the images Schliemann (and perhaps others, like Burnouf) cited in particular as inspiring their interpretation of the swastika, namely: the sarcophagus of Stilicho (Schliemann calls it the pulpit of the Basilica Sant'Ambrogio, though the mediaeval pulpit was built around the late Roman sarcophagus); the Anglo-Saxon funerary urn from Shropham (Schliemann calls it "Celtic") which was also cited by Thomas Wilson's 1896 The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration from John Burley Waring's 1874 Ceramic Art in Remote Ages; the classical coins of Lefkada (Leucas); an example from the Roman catacombs; and if possible the archaic Attic vases in the possession of Athanasios Rhousopoulos (the English translation misspells his name as "Professor Kusopulos", but the German has "Rusopulos", and one of the vases may be in Graz, a skyphos with lid noted in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum as having come from Rhousopoulos's collection (page 36–37 & plate 12)) and the Corinthian vases Schliemann himself owned (one of these may among those Schliemann gave to Oscar II and which the king later gave to the then Ethnographical Museum of the University of Oslo, now the Museum of Cultural History, Oslo, with inventory number C41803, with the swastika on the bottom as seen in figure 13b of Seeberg 2017). The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 22:40, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

@Binksternet, @JMF, I have not got a reply from either of you. Would you please respond to my questions? The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 16:19, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree in theory that some of the images here could be moved to Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century. However, that article is also getting overloaded with images. Perhaps we decline to show them, and just let Commons host them. Binksternet (talk) 16:23, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Binksternet Thanks for the reply. Many of the images (and much besides) are already duplicated at Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century, and those which are repeated here can simply be deleted. The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 16:32, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure I recall a policy that explicitly deprecates burying an article in images and galleries, that says that this is the function of Commons, not Wikipedia. So I have asked at wp:Teahouse#Image overload policy for a reminder. IMO, the article need a drastic spring-clean.

But it also occurs to me, @The wisest fool in Christendom, that Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century would provide a more accommodating space for your material, indeed give it the space it deserves because it is critically important in that context. In this article, it can best be summarised and linked with a {{main}}. The images you have identified should absolutely be included in a Wikipedia article; the only debate is about which one. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:12, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@JMF I cannot agree that any of the material I have added belongs (exclusively) at Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century. Everything I have added concerns the 19th century's scholarly interpretation of the swastika. Schliemann, for example, died in 1890 and can have nothing to do with the 20th century. Conversely, while von List died in 1919, it was his 19th-century interpretation of the swastika which is of relevance to the 19th-century use of the swastika in general and its particular use in that period as a symbol of pan-Germanism and antisemitism. Since the article "Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century" seems to exclude this theme and deals with the non-Nazi usage exclusively, and since there is no article devoted to swastikas in Nazism, or to swastikas in pre-Nazi pan-German nationalism generally, it is certainly the job of the main article (this one) to deal with the evolution of swastikas' interpretation among 19th-century scholars. The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 17:32, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@The wisest fool in Christendom:, no, I certainly did not and so not suggest that it belongs exclusively there. On the contrary, I said that a summary of it belongs at Swastika and the full exposition can be given the space it needs at "Western use". I hadn't spotted that the Western Use article currently has next to nothing about Nazi use: that is an extraordinary omission that needs immediate rectification.

there is no article devoted to swastikas in Nazism, or to swastikas in pre-Nazi pan-German nationalism generally Well as you have all but written it already, why not go ahead and create it? You have proper sourcing so it should have no obstacles to going live. If so, then it will be the one that is summarised in both articles (so don't waste your time trying to add substantially to the Western Use article.)

