EVERYTHING, literally EVERYTHING about WESTERN WHITES is "INFINITE
DECEPTION".
NOT even an IOTA of respectable character trait.
Nazis are EVIL WHITE CHRISTIANS, but the INFINITELY CUNNING WHITE FILTH
"deliberately DISASSOCIATED Nazis from WHITE RACE and CHRISTIANITY" by
calling them NAZIS.
Nazi HATRED for jews EMANATED DIRECTLY from the one of the BIGGEST HATE
MANUALS in this Universe, ie. BIBLE.
EVERY WORD and SENTENCE that comes out of the bodily orifices of WHITE
FILTH are "MEANT" to DECEIVE and MANIPULATE some entity on the planet.
WHITE DNA should be and must be "FORCIBLY CIVILIZED HUMANIZED and REFORMED."
====================================================================
WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: THE SWASTIKA IS NOT HITLER’S HAKENKREUZ
https://cohna.org/swastika-is-not-hakenkreuz/
WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: THE SWASTIKA IS NOT HITLER’S HAKENKREUZ
–Nikunj Trivedi
On a late June afternoon, I received a WhatsApp message that the State
of New York was considering a bill that would mandate that the Swastika
be taught as a symbol of hatred and intolerance in all New York schools.
(Note: As of July 2020, the bill has been stalled due to widespread
outrage among Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and other communities due to the
deeply religious significance of the Swastika in these traditions).
Naturally, the Swastika and its equivalents hold immense sacred
significance for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Native Americans, and many
other cultures, and are thousands of years old. As a Hindu, I cannot
imagine life without sacred symbols like Om, Swastika, Trishul, Tilak,
and others. They form a deep connection through which we express our
identities while connecting with the Divine. Each has its unique place
in Hindu symbolism and practices.
Undoubtedly, educating students about hatred, racism and bigotry is
essential. This is even more urgent, given the recent increase in hate
crimes against Jewish and African American communities. Incidents of
Neo-Nazi emblems being graffitied outside Jewish homes and synagogues,
often accompanied by horrific acts of violence by hate groups have seen
an alarming increase. Hindus and Sikhs have also been targets of of
Neo-Nazis and those who support Nazi ideology.
Yet, the important work of fighting bigotry and racism must not
inadvertently stoke resentment against other religious minorities. This
was the Hindu community’s concern about including the Swastika as a
hate symbol in the New York bill without proper context.
Swastika — a sacred and auspicious symbol
Swastika is a Sanskrit word, derived from the roots su and asti, and
means “that which brings good luck and well-being.” The word swasti
appears in the Vedas and across classical Hindu literature, as
illustrated by this famous Mantra from the Rigveda:
Om Swasti Na Indro Vriddhashravah Swasti Nah Pusha Vishva-Vedah।
Swasti Nastarkshyoarishta-Nemih Swasti No Brihaspatirdadhatu॥
Translation — Om! May Indra, who is provided with great speed do well to
us, may Pushan, who is the knower of the world, do good to us and may
Tarkshya who devastates enemies do good to us! May Brihaspati, the Lord
of Vedic knowledge or speech, give us spiritual delight gotten from the
light of knowledge and wisdom.
Hindus use Swastika in various aspects of life
Similarly, the Puranas, the Upanishads and other Hindu philosophical
texts use the word for greetings, to denote all that is auspicious and
sacred, among other things.
Swastika’s simple yet profound design has many different meanings. It
denotes the movement of the universe, the four Vedas themselves, the
four-fold goals of life (Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha), the four stage of
life, etc.
Hindus use Swastika extensively. It adorns the entrances of our homes as
a “welcome” sign and can be seen in our Mandirs (temples) — both at home
and outside. Some Hindus use a Swastika as part of their yoga (a posture
known as Swastikasana) and meditation practices. In a traditional head
shaving ceremony (called Mundan), a large Swastika is drawn on a child’s
head as a sign of auspiciousness. Similarly, in festivals such as
Diwali, Navratri, etc. Hindus draw Swastikas at the entrances of their
homes and create color patterns called Rangolis containing Swastikas.
