Hacker News Reader

Comment by amriksohata | Hacker News Reader

Nowhere in the mein kampf by Hitler does he call it a swastika, in the original German publication He called it haken Cruz which literally means hooked cross, it being a hooked Christian cross. t was a Christian bishop who translated it to English and translated hakencruz to swastika. Effectively taking the blame off Christianity and pushing it onto eastern religions

View on HN

In German, there are no two terms for those, both are called "Hakenkreuz". And the Nazi ideology actually made references to eastern culture and peoples, claiming that Germans were descendents of the Aryan peoples: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/aryan-1

And while Nazi antisemitism was of course descended from the traditional christian antisemitism, there were also parts of the Nazi movement that called for a replacement of christianity by an "Aryan" or "German" religion, which seems to have been a mixture of Germanic/Norse religion and more modern esotericisms.

So yes, while eastern religions are blameless for what the Nazis made of their symbol, it also isn't of christian descent either.

Hitler wasn't a Christian, and it isn't a hooked version of the Christian cross. And it doesn't matter what he called it. This is about the symbol itself, as it's on display. It is seen as a Nazi symbol in the US. That's where these people live.

> taking the blame off Christianity and pushing it onto eastern religions

Nonsense. Nobody in their right mind blames Eastern religions for what the Nazis did.

Then why did the Bishop translate Hakencruz to Swastika? The words are completely unrelated, the symbology is more similar to the "hooked" version and nothing to do with Swastik which has dots on it. It was a clear attempt by the Church to wash their hands.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com