In wikipedia, when articles get too long (as this one has), sub-articles get spawned off and they are summarised at the main article. This is a standard technique. A "South Asian use" daughter article could be created in the same way. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:30, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@JMF My position is that the 19th-century interpretations are not of exclusive relevance to the "Western use", still less in the early 20th century. Rather, the interpretations and scholarly exegesis of the swastika during the 19th century is and remains the most significant and widespread set of views on it. The interpretation of the swastika as an Aryan symbol, or as the symbol of the Aryans, is, for example, not at all limited to the West, but is also relevant, for example, in India. My point in saying that "there is no article devoted to swastikas in Nazism, or to swastikas in pre-Nazi pan-German nationalism generally" is to emphasize the centrality of this topic to the main article (this one). As I see it, there are and have been broadly three schools of thought on the swastika:

1. a decorative motif or symbol with more-or-less universal implications of good luck and wellbeing with vaguely cyclical or solar inferences, used in all periods and on all continents;
2. a symbol of various interpretations in various religions, including in particular Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism (as the most visible living religions in the present day) but also employed by Christians, Jews, Mithraicists, by Germanic and Graeco-Roman pagans, and others; and
3. a symbol of particular interpretation, developed in the 19th century, that the swastika had a particular Indo-European derivation and significance (usually related to fire or the sun) and was representative of historic and prehistoric Aryan civilization in general and of either German or Hindu culture in particular, with the usual corollary that being exclusive to (these) Aryan nations, the swastika was alien to non-Aryans and hence a political symbol of anti-Semitism (broadly construed as opposing Semitic peoples or Semitic religions).

I argue that № 3 is as important historically as the other two, and that this main article is the place to discuss all three interpretations. My position is that a detailed and (importantly) fully illustrated discussion of how № 1 and № 2 led to № 3 is indispensable to this article. Apart from anything else, it is № 3 that caused one regional name (swastika) to predominate over other names in English, as well as in other Western languages. It is not a summary of № 3 that is required here at swastika, but the full treatment. The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 20:20, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

First, I thought that I had acknowledged that the "Western use" article is not the appropriate place for this material; if that was not clear, then let me affirm it now.

Second, I still think that you have shown that the material deserves its own article, but if you do not want to pursue that option, that is up to you. Certainly it must be over a year since I asked that someone fill the information gaps in the sequence that resulted in the Nazi appropriation, so of course I agree that this is essential information. So if you are content to squeeze it into this article (where it will be a needle in a haystack), then go ahead. But I invite you to read Wikipedia:Article size, especially WP:TOOBIG: the article is currently 63,231 words long, more than four times larger that the advised maximum. And it still leaves us with the problem of image overload: previously you said that your illustrations were essential – can you manage without them? The majority of readers of Wikipedia do so using a mobile: have you actually tried this yourself? It is a chastening experience.

I suspect that all this comes across as obstructive but that is emphatically not the intent. We are trying to find solutions here and in all honesty just bloating the article even more than its current morbid obesity does nobody any favours. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:15, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

This article needs to be fixed

We need to fix this article. And not just say FAQ. Wikipedia is one of the top source for common people. This is actually creating a lot of problems for Hindus in schools and immigrations.

First. We need to dedicate Swastika to Hinduism which is the original source of this and is still widely applicable.

Then we need clear out how Nazi symbol is completely different from Swastika.

Nazi symbol is Hakenkruez not Swastika.

Just like you wouldn't call American Football as Rugby, in the same way you can't call Nazi symbol as Swastika.

I am happy to contribute if someone wants to pair pair up.

https://cohna.org/swastika-is-not-hakenkreuz/ Firedrake123 (talk) 20:19, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not here to correct something you think is wrong. Rather, Wikipedia summarizes the mainstream literature about a topic. Your request has no chance of happening. Binksternet (talk) 20:46, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

You should think twice before giving your lecture here it's clearly mention in every German document that Swastika is different and German Nazi symbol hakenkruez is different just because it belongs to Christianity that's why you are not accepting it we have prove and documented old 1930 document and newspaper articles and German published real document on internet sites you can find it easily so I believe Wikipedia good correct it if you don't have information then take it from my account and email you the information then uploaded on Wikipedia don't give miss information about Swastika and hakenkruez