Buddhists and Jains also use Swastika in various aspects of their lives.
In Japan, Swastikas (also known as Manji in Japanese) can be seen on
street maps, temples and other places.
Over 1.5 Billion people use this symbol and its equivalents for a
variety of religious purposes.
Swastika in American culture
Prior to the Swastika legislation controversy, I had limited knowledge
of the extent to which the Swastika and its equivalents were used in
American and world culture before WWII. For example, the symbol was on
Boy Scouts paraphernalia, Coca Cola products, on the uniform of hockey
teams, in fashion accessories, etc.
In fact, I recently found out that the United States has had towns named
Swastika. On September 23, 2020, the town of Swastika, New York voted to
keep its name, citing the symbol’s auspicious origins in Hindu and
Buddhist traditions. A town in Colorado was also known as Swastika
Acres, though it changed its name in 2019 after having it for 111 years.
A US Army base in San Diego is shaped in the form of a Swastika. Not
just in the United States, there is a town named Swastika in Ontario,
Canada too!
In 1896, Thomas Wilson, a curator at the US National Museum, wrote a
fascinating book called The swastika : the earliest known symbol, and
its migrations : with observations on the migration of certain
industries in prehistoric times, where he discussed the Swastika and
similar objects in various cultures around the world, from ancient India
to Europe, Latin America and Australia.
Unfortunately, these connections got heavily overshadowed due to World
War II and the resulting murder of six million Jews, one and half
million Roma and others at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis. Hitler’s
emblem of hatred brings trauma, pain, and intimidation to Jewish
Americans even today, and we have seen increased hate crimes in New
York, Pittsburgh and other locations at the hands of Neo-Nazis and white
supremacists.
Did Hitler use the Swastika as his symbol?
Yet, as I thought about that horrific era, my conscience told me that
something was not right. Did Hitler really use the Swastika, or was it
something else?
I looked into the history and soon realized that the negative
connotation of the Swastika was not because of Hitler’s usage. Rather,
it stemmed from conflation of the symbol that Hitler used — the
Hakenkreuz (a German word, meaning “hooked cross”)— with Swastika. There
is overwhelming evidence showing this, some of which is listed below.
The “hooked cross” became popular in Germany when archaeologist Heinrich
Schliemann discovered it on the site of ancient Troy in 1872 and wrote
about it in this 1891 book (link with English translation). Thanks to
his French cartographer Emil Burnouf (who harbored anti-Jewish
sentiments), Schliemann connected it with similar shapes found on
pottery in Germany and misinterpreted it as a valuable symbol of their
ancestors and of a master race known as “Aryans,” due to the increasing
acceptance of racial theories during nineteenth century Europe. Other
European scholars and thinkers provided additional fuel to this racist
and supremacist theory, and the connection began to take a dangerous
turn. German nationalist groups started using this symbol as a sign of
the “Aryan master race” and the German-Aryan connection.
Interestingly, in 1880, the German philologist Max Mueller had warned
Schliemann against using the word “Swastika” when describing the ancient
symbols found in Troy, saying:
“I do not like the use of the word [Swastika] outside India. It is a
word of Indian origin, and has its history and definite meaning in
India. I know the temptation is great to transfer names, with which we
are familiar, to similar objects which come before us in the course of
our researches. But it is a temptation which the true student ought to
resist, except, it may be, for the sake of illustration. The mischief
arising from the promiscuous use of technical terms is very great….the
occurrence of such crosses in different parts of the world may or may
not point to a common origin. But, if they are once called [Swastika],
the vulgus profanum [common masses] will at one jump to the conclusion
that they all come from India, and it will take some time to weed out
that prejudice.”
Indeed, the mischief from such a promiscuous use of the term “Swastika”
and the prejudice against it has already been great – it has been
wrongfully associated a symbol of peace and harmony with death and
destruction.
But, was it the Swastika?
