Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Behind the Swastika

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Robert is joined again by Chelsey Weber-Smith to continue to discuss the secret history of the Swastika.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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that's how I was raised. It is not wrong if you take your clothes off for the apostle. Listen to Sacred Scandal on the IHR radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up? This iced tea was something I know you're gonna wanna hear. In my new podcast, iced tea's daily game. your podcasts. I'll be coming to you every single weekday with a fresh new quote that speaks directly to me and I hope to you as well. In five minutes or less, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories and experiences that show them in action in my life. My goal is to inspire all of you out there to achieve success and happiness whatever that means to you So start every week day morning with me and get inspired listen to I see daily game every week day on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts

Or wherever you get your podcasts and start your morning with me What wasn't my no Deca's so feet so feet. I'm just trying I'm trying to recapture that what's boiling my pig anus's energy that I still like the classic what's cracking my peppers that's still one of my favorite ones you've ever done I know it's been so whole song four years I'll never use again. I know it's been like four years. But I hold it in my heart. Never again. Fine. Just gonna make it more and more off-putting, you know?

Yeah, just try people way more and more. What's trafficking my children, that kind of stuff. Just gonna be a problem. Thanks for reminding us. Yeah, we need that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is behind the bastards.

Podcast, worst people, tell y'all about them. And today, getting this is behind the bastards podcast worse people tell you all about them. And today getting behind really behind the Nazis by getting behind the swastika with Chelsea Weber Smith. Oh, this has been so interesting so far. And I just have no idea really where it's going. So thanks for having me here and taking me on this journey. Thank you for being here, Chelsea Weber Smith, whose podcast American hysteria is pretty cool and people should check out. Chelsea! Yes.

You ready? I'm ready. Are you ready to do this? I'm ready to do this. And then a bunch of like swastikas play on screen. I don't know why. I hate that. I hate that.

That's who, I don't know why I hate that. I hate that that's who we are now. Yeah, that's like so our, well, I probably shouldn't tell that story, but I come across periodically old pieces of like Nazi paraphernalia. It's a hazard of the job. And there's definitely been a few times when I've been like, oh, that would be an interesting, like that book would be interesting to have because of, you know, this person who signed it. And then like, no, I don't need that in my house. What am I, what am I doing? You're, you're, you don't, you don't want to have this, Robert. It's haunted. As book. Yeah, this haunted ass Nazi book. I was given through someone else,

a like family heirloom that was an old Hitler youth dagger, and I had no idea what to do with it. So I just kind of like put it in my trash pile out in the yard, and it's just slowly decaying, which I think is the right thing to do with a Hitler youth dagger. Was that the one that was mailed to the corporate office? No, no, no, no. Yeah. We get all sorts of weird stuff.

So in the late 1920s and early 1930s, you might have heard about this. The Nazis rise to power. They solidify their grip on power. And while the Nazis are kind of like moving up in their inevitable kind of like path towards taking control of the German government. There's also it's a fight in the street, you know?

You got your old-timey anti-fascists, both kind of social Democrats and communists, you know, duken it out with the Nazis in the streets. And these street fights, these big brawls, these murders and assassinations are kind of a regular cause of fascination in the world media, right? Like they get a lot of attention in the American newspapers in particular. And so they start sending over reporters to cover all of this unrest in Vimer, Germany. In 1927, an American journalist from town and country magazine traveled to Austria to report on fighting between local social Democrats

and Nazi-aligned fascists. Being a dumb American, this person, she did not worry much about the fact that she had gone to Austria in 1927 with her girls club ring, which bore a swastika on it. So she's got this like- Back to the girls club, yeah. She's like showing up to like embed with these social

Democrat like street fighting gangs, and she's got a swastika ring. And like one of these guys has to take her side and be like Oh, I can't be wearing that here I know you don't mean it, but you you gotta you gotta take that thing off gosh that is amazing that is so funny. Oh, it's amazing Well, it's history is so funny. Oh, it's amazing. Well, history is so rich. History is rich, but also there have always been, you know, as someone who's done conflict reporting, I know a lot of great journalists, a lot of people I respect a lot, but the majority

of journalists who do that kind of work are always like shitheads, right? And like, it is a shitheaded thing to like go to travel to like report on the fighting between these Nazis and these other groups and not be like, should I bring my swastika ring? Like maybe I should leave this in. You didn't do that much research. Yeah, you didn't possess the very most basic knowledge that you would need to report for newspaper on these events. It is 1927. You had some time. Yes. Yeah.

Sloppy Sloppy. Six years later in 1933, Hitler had been made chancellor of Germany. This obviously supercharged international resistance to the regime, an American anti-fascist held a rally in New York City to protest the New Limented dictator. One journalist with the New Yorker showed up to cover the event and realized very quickly that his pocket watch, which was engraved with a swastika, might be a bad thing to have out on the street with it, right? Like, really? Again, but it does kind of show I'm making fun of these people and I think they should

do. But it does show you like how Benal it was seen as. We're like, somebody might show up and be like, oh fuck, I can't have this thing on me. I didn't realize this would be a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Starting in the early 30s, American use of the swastika began to decline. And this was matched throughout much of the Western world. For reasons I probably don't need to spend too much time on. Not surprising that it does start to decline in its kind of anodine usage. In Nazi Germany, the new regime actually encouraged this.

