Interested in opinions: increasing use of swastika in jewelry, claims that they are trying to "rehab [View all]

[adigal]

the symbol.

I got in the middle of something. I make jewelry and a few weeks ago, saw that a Native American man who makes stamps for metal was selling a swastika. When I asked, he explained it had been an ancient symbol and that they were trying to reclaim it. I didn't say much, but I kind of thought that it is a symbol better left alone.

Last night, I was told to look at a young jeweler's stuff on Instagram. Young woman, blonde, totally tattoed up - whatever, I'm easy, I don't care. She is talented. But then I saw that more and more of her jewelry had the swastika, and that none of her 25K Instagram followers ever said anything except, "Cool symbol!" and "I can't wait to make more $$ so I can buy one of those!!" When I expressed my dislike of this, I was yelled at, called stupid, ignorant and hateful. The jeweler responded with "I am not using this in any way as a Nazi. You are ignorant, so get lost!" Duh. I think she slept through history class.

BUT, what made me see her ignorance as BS is that she often showed it in a picture of women with very low cut shirts on, or on her half-naked self. The way she was portraying it wasn't in any way sacred, or culturally appropriate, I think. Also, she didn't have any of the swastika pics on Facebook or her etsy site. Just Instagram and her own website. I said that, got slammed some more, asked what would an older Jewish person think seeing this on someone, was told I'm stupid, etc. I reported the pics, and either Instagram took her down or she deleted it herself. I think she was using it to be "edgy," to push the envelope, to be cool enough to transcend the meaning of the symbol to 99% of us.

I generally don't believe in censorship, but that a huge group of young people think the swastika is "no big deal," and that I'm hate-filled because I found it upsetting is disturbing. I think this is a symbol that shouldn't be rehabbed. What do you think about this?