Yet, while the symbol appeared similar, it was not the Swastika. My
research on this topic led me to the works of many scholars, including
Rev. T.K. Nakagaki, former President of the Buddhist Council of New
York. Nakagaki’s book The Buddhist Swastika and Hitler’s Cross: Rescuing
a Symbol of Peace from the Forces of Hate, provides exhaustive details
about the Swastika as well as its wrongful association with the
Hakenkreuz, the symbol used by Hitler and the Nazis. According to Nakagaki,
“Many in the West believe that Hitler invented the swastika symbol. He
didn’t. Many also believe he invented the word ‘swastika’ to describe
it. He didn’t do that either. But, he did consciously use a different
German word, ‘Hakenkreuz,’ and that is more significant because in the
use of that word we can see how Hitler saw the symbol…”
Hakenkreuz at the Benedictine Monastery, Lambach, Austria
Similarly, Dr. Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, an expert on Christianity and
Professor Emeritus at University of California Davis, provides plethora
of evidence regarding Hitler’s Christian upbringing and the influence of
Christian symbolism on him. In his book The Sign of the Cross: From
Golgotha to Genocide Rancour-Laferriere shows that Hitler’s decision to
use the Hakenkreuz as a symbol of the Nazi party may have been due to
his childhood upbringing at the Benedictine Monastery in Austria, where
he repeatedly saw the “hooked cross” in multiple places, and used to see
a statue of Abbot Theoderich von Hagen, who had a stylized Hakenkreuz in
the coat of arms.
Furthermore, Rancour-Laferriere points out the mistranslation of
Hakenkreuz into Swastika, even though a native German speaker can easily
understand that the infamous term is translated as “hook” (Haken)
“cross” (Kreuz). Rancour-Laferriere observes: “It cannot be disputed
that, as a boy, Adolf Hitler repeatedly saw the hooked cross in the
Christian context of the Benedictine Catholic Monastery where he had his
choir lessons and other classes…”
Rancour-Laferriere’s book discusses the work of Werner Maser, a famous
German historian and a leading expert on Hitler who observed that in an
early notebook of Hitler, we find a sketch of a projected book cover
featuring the hooked cross which looked similar to what would become the
Nazi flag of the future. Maser believed that the hooked cross and the
banner reflected the influence of the Hakenkreuz that Hitler saw at
Lambach Abbey and on the coat of arms of Abbot Hagen.
To illustrates this further, German historian John Vincent Palatine
discusses Hitler’s affinity for the monastery, his admiration for the
Abbot and his constant encounters with the Hakenkreuz at the monastery.
In his article, The Oedipus Factor — Alois Hitler and his son Adolf,
Palatine outlines Hitler’s childhood experiences as follows:
“Lambach had a quite modern primary school in which Adolf did well…He
also participated in the monastery’s boys’ choir, where he, probably for
the first time in his life, saw the [hooked cross]. The depiction was
part of a previous abbot’s coat of arms, a huge specimen of which was
fastened to the stone arch over the abbey’s entrance, which the boys had
to pass under on the way to choir practice…”
Using Hitler’s own words from Mein Kampf, Palatine illustrates the young
dictator’s admiration for the church and the Abbot:
“Again and again I enjoyed the best possibility of intoxicating myself
with the solemn splendour (sic) of the dazzling festivals of the church.
It seemed to me perfectly natural to regard the abbot as the highest and
more desirable ideal, just as my father regarded the village priest as
his ideal.”
Palatine goes on to state the impression that the Hakenkreuz had left on
Hitler’s mind:
“One thing [Hitler] clearly kept in mind was the [hooked cross] he had
discovered on the abbot’s coat of arms. The original bearer of the coat,
Abbot Theoderich von Hagen, had been the prior of the monastery in the
middle of the preceding century, and the [symbol] was not only featured
on his coat but was found at many places in the structure as an element
of decoration.”
Similarly, Rancour-Laferriere points us to the writings of Robert Payne,
the famous biographer of Hitler’s life, who also surmised that the
Hakenkreuz at the monastery was the source of Hitler’s Nazi emblem.
