The swastika is a symbol -- an ancient symbol with a very long history. It has been used in Western, Hindu, and Buddhist motifs. But, as you know, it is most famous as the icon of the Nazi movement, which is directly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.Symbols have power. Most people in the West, I suspect, think 'Nazi' as soon as they a swastika. If one sees a person walking down the street with a big swastika on his shirt, one rapidly concludes that this person is a Nazi or strongly sympathetic to Nazism. This is a reasonable conclusion.
Likewise, May Day is a symbol. It began as a commemoration of the Chicago Haymarket Riot of 1886. The labor movement rapidly adopted it as a moment to promote itself. Alas, so did the Communist movement and during the despotic reign of the Soviet Union, it became the central holiday to celebrate their evil philosophy and its accomplishments.Unfortunately, the illegal immigration march occurred on May 1 and among the principle march organizers were literal Communists. Now it is very dubious that anything other than a small minority of the marchers were Communists. The Mexicans who marched were dupes of the subtler messages of the organizers. But it was a reasonable suspicion and therefore Inoperable Terran was reasonable to point it out.
Wise people who have a message do their best to avoid the use of words or other symbols which will give false impressions about that message, especially ones that will result in moral revulsion by the audience. That's why in America and Europe, most people, even devout Hindus, do not wear swastikas in public. Or shirts bearing the image of Hermann Goring.
Following similar logic, if the marchers wished to communicate a message of freedom and human rights unencumbered by incorrect connotations, they should have completely disassociated themselves from any Communist supporters and chosen a day other than May Day.
4 comments:
nah
it's time to reclaim May Day.
Good luck. The first step is to vigorously, repeatedly, and endlessly denounce communism. Let there be no confusion about what you think that May Day should be.
I understand your argument because it's one I used to, in a slightly different context, make. But I think it-- as mine did-- falls short.
Back in my bitterest anti-Christian days, I used to say that, even if I were to believe in the essential message of Christianity, believe in Christ, etc, I would never be able to call myself a "Christian" because the label left such a horrible taste in my mouth. I said that, were a revamped Nazi party to come into style trumpeting all the things I believed in, doing genuinely good works, I would never be able to call myself a "Nazi" because of the history, because of the horror attached to the word. Similarly, the "Christian" church had done so many horrific things-- abuse of women, torture, executions, warfare, slavery, pogroms, etc-- that I would never be able to associate myself with it, no matter what I thought about the core message.
It sounds to me like what you're trying to say here. Sure, there might be more to May Day, but there are horrible associations because of Stalin, etc. Even a Swastika was to be thrown on something innocent, you wouldn't want to wear it. So why celebrate May Day, another symbol of horror?
I don't think the two are comparable.
In the case of Christianity, for instance, we have something very different than Nazism, even if there are (over a longer period of time) just as many horrors attached to it. Firstly, while people in prominence in the church may have done horrible things, while many people in the rank and file supported or ignored it, those horrible things have never been the "essence" or the "core" of the church. Bad, unforgettable, yes. But not what the church was all about. There have always been as many or people with genuine faith... so the cross, as much as may have liked to pretend otherwise 13 years ago, doesnt' JUST mean torture and oppression and hypocrisy. It also means love and hope and forgiveness and the like. While the Swastika may have had origins somewhere else, it's association with the Nazi party became total. And there just isn't a counterbalance to the horrors of Nazism. There's no sense that most Nazis were out there doing good things and loving people and then a crazy Nazi got in charge and did horrible things. Nazism wasn't a long tradition with good values that suddenly got ruined. The Swastika doesn't stand for good things in the minds of millions and millions of people around the world. Using it would not be appealing to the best nature of many with the risk of alienating some.
I think the whole May Day/Communism issue falls closer to the church image than to the Nazi image. No doubt horrible things were done in the name of Communism (usually by people who did not in any way hold genuine Communist ideals). But May Day's association with Stalin's death camps isn't anywhere near as total as the swastika's association with Hitler's camps, and, regardless of what truly horrible people may have done, much like the church, there has always been a counter balance of people involved in communist movements for good reasons. I would say the majority, by far, of the people who view May Day as something of a symbol, who uphold the ideals of communism/socialism/labor, are not motivated by hate, do not want violence, do not see these things through the lens that you do.
To be honest, and without having enough information to really make the case, I'd say that you're blinded in a way on this. As I said, I was once bitterly anti-Christian. When I made this kind of argument, I would tell myself that I was opposed so strongly to the church because of all the horrid things it had done, and I would insist that the balance had leaned toward evil, that there was little good to be acknowledged. The truth, though, is that my disdain for the ideas of the church (largely subjective) biased me from the beginning, made me prone to see all the horrors and none of the good, and draw conclusions from that slanted evidence. It's clear that you disagree with some of the basic notions of the communist/socialist ideal-- you've had plenty to say on your views regarding property, personal responsibility, etc, and I'd say that those views put you at odds with those movements-- I think you let that disagreement on values color your view of anything and everything people involved in that movement do. Clearly seeing all the negatives, none of the positives.
Just a guess, though. I don't know most of what makes ME tick, I won't pretend to know the secrets of YOUR soul.
Implicit in my argument is that Communism and Nazism are morally comparable; that both are deeply evil inherently, not just in practice thus far. On principle, I will let that premise remain implicit rather than explicit. Some arguments (with all due respect, or at least as much as I can summon) are not worth making.
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