Just 100 years ago, in an article dated Nov 21, 1922, the New York Times, in its first ever coverage of Hitler, called his movement the “Hakenkreuz Movement” and referred to his followers as “Hakenkreuzlers.Another 1934 New York Times article, even reported about the Nazi Newspaper, accurately calling it the Hakenkreuz Banner, versus anything related to Swastika.New York Times’ March 1933 coverage of Hitler’s “Hooked Cross.”The popularization of "Swastika" in Media TerminologyHakenkreuzbanner, The Nazi NewspaperIn a similar vein, 1925 edition of The Jewish Daily Bulletin Index (page 14-15), made repeated references to Hitler’s followers as the “Hakenkreuzlers,” documenting their attacks on Jews, women’s groups and more. 18 mentions of this word can be found in the paper.We can also look at the records of the Nazis themselves, who published their own paper in Mannheim from 1931- 1945. Not surprisingly, the paper was known as the “Hakenkreuzbanner”, and not any word related even remotely to “Swastika 2409:40C4:28:4FD4:D82C:465A:8DC2:EB9B (talk) 03:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I sympathize. I honestly do. It is terrible that we have ended up in this place where the Swastika is associated with evil. Were Swatika and hakenkreuz different and distinguishable at some point in time? Quite possibly. But the sad fact is that the term Swastika is the one used in the vast majority of English sources to date. Wikipedia is a trailing indicator, not leading. I am all for the various efforts to educate people and distinguish the symbols. But until such efforts take hold, Wikipedia should remain the way it is. Change the world, and Wikipedia will surely follow. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 04:41, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

It is amazing that English speaking Christians in western world could not find a Kosher English word for the German word Hakenkreuz used by Hitler and his Nazis.

For any educated and sensible person it would be simple "Crooked Cross", but as Hitler and Nazis were all true Christians and followed the same sacred cross as their enemies, it would be unthinkable to tarnish our Christian Cross.

So the most convenient thing was to associate our enemy's Christian Crooked Cross with an ancient alien culture and pick their Sanskrit language word "Sawastika"(Holy and auspicious) which was used in most of the temples and scriptures of Buddist, Hindu and Jain religion.

Most English speaking population would have never heard of it.

Therefore it was not Hitler but the English speaking Christians who translated "Hakenkreuz" to Sanskrit word Sawastika rather than two simple english words "Crooked CROSS"

Let's please be honest and acknowledge the real meaning of Hakenkreuz and give back Sawastika to the real peaceful ancient religions worldwide. Koshswstka (talk) 14:22, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

What are your sources for English speaking Christians being responsible? Adolf Hitler pretended to be a Christian but actually despised Christianity. I don't know how many senior Nazis were Christian. This is a waste of time without reliable sources. Doug Weller talk 14:30, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

... and if you actually read the article, you would know that the British Empire adopted the Sanskrit word (and it association with good fortune) at least one hundred years before the German Volksich group adopted it independently from ancient Nordic culture. No translation involved. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

And that's the nub of the issue. The swastika and the hakenkreuz are visually indistinguishable even if they represent very different things. The swastika (symbol and term) was well known in the western world well before the Nazis. What else were they going to call it, especially the British elite with their background in the Raj? Certainly not some German word favoured by the Nazis. Can you imagine Churchill et al. saying to themselves "we must respect Nazi sensitivities and use the word they have allocated to this symbol and forget what we learnt for our Cambridge tripos". DeCausa (talk) 18:46, 31 March 2024 (UTC) DeCausa (talk) 18:46, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Consider replacing "appropriation" with "misappropriation" or using both with /

under the nazi hooked-cross image part of the text reads "appropriation", indisputably and in hindsight this appropriation is also a clear example of "misappropriation" and the page would present a clearer picture of what the original usage is and is not.

so proud of the veterans in my family that took out fascists.

