Hacker News Reader

Comment by dhruval | Hacker News Reader

The word swastika itself is culturally appropriated from Sanskrit (India) by the British who had colonized the country during WW2.

Hakenkreuz (hooked cross) is the German term.

View on HN

When did loan words become cultural appropriation?

Shortly after the end of the cold war, when we no longer had a common enemy to focus on and started fighting each other

Good point, I meant it is a loan word.

In the era of socially sensitive language, I would like to see the Nazi swastika referred to with the German term, to rehabilitate the term swastika.

If you are against socially engineering language to make it more culturally sensitive via things like gender pronouns, removing certain slurs etc. Then ok at least that is a consistent ethical position, and understandable.

But if you support the use of more inclusive language, then this would be my request.

When the British do it.

So when 'the west' ignore things from other nations we're sidelining them and destroying their heritage. But if we take an interest in their culture and take it on board, it's cultural appropriation? What are we supposed to do. Say how great X is without ever doing X?

What parts of my own culture am I even allowed to partake in because most of it comes from elsewhere.

Can't you just be happy that cultures can take things from other cultures and make it their own and gain a bit of understanding about the former in the process, rather than make it into a culture war.

Wartime Enid Blyton books called it the “Crooked Cross” (which was vaguely mystifying to 8 yo me, 30 years after the end of the war and in the pacific).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com