Thus, the Hakenkreuz was the source of Hitler’s Nazi emblem and not the
Swastika.
“Christenkreuz” and “Hakenkreuz”
Hitler recognized the power of a symbol to bring about transformation of
ideas and society in ways he saw fit. In Mein Kampf, he recounts his
experience at a Marxist rally in Berlin, and the profound impact of
symbolism on the masses:
“More than once in my youth, the psychological importance of such a
symbol had been clearly evident to me from the point of view of
sentiment. In Berlin, after the War, I was present at a mass
demonstration of Marxism in front of the Royal Palace. A sea of red
flags, red scarves, and red flowers, gave an outward appearance of power
to that crowd, which I estimated at about 120,000 persons. I felt and
understood how easily the man in the street is impressed by the
suggestive magic of such a grandiose piece of play-acting.”
He details this thought process while designing the Nazi flag and its
colors, remarking how the symbol had to spark curiosity and stir
emotions among the masses. The symbol had to have a “striking,
poster-like effect” and ignite a desire “to know more about the movement
in hundreds of thousands of cases.”
For a devoutly Christian country such as Germany, nothing would resonate
more than a symbol connected to their roots and theological beliefs.
This is discussed in further sections.
Hooked Cross in Christianity
In order to understand why Hitler chose the Hakenkreuz and not any other
symbol, one must study the importance and usage of this symbol in
Christianity and in German literature, as well as the dynamics
surrounding racial and theological narratives in nineteenth century
Europe and Germany.
The hooked cross holds deep significance in Christianity, and can be
found across Europe and other places where Christianity is practiced,
from the tombs of the Knights Templar to mosaic on the floor of the
Byzantine Church in Shavei-Zion, on the walls of the Lalibela Church in
Ethiopia, in churches in Mexico and in Macedonia, etc. The hooked cross
was seen as the symbol of Jesus’ victory over death and persecution.
Thus, for Hitler, who was exposed to such teachings at the Lambach
Abbey, it was quite natural to see this connection and twist it into a
powerful yet evil symbol known to the masses and one that could be
easily repurposed to arouse anti-Jewish emotions among the Volk.
“Hooked Cross” in German literature and language
Ritterkreuz (Knight’s Cross)
The connections between the Christian cross (known as “Christenkreuz” in
German) and the hooked cross (known as “Hakenkreuz” in German) can be
found in multiple places within the German language as well as in
literature. Take for example, the Knight’s Cross, (Ritterkreuz), which
was created by Hitler as the highest award in the military and
paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. Similarly, the
Balkenkreuz, a stylized version of the Knight’s Cross, was the emblem of
the German Armed Forces during World War II.
Rancour-Laferriere’s book provides several additional examples. The
varied uses of words across periodicals, images, references, etc. show
that the Germans were aware that the Hakenkreuz was a “hooked cross” and
The German Church and the Nazis
In order for a symbol to have a strong and popular appeal, it had to
resonate with the masses. As outlined below, the relationship between
the Church and the Nazis of the era provides overwhelming evidence that
Germans as well as the Nazis saw a strong connection between Hitler’s
Hakenkreuz and the Christian cross, not the Swastika.
According to the US Holocaust Museum, most of the German Christians
supported hatred against Jews and thus welcomed the rise of Nazism, as
illustrated by an excerpt from Article 24 of The Nazi Party Platform:
“…The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity
without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats
the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that
a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on
the basis of the common good before individual good.”
The Museum concludes: “Despite the open antisemitism of this statement
and its linkage between confessional ‘freedom’ and a nationalistic,
racialized understanding of morality, many Christians in Germany at the
time read this as an affirmation of Christian values.”
This is further evident from the writings of Gerhard Hahn, a prominent
leader of the Lutheran Church of Hanover, Germany. Speaking of the
solidarity between the Hakenkreuz and the Christian cross, Hahn proudly
declared:
“The cross of Christ and the [Hakenkreuz] do not need to oppose each
other, and must not do so, but rather they can and should stand
together. One should not dominate the other, but rather each should
maintain its own meaning and significance…Both together, however, the
cross of Christ and the [Hakenkreuz], admonish us: Remember that you are
German Christian people and should become ever more whole German
Christian people, and remain so!”