Talonx77.191.128.84 (talk) 09:38, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I can see your logic but to my mind, "misappropriate" would have less impact. According to Wiktionary (in summary), "misappropriate" means "embezzle" whereas "appropriate" (v) means "To take to oneself; to claim or use, especially as by an exclusive right". A better definition of the sense we are using it is at wikt:cultural appropriation The exploitative or oppressive cooption of elements of one culture by members of a different culture. Even that is problematic because the glyph had millennia of use in northern Europe so (within the warped logic of the Nazis and their antecedents) they were using a symbol of their own culture; that it was also important to Asian cultures was [to them] incidental.

The second issue is the word swastika itself and here we have a double problem. It was the British Empire that "culturally appropriated" the Sanskrit word. As many have pointed out, the Nazis never used that name because it had not been absorbed into German as it was into English. In the English language Wikipedia, we use the word used in English; if German: hakencreuz had become absorbed into English, we would use that instead, but it hasn't.

So in my opinion at least, your suggestion (although a reasonable one) would not be an improvement. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:05, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

The article is confusing

I have been hearing more and more that the Swastika has been appropriated by the Nazis from the Hindus. This clashed with my previous knowledge that it was actually the adoption of a similar symbol that had been developed in parallel in Europe. So I came to this article to get a bit of clarity on the matter.

The article mentions the cultural appropriation in the lead, but then fails to mention it in the body. The body actually seems to support my previous knowledge of parallel development by describing all the places where the swastika has appeared (including northern europe) and even mentions that the earliest known swastika is from 10,000 BCE and was found in the Ukraine. So what is the right answer?

This article should either develop further the culture appropriation issue in the body, explaining the historical link between the Hindu swastika and the Nazi swastika, or eliminate it from the lead. As it is, it seems confusing and even contradictory. Shadowphoenixpt (talk) 17:08, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be better to emphasize the following terms found in the Swastika § Etymology and nomenclature section with respect to their use in the Third Reich:

• hooked cross (German: Hakenkreuz), angled cross (Winkelkreuz), or crooked cross (Krummkreuz)

The primary manifestation of the Nazi use of the swastika was turned on the diagonal, which I believe was very unusual, if existant at all, in other cultures. Perhaps we can call out this distinctive feature. I speculate that other cultures / religions may consider the 45° rotation of the swastika to be a perversion of the symbol itself. Does anyone have any citations for this? Peaceray (talk) 18:37, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

@Shadowphoenixpt: you informants are confusing two things. The word swastika was appropriated from Sanskrit, but it was by the British Empire, not the Nazis. The symbol itself has a long history in northern Europe too (as the article describes). Our use of the word appropriation is the sense of "taking it for themselves to the exclusion of all others" (which they didn't really do, just everybody else backed away).

@Peaceray: The diagonal form was used on the Nazi flag but the vertical form was extensively used by them too; you would need an RS that considers the distinction notable. German: Hakencreuz is just that, German. The terms gammadion and fylfot have also been used but this is the English language wikipedia and the only word that has ever been used in English is Swastika. In the light of subsequent developments, this is more than unfortunate but it is not our role to WP:Right great wrongs. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:53, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I get it now. But maybe it should be explained in the lead that it was the name that was actually appropriated, not the symbol, to avoid confusion. As it currently stands, it states "German Nazi Party who appropriated it from Asian cultures starting in the early 20th century" which it's easy to misunderstand. Shadowphoenixpt (talk) 19:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Actually, the whole symbol was appropriated. See the FAQ at the top of this talk page which quotes Hitler describing how the Nazi symbol was previously seen in India and Asia on temple walls, etc. It wasn't just the name. Binksternet (talk) 20:03, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

There is no doubt that the vertical form was used, but it is almost self-evident that the primary form was on the diagonal. I will see what RS can be found. Peaceray (talk) 20:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 March 2024

Upadate Referncies. 57. "Right-Facing Svasti Sign" link http://unicode-table.com/en/0FD5/ is redirected to https://symbl.cc/en/0FD5/ Res0lution (talk) 06:43, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done I replaced this reference with an archived copy, thanks. Jamedeus (talk) 07:06, 4 March 2024 (UTC)