Comment by jdlshore

10 months ago

Seems like ignorance of the implications, not any desire to a tie themselves to a political stance. I think the “assume positive intent” principle needs to apply here.

Also, if you're not from the USA, you're more likely to associate it with the beloved Rowan Atkinson sitcom.

  • Or the non-politically-loaded phrase that the sitcom is named for.

    • > the non-politically-loaded phrase

      You mean its popularisation and heavy use by William Henry Parker III, Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (from 1950 to 1966)?

      He very much used it in a loaded manner to portray police as bastions of good and the last defence against "the criminal element".

      From his wikipedia page:

         Parker himself was known for his "unambiguous racism".
      

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Parker_(police_offi...

    • There's a difference between "not politically-loaded decades ago" and "not politically-loaded now".

      We still let people use the Swastika if they had a harmless tradition of using it beforetime. But if anybody new uses it, we assume it's because of the murder.

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