Finally, this relationship between the Church and Nazi Germany was
officially sealed by the 1933 Reich Concordat, signed by the Vatican and
the Nazis, allowing the latter to garner additional credibility.
Adolf Hitler with the Vatican ambassador, Cesare Orsenigo, in 1935, two
years after he seized power. Source: The Times/Getty Images
This open support for the Nazi regime has been further corroborated by
recent evidence.
On May 1st, 2020, The Times of UK reported that the German branch of the
Catholic church admitted its “complicity” in the Second World War. May
2020 coverage in the Times of Israel also highlighted the fact that the
Church had provided hudreds of priests who joined Nazi soldiers on the
frontlines to offer spiritual advice from 1939 to 1945 and converted
thousands of church properties into military hospitals where tends of
thousands of nuns worked as nurses. On Hitler’s 50th birthday in 1939,
churches flew Nazi flags and prayed for the protection of the “Fuhrer
and the Reich.” What’s worse, Pope Pius XII knew about the mass killing
of Jews from his own sources but kept the matter from the US government.
While discussing the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel, the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize
winner, had less than kind words to describe the ideological environment
leading to the Holocaust. Putting it bluntly, Wiesel remarked:
“All the killers were Christians. The Nazi system was the consequence of
a movement of ideas and followed a strict logic; it did not arise in a
void but had its roots deep in a tradition that prophesied it, prepared
for it, and brought it to maturity. That tradition was inseparable from
the past of Christian, civilized Europe.”
Indeed, various studies have highlighted the centuries old persecution
of Jews at the hands of Christians in Europe, from being forced to dress
in certain ways and carry certain marks, to being subjected to systemic
pogroms. Thus, it is easy to see why a powerful narrative married with
Christian symbolism would gain popularity.
The Aryan Christ
Susanna Heschel, a professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and
the author of the meticulously detailed book The Aryan Jesus: Christian
Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany describes a massive
theological attempt to de-couple Jesus from his Jewish ancestry and
transform him into a symbol of resistance for the “Aryans.” According to
Heschel, “various theological strategies were employed during the
nineteenth century to distance Jesus from Judaism, but with the rise of
racial theory suggestions began to circulate that Jesus was not a Jew,
but rather an Aryan, born in the town of Galilee, where an ethnically
mixed population lived.”
During the Third Reich, individuals such as Walter Grundmann, a leading
figure in the pro-Nazi faction of the German Protestant Church, Deutsche
Christen, provided significant theological and institutional support to
advance this theory. According to Heschel, Grundmann and his ilk posited
that Jesus was not Jewish but a “an anti-Jewish Aryan whose true
identity had been concealed by Jews who entered the early church and
falsified the Gospels.” In 1939, Grundmann set up the Institute for the
Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, a
cross-church establishment by eleven Protestant churches. The institute
became the most important propaganda vehicle for German Protestantism,
which produced a “nazified Christianity” at its theological core.
According to Heschel, the Institute started with the declaration: “Is
Christianity derived from Judaism and is it its continuation and
completion, or does Christianity stand in opposition to Judaism? We
answer this question: Christianity is the unbridgeable religious
opposition to Judaism.”
Around two hundred church leaders, pastors, professors and academic
theologians were willing to collaborate with or support the institute.
While the idea of an Aryan Jesus took new and dangerous turns during the
Third Reich, it is important to note, as Heschel noted earlier, that the
seeds of such “Aryanization” of Jesus trace back to nineteenth century.
Growing up, Hitler was well aware of such theories. A devout Christian,
Hitler squarely blamed Jews for persecuting Jesus. However, he and
others could not bear Jesus’ Jewish heritage, and thus sought
“de-judaize” Jesus in their own ways, calling him a “Aryan fighter” and
the savior of the world against Jewry. To quote Hitler’s words:
“And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation
of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies
of the human race out of the Temple of God; because then, as always,
they used religion as a means of advancing their commercial interests.
