There’s a lot of hoo-har about Prince Harry dressing as a Nazi. We’ve had years of the Royals doing stupid and crass things like that, you’d think people would start to realise there is very little point to maintaining the Royal Family by now.

I’m not going to talk much on the incident itself, but instead on the taboo nature of the swastika. It was the home-made armband that stands out most on Harry’s arm has been played up the most - in virtually every report, picture or not, the swastika is mentioned as the item that qualified the outfit as truly ‘Nazi’.

In our society, the swastika is a single, succinct symbol of Nazism, the closest definition of evil we have in the modern world. Whenever it appears today, there is almighty panic to remove it; when it appeared in a Microsoft font pack, a patch to remove it was hastily released; in Melbourne, a cockup on the part of the city’s gardeners left the city council grovelling when flowerbeds were accidentally laid in swastika patterns. From my own experience, when I was at primary school, I recall how some teachers were horrified that the Hindu kids in school would have (perfectly innocent) mehndi swastikas on their hands.

Wikipedia has an excellent article about the swastika, which is worth reading, as a reminder of its benign origins as a good luck symbol, in not only Indian cultures, but also in Ancient Rome and the Navajo nation. It features in historic Christian and even Jewish architecture, and in the early years of the 20th century, before the rise of Nazism, featured in logos in Britain, and on the merchandise of Coca Cola and Carlsberg.

This is not a call for the prompt rehabilitation of the swastika; to try to redefine it now would be an insult to those victims who are still alive, those to whom the swastika can only ever be a reminder of the Holocaust and other horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. But could it be ever taken back as a benign symbol? Perhaps we do need the taboo, as a continual and everlasting reminder of the evil the Nazis prepetrated. As long as Nazism remains the lowest ebb of humanity, then the swastika will retain its negative connotations. Society will be happy to pay the cost, that of perpetuating ignorance, and continuing to tarnish other cultures’ symbology.

Update: Oh dear…

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 13th, 2005 at 23:39:40 and is filed under General.