At first, the ubiquity of the symbol had been good for them. In the early years, when they're rising to power, it's free PR. But now they're in power, and the hundreds of men have died fighting under the swastika. So it has become this kind of holy symbol of sacrifice. And once they're in power, the Nazis kind of find it horrifying that some company might use it to sell coffee. In 1933, Joseph Gerbels announced the law for protection of national symbols. Quote, If the symbol is used on an object or in connection with it, it may only be used

if the object itself has an interrelation to the symbol. The use of symbols for publicity purposes is in any case forbidden. So basically, this law means you can't use a swastika to like sell a cigar or whatever, right? Unless it's like you're doing a fundraiser for the Nazi party, then you can probably get away with it. For the Nazis, the swastika then had come full circle from a symbol that they co-opted to mainstream their image

to a sacred object restricted from commercial use, unless that commercial use was Nazi in origin. This created problems for a number of people, particularly people outside of Nazi Germany. And some of those people were Canadians who lived in the quaint Northern Ontario town of Swastika. Named after? Just pick it up the news one morning, like, you know, you're living out in the middle of nowhere, maybe you don't check in for a while, and then like, you see that like Hitler's taken power in Germany, and you look at the banner behind him like oh my god

wow. This is going to be a problem for a swastikers. Now swastika Ontario. Swastika Ontario was named after the swastika gold mine, staked in 1907. The town name was inspired by the Sanskrit symbol, not the other thing. Several minds soon came to dot the boom town, and all of them were kind of swastika themed. There was the swastika mind. There was also the lucky cross mine.

In 1940, as the war breaks out, members of swastika, or citizens of swastika, started to feel pressure to change the town name. There are a couple of articles at the time We're like people in town are like we're not changing the name. They don't get to take it from us Like this has been our name longer than they've been using it, you know But eventually the provincial government over rules them and they they send like I don't know Mounties or whatever to take The swastika sign outside of town and replace it with one that says Winston Winston doesn't have the same ring to it.

No, no, no, no. These people should have owned like an NFL team without energy. Although it does make me think what if Hitler had adopted as a symbol just a man named Winston or maybe a carton of Winston cigarettes, you know? It's a lot of Americans and camels writing to Nuremberg or to a fucking Normandy. So, yeah, they changed the, the, the provincial government tries to change the town name to Winston. And the swastikers are so adamant that like we're not going to change our town name, they tear down the Winston sign and they put up their own new sign for swastika telling reporters still with Hitler

We came up with our name first I appreciate the dedication, you know, this is where things go. Yeah, I mean, you know They're not wrong right like because it's not their fault, you know, that might not be the right hill to die on. I wouldn't, this is not the hill I would pick to die on. No. Just my little town in Ontario has the name, but it makes me think.

So like the first big piece of like conflict reporting I did was after the Bata Claw massacre in 2015 when ISIS murdered dozens and dozens of people in France at that like mass shooting type deal. I did this article where I went through like 800 or 900 pages of like ISIS propaganda and like wrote this thing about their weird magazine. But like I remember I spent like two or three days just kind of like stuck in my little office writing this thing and then I go out to like do laundry

at the laundromat near my house, which was the ISIS laundromat. So I just remember like looking up at it and being like, ugh, that's probably gonna be a problem for you guys. Oh man, in the similar vein we have a dry cleaner that is just called Q. Q, yeah. Man, that's too bad. Yeah have a dry cleaner that is just called Q. Q. Yeah. That's too bad.

Yeah, I mean, it's not on you. But we did it first. They haven't changed it. There is another funny story about this of Swastika Mountain in Southern Oregon. Now Oregon has a famously bad Nazi problem. So you might assume probably a dark history. But the combination of word, We bad Nazi problems. You might assume probably a dark history about it. Yeah.

A word. Swastika mountain. In Oregon. Yeah, in Oregon. But no, it was, it was again, it predates the use of that. It was just somebody, some guy decided, call it Swastika mountain. It got renamed like a couple of years ago. It was not all that long ago that the state was like, we probably shouldn't have this. Like what year are we talking? Like a couple of years ago, it was not all that long ago that the state was like, we probably shouldn't have this.

Like what year are we talking? Like a couple of years ago, like not all that long ago, that's what we know this. How did we know this? As Pacific Northwesterners. It wasn't a big, it's not like a major mountain, right? It's not like hood. It's not one of your money mountains, you know. I also, I can remember, there's this farmhouse, I used to spend a lot of time in pretty old farmhouse

outside of about an hour and a half outside of Reading in the middle of fucking nowhere, North Central California, that the original owner had burnt into the wooden roof, all of the different cattle brands from different ranches in the area, and one of them is a fucking swastika. And it was knowing the area like, I actually knew a guy who had been in the Hitler youth as a kid out there, although he was not a Nazi anymore. You know, the war in the room, he was 14, it's not really on him, but like, seeing that and being like,

just knowing the history, this could just be a thing that people had way back in the day before the Nazis. Or it could be a Nazi ranch, like rural California. Also, either of those is equally likely. I looked it up, it's August 2022, the old and geographic needs board confirmed that it would no longer be called swastika mountain.