But at that time Christ was nailed to the Cross for his attitude towards
the Jews…”
Based on the above information, it is beyond doubt that Hitler saw in
the Hakenkreuz a symbol of the struggle of an Aryan Jesus, who was
nailed to the Cross for his transgressions against Jews. Clearly then,
Hitler’s Hakenkreuz would symbolize the persecution of Jesus and
resistance against “Jewish world domination,” narratives promoted by
various churches for the past 2,000 years.
Mein Kampf — From translation to deliberate mistranslation
As Nakagaki points out in his book, many in the West think that Hitler
invented the word Swastika or that it is present in his writings. To
analyze this, I browsed through three early English translations of
Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Evidently, Hitler did not use the word Swastika
anywhere in Mein Kampf— only “Hakenkreuz.” Some relevant passages from
Mein Kampf (original, German version) read as follows (emphasis added):
“1. Dennoch mußte ich die zahllosen Entwürfe, die damals aus den Kreisen
der jungen Bewegung einliefen, und die meistens das Hakenkreuzin die
alte Fahne hineingezeichnet hatten, ausnahmslos ablehnen.
2. atsächlich hat ein Zahnarzt aus Starnberg auch einen gar nicht
schlechten Entwurf geliefert, der übrigens dem meinen ziemlich nahekam,
nur den einen Fehler hatte, daß das Hakenkreuzmit gebogenen Haken in
eine weiße Scheibe hineinkomponiert war.
3. Ich selbst hatte unterdes nach unzähligen Versuchen eine endgültige
Form niedergelegt; eine Fahne aus rotem Grundtuch mit einer weißen
Scheibe und in deren Mitte ein schwarzes Hakenkreuz. Nach langen
Versuchen fand ich auch ein bestimmtes Verhältnis zwischen der Größe der
Fahne und der Größe der weißen Scheibe sowie der Form und Stärke des
Hakenkreuzes.”
Nowhere does the word Swastika appear above. Had Hitler known about this
word through previous associations with German socialist groups, he
would have used it.
To illustrate this further, the first (abridged) translation of Mein
Kampf was done by Englishman E.T.S Dugdale in 1931. Dugdale, who was
fluent in German and had done work for the German government, accurately
translated the relevant passages and never once used the word Swastika.
To quote some passages from Dugdale’s translation (emphasis added):
“After innumerable trials, I settled upon a final form: a flag having a
red background, with a white disc in it, bearing on its center a black
hooked cross. After much searching, I decided upon the proper
proportions between the size of the flag and that of the white disc, and
the form and thickness of the cross; and it has remained so ever since.
Armbands, also of the same, were at once ordered for the men of the
bodies for keeping order — red with a white disc and a hooked cross in
it. The new flag first appeared in public in the middle of the summer of
1920.”
Thus, a literal translation from German to English would produce “hooked
cross,” as rightly done by Dugdale.
Another interesting point to note is from the work of Thomas Wilson of
the Smithsonian Museum (discussed earlier), who writes how the word
Swastika did not appear in any major dictionary or reference source
during his time, admitting:
“I began a search of which proved almost futile, as even the word
Swastika did not appear in such works as Worcester’s or Webster’s
dictionaries, the Encyclopedic Dictionary, the Encyclopedia Britannica,
Johnson’s Universal Cyclopedia, the People’s Cyclopedia, nor Smith’s
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities…In the American Encyclopedia
the description is erroneous while all the Century Dictionary says is
‘same as fylfot,’ and ‘Compare Crux Ansata and Gammadion.’”
Thus, at best, the definition of Swastika implied a resemblanceto other
symbols observed in Europe, rather than the equivalence.
The deliberate mistranslation
Unfortunately, Dugdale’s translation did not become popular due to a
host of reasons. However, one translation that did gain popularity, was
that of Irish Catholic Priest and journalist James Vincent Murphy.
Murphy published the first complete translation of Mein Kampf in 1939.
