#ripcomedian

So do symbols have meaning or do they not have meaning?

yes symbols, like languages, are not fluid and never change and hwæne béonne ic síþ hércyme cwéman ádón fullæst

They have to have meaning to be regarded as symbols. But who calls the shots over what meaning a symbol gets? It's the mainstream and what is the mainstream? It's the official version of culture that the State wants us to adhere to. When ideas are introduced to public discourse that run counter to this official version, then the State must suppress it through trivialization or ridicule. It can then be controlled and reintroduced to public discourse in a sterile, "harmless" form so that it goes from iconoclast to pariah.

In the case of the swastika, you have a fresh idea that challenges a long held tenet of the mainstream discourse--namely, the swastika is not a symbol of evil or terror.

In our society we have these competing, safe-for-mass-consumption views that want to impose themselves over the other. This is done mainly to paralyze society into a kind of zombie state. The state where you get up, drive to work and, if you even bother to reflect on it, don't remember a damn thing about your drive into work. You're just a nameless, faceless cog in the State's machinery serving the purpose it wants you to serve. Leave the thinking to others who have the brains to navigate the quagmire.

It then becomes necessary to invent an enemy that proves how this mainstream zombie state we live in is much better than anything else. This enemy is called terrorism but it has corollaries as "Nazi" or "Hitlerian" or "anti-Semitic" for example. So this symbol of the swastika has become useful as the representative of this imagined enemy.

The mainstream brainwashing is astonishing once you start looking at it objectively instead of (falsely) believing you have a stake in this thing. I was watching the news last night and there was a kind of point-counterpoint segment between a white conservative and a Muslim who publishes a newsletter in Dearborn (called the city with the second most amount of terrorist connections by some report or other). The conservative tells the Muslim: "Your publication deserves to be called terrorist because you call Hamas freedom-fighters. You are anti-Semitic!"

He presented the mainstream view. Somebody is a terrorist not by what he's done but by what he believes about Hamas. As for being antisemitic, have you ever looked up what a Semite is? An Arab IS a Semite. Here's a white man calling a Semite an anti-Semite. Moreover, Semitic refers to a linguistic group and yet somehow we have allowed the Jews to appropriate the word as though they are the only Semites. If you are anti-Arab you too are an anti-Semite. Since most Jews are of European descent today, you are more justified to call them anti-Semitic than an Arab who hates them.

Mainstream discourse has turned the truth on its head because truth is inimical to it. Truth is an obstacle to mass consumption and mass consumption is the name of the game.

Symbols are potent tools either for mass consumption or for truth which is why the State must not be allowed to dictate the meaning but it is difficult to get this across because the mass media is so seductive.

I know this response is going to generate a bunch of "tldr" crap but your question is profound one deserving of a detailed answer and not a safe-for-online-consumption word-byte non-answer that online communities encourage.

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Woman Claims She Found Butter Swastika On McDonald’s Chicken Sandwich « CBS Charlotte

Some woman in North Carolina got a wild hare up her ass about the butter on her McDonald's whatever-it-is laid out in the shape of a swastika. She states, ”Many people died because of that symbol....” Really? Actually NOBODY died because of that symbol--not a single, solitary person.

And somebody got fired for it. Did it ever occur to them that it could have been unintentional?? Some teenaged kid gets told to punch out and don't come back and he probably has no idea why. I mean, I'm sure he didn't have a shaved head and white power slogans tatooed all over him when they hired him (or her).

I'm more offended that people even eat at McDonalds at all. They serve crap. Being this was North Carolina, I wonder what her reaction would have been if I made a big row about how the butter on my hurlburger looked too much like a stars & bars flag and how that flag enslaved an entire continent of innocent, unoffending people. I have no doubt she'd say, "It's just a symbol of Southern pride--shut up and get over it!"

So just shut up, stuff that piece of processed garbage in your mouth and eat it, lady.

That does not look like an accidental swastika to me.

If I am recalling history correctly the majority of American slaves were purchased from Africa where they were already enslaved.

More on topic, I find it pretty unbelievable that the butter just happened to end up that way, but I also don't know how they make their food. Could it have been pre-made at a factory and frozen? So no one from that McDs is actually responsible.

If the kid did actually do it I think he deserves to be fired. Even though I mostly agree with you on the symbol having no power and not being offended by it, I also understand that some people do not share the same views and it is highly offense to a large population. We are the minority here.

OP:

BOOHOO I CANT WEAR SWASTIKAS BECAUSE PEOPLE WILL GET OFFENDED AND I FEEL LIKE I HAVE THE RIGHT TO TELL EVERYONE WHAT THEY SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT BE OFFENDED BY.



Obviously the symbol didn't do it, dude. But the symbol represented a group of people who did. How is that not enough for you to understand that someone might inherently associate a swastika with Nazism, even if they're well aware of it's history before WW2? I don't care enough to delve into it's meanings to different cultures of the centuries but am still aware it means something else to a lot of people. But in the western world? It's Nazism.

My point is that the stars & bars flag had nothing whatsoever to do with the enslavement of people in Africa. It's bad history. It's not worth getting offended over. One of my neighbors flies one on his porch. I don't care, doesn't bother me.

Suppose he did it deliberately. So what? May be he meant it as a good luck symbol as in "good luck trying to digest that f-ucking piece of garbage you just ordered."

This.