Comment by dowager_dan99
6 days ago
Is that how you justify a swastika tattoo? You can also rob the bad people of the power to hide behind the words and symbols: if only bad people use them, we know the users are bad. It's definitely signaling, I don't see why it has to be "cultural".
>You can also rob the bad people of the power to hide behind the words and symbols: if only bad people use them, we know the users are bad. It's definitely signaling
No, you are just giving them the power to actually do stuff without looking like they are doing stuff.
As long as they talk the talk, they don't have to walk the walk. You don''t have to actually care about issues, that's what the DEI department is for.
I don't think a swastika tattoo would be problematic if the person doesn't impute Nazi symbolism to theirs. Even in the West, swastikas and associated symbology is used pretty heavily in neo-pagan circles, and while some of those folk are racist, most aren't.
But OPs point is broader: if you allow the bad people to just appropriate the symbol as their own, they're going to gradually take over everything. Never mind swastikas; we're at the point where making an okay sign can be misconstrued as a white nationalist gesture, and people self-censor themselves accordingly.
There's also the reverse problem here, where, if you tie such things so strongly to symbols in popular opinion, then loud condemnation of such symbols is used to "prove" that one is not a bad person. For a major ongoing example of this look at Russia with its cult of "we defeated the Nazis therefore we're definitely the good guys".
At the end of the day, it's really just a lazy shortcut. The bad people are bad because of their ideas and actions, not because of their symbols. If we always look at the ideas and actions, the symbols are irrelevant, and we don't have to surrender them to the bad guys' claims.
That doesn't really fly. The Nazis are so bad that unless you're south Asian a swastika is assumed to be a pro Nazi sign. Does it sort of suck? Yeah but it is the way it is. Plenty of slurs don't have any inherent negative meaning and are slurs because of how they tend to be used. Occasionally some minority groups partially reclaim them like with Queer but mostly polite people stop using them
Signaling is bad because anyone can signal anything they want. Everyone should be judging either other based on actions not superfluous signals. And yes, maybe you should think twice if you see a swastika tatoo on someone, people change and are multi dimensional.
Is your comment here an "action" or "superfluous signal"?
Do you have a coherent principle that separates one from the other?
Obviously its a gradient, but we can agree that "dedicate time and money" is on the action side and "typing online" being superfluous signaling. And yes, if you knew me in real life, you probably shouldn't weight my hacker news comments over what I spend time and money on.
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> And yes, maybe you should think twice if you see a swastika tatoo on someone, people change and are multi dimensional.
Tattoos can change, too. If I had a tattoo like that, but had come to see the error of my ways, I would have it removed, or if that was too costly and time-consuming (it takes a year or so of painful, expensive, periodic laser treatments to remove a tattoo), I'd have a tattoo artist cover it up with something else.
There's no excuse for keeping a neo-Nazi tattoo if you stop being a neo-Nazi and realize that neo-Nazis are disgusting people.
Everyone "should" be vegan too but I ain't holding my breath