Murphy deliberately mistranslated Hakenkreuz into Swastika while leaving
other German words either in original form or translating them properly
in English. For example, in his preface, Murphy describes how he
carefully avoided translating Weltanschhauung and Volkisch. To quote:
“There are a few points more that I wish to mention in this introductory
note. For instance, I have let the word Weltanschhauung stand in its
original form very often. We have no one English word to convey the same
meaning as the German word, and it would have burdened the text too much
if I were to use a circumlocution each time the word occurs.
Weltanschhauung literally means ‘Outlook-on-the World.’
Another word I have often left standing in the original is völkisch. The
basic word here is Volk, which is sometimes translated as People; but
the German word, Volk, means the whole body of the people without any
distinction of class or caste.”
It is evident that Murphy was familiar with native German words that
didn’t really have English equivalents! Furthermore, if there were no
English equivalents of these words, how does Swastika (a Sanskrit word
used by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains only) then become the English
translation of Hakenkreuz?
Hitler did not know English or any other languages such as Sanskrit and
was not familiar with the word “Swastika.” This is clearly established
by the fact that Hitler uses the word “Aryan” extensively in Mein Kampf.
“Aryan” is a Sanskrit word, which he learned within the context of the
the racist Aryan Supremacy Theory expounded by the likes of Houston
Stewart Chamberlain, Arthur de Gobineau and others, along with
nineteenth century theological attempts to make Jesus a symbol of Aryan
struggle. Had he learned about the Swastika as a symbol of ancient
Aryans, he would have included the word.
One cannot help but conclude that Murphy, being an ordained priest,
didn’t want the evil Nazi symbol to be associated in any way with the
sacred hooked cross of Christianity, and thus deliberately mistranslated
Hakenkreuz into Swastika.
Indeed, as Nakagaki admits in his book: “Whether intentional or not,
these translators protected the Christian cross and damaged the Eastern
religious swastika.”
The damage of wrongfully associating Swastika with Hakenkreuz
The scale of the damage is such that a symbol used by close to 1.5
Billion people in the world in their religious and cultural practices (a
symbol that literally means well-being and peace), is wrongfully
associated with evil, death and destruction.
Wrongfully associating the Swastika with the Hakenkreuz endorses bigotry
and creates a dangerous environment for Hindus, Buddhists and Jains; it
promotes the viewpoint that their religions are closely tied to Nazi
ideology. What’s more, when lawmakers such as those in New York attempt
to pass legislation deeming a sacred symbol as an emblem of hatred,
millions of kids attending schools are forced to learn that a symbol of
peace and well-being is a symbol of death and destruction. It will lead
to unprecedented levels of bullying and attacks on students belonging to
these religious backgrounds in schools and colleges across the Western
world, as well as escalate the spread of Hinduphobia worldwide rather
than fostering an environment of mutual respect and understanding.
Google Mistranslation
Millions of users rely on Google Translate to interpret documents in
foreign languages. The below illustrates how a mistranslation can can
lead to the entire world interpreting the Hakenkreuz as the Swastika. In
the first picture, the word “Christenkreuz” is translated as “Christian
cross” but the word “Hakenkreuz” is translated as “Swastika”! What’s
worse, in the second picture, when broken up, “Haken” is translated as
“hook”, “Kreuz” is translated as “cross” but “Hakenkreuz is translated
as “Swastika”!nothing else. For instance, Christuskreuz und Hakenkreuz
was a protestant periodical which supported Hitler. Another book, called
Kreuz und Hakenkreuz details the relationship between the Church and the
Nazis. And a paper, titled Kreuz und Hakenkreuz — Zur rechtlichen
Stellung der Religionsgemeinschaften im nationalsozialistischen Staat,
also discusses the complex relationship between the Church and the
Nazis. Finally, in 2017, an exhibition in Berlin, titled Christenkreuz
und Hakenkreuz (note: the document is in German) discussed the influence
of Nazi Socialist ideology in the design of the churches that were built
after Hitler came to power. None of these periodicals or works use the
word Swastika.
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