Hacker News Reader

Comment by umarniz | Hacker News Reader

Edit as this is flagged by many people already: My opinion is all art and historical text should be discussed and talked about. Apparently an attempt to share the context is not very appreciated here.

No horse in the race but I find it important to try to understand the perspective from all sides.

Apparently its similar to showing a swastika or hail hitler. People have been punished for that as well: https://www.thefire.org/cases/george-washington-university-j...

View on HN

At least that swastika thing was on a bulletin board in a dorm, I think it would be much harder to object to one being shown in context in a history class, for example.

It is not similar at all. Kids all over the world draw swastikas on bathroom stalls and such, just to provoke. Rarely do they get beheaded/stabbed as a consequence, though.

Swastikas are not acceptable, but very few have any strong personal feelings about it. The prophet of this ideology, however, is like a (glorified) family member to 1/4 of the world's population, and you can very easily get killed for depicting him. The most recent and well-known case was the stabbing of Salman Rushdie.

This is classical Persian Muslim art they're complaining about. Not Charlie Hebdo caricatures... Figure that, then weep.

You mean like how a Swastika is shorthand for "I support the extermination of Jews and black people"... An image of Mohammed is shorthand for "I support stoning women who don't cover their faces"?

I dunno if that is quite right! Context matters.

I was definitely shown a swastika in history class, as well as read about heil Hitler.

So we shouldn’t be showing swastikas or Hitler in a history class, for they might offend someone?

Or on anti-Nazi media like the Wolfenstein series of computer games. For Wolfenstein 3D at least, Germany made them replace all the swastikas with neutral imagery before the game could be released there.

> For Wolfenstein 3D at least

Not just Wolfenstein 3D, the same thing happened even with the Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

But that law was retarded and they recently repealed it. It's now okay to depict fictional nazis and nazi iconography even in Germany.

Let us not forget the difference between the hakenkreuz and the swastika please.

Swastika is welcome, the nazi version of it isn't.

The better and most appropriate term is Hakenkreuz, that the Nazis themselves used.

what difference ? The clockwise version (࿕) is called swastika in Hinduism, and is the exact same symbol as what the Nazis used. It used to be (until the 1930s) used in art quite a lot all over Europe. You can still find it high up on the facade of old houses. And Yes, some people are offended by it, but when you explain both the building and the symbol predate Nazism, they usually calm down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com