We did it guys. We did it guys. We almost died on that hill. Yeah, yeah, God bless Oregon, finally. Yeah, uh-huh. Making progress, everybody. Really got that knocked out before the election. But that's like, it's so fascinating that you can look at that now and actually truly not know.

I mean, you can honestly know if you have a dividing line of time, but with these certain like products, you don't have like such a definitive line that happens where you're like This is not Nazi shit. This is not see Nazi shit, you know, and we can say that without any doubt It's just I had no idea. Yeah, pretty cool stuff So the use of the swastika as a fashion icon had started to fade I'll be it unevenly by the end of the 1930s, as this segment from a write-up in Slate makes clear. One incident in 1936 made that clear. Swastika motif receives cold reception,

read a small headline in Women's Wear Daily in 1936. Buttons, crested with Swastika, shown by one kuture house, stirred up some comment among an audience of New York buyers, the editors wrote. No sales of this particular model are reported. Although no reason for this chilly response was given, it might be due to the fact that many of New York buyers, the editors wrote. No sales of this particular model are reported. Although no reason for this chilly response was given, it might be due to the fact that many important New York department stores

were underfounded by Jews, including B. Altman, Bloomingdale's, Bergdorf Goodman, Sacks with Avenue, and Macy's. Although the women's wear daily article left the designer of these buttons anonymous, Vogue also reported on a fashion show featuring swastika buttons, identifying the designer as Marcel Rokis, a well-known French courteier. Unlike women's wear daily, Vogue found the use of the

Swastika to be amusing, rather than disturbing. Now, it's like telling me it wasn't Coco Chanel. There's a pretty, I mean, like Coco, there's a pretty good chance that Vogue had no problem with the Swastika because the people running it were pretty fucking racist and kind of fans of the Nazis. They, along with many other publications, were cautiously positive about Hitler in the lead up to the war years. That same year, they ran a spread showing the home decor of Hitler in his mountain hideaway, including a prominent swastika cushion on his couch.

Slate says that this was an example of them humanizing Hitler and trying to reinforce the domestic feel of the symbol. They did also include a profile on British Prime Minister Anthony Eden's house at the same time, so I don't know. The article goes on, as late as 1937, good housekeeping recommended creating a swastika out of cashews as a Clifford cake decoration.

I know that's what I'm doing. My next birthday, cashew swastika baby. Wow. Oh, you got a nut allergy. That's a double problem right there. Yeah. So I wonder if your local grocery store would go ahead and pop one and frosting. I was just going through my-

I was just going through my 37 issues of a good housekeeping and, yeah, they recommended this. Can you do this, Kate, for me? This is what I want. But in 1940, the Boy Scouts finally decided they'd had enough of the hook cross. At that year's Jamboree in Santiago, Chile, a vote was taken to abandon the Swastika, due to the fact that Boy Scouts and Scout leaders

had been heckled and pelted with shit while marching through streets with swastikas on their uniform. And again, hard to blame anyone in 1940 for seeing a bunch of dudes in military style uniforms with white swastikas and going, I'm gonna throw some stuff at those kids. It's too late, boys. You gotta give up the symbol. Might have to fuck up a boy scout over this. The boy scout order of the white swastika was of course never sacred. And neither was really the town name of swastika Ontario.

But all of this does create a very serious problem for the Navajo, the Papago, the Apache, and the Hopi people, all of whom had used the swastika or the the the whirling log in various works of religious significance since time immemorial, right? This is a religious symbol for them. It is not as simple as just, oh, this weird decoration or name that we used is problematic. Now we got to change it, right? Like this is a thing that is a part of religious

observances, you know? But after the Nazi invasion of France, representatives from each of these tribes, the Navajo, the Papago, the Apache, and the Hopi, sign a proclamation on the whirling log symbol. Because the above ornament, which has been a symbol of friendship among our forefathers for many centuries, has been desecrated recently by another nation of peoples. Therefore it is resolved that henceforth from this date and forevermore, our tribes renounce the use of the emblem commonly known today as the swastika on our blankets, baskets, art objects, sand paintings, and clothing. Now, I want you to really think about that, right?

Because they've done nothing wrong and the whirling log has done nothing wrong. They are choosing to give up a sacred symbol because of something a completely different group of people across the world have done with a version of that symbol as an act of solidarity with their victims. And I want to be clear, I'm not saying like, this is the right thing or not doing this would have been the wrong thing because I don't think it would have been wrong. If they'd said, look, this is our religious symbol, we're not going to change it because of these assholes, right? I think that would have been fine too.

I'm just saying that's a really noteworthy decision to make, especially prior to, yeah. I mean. Yeah, I think that's like, it is like you said it, it seems like an act of solidarity. Yeah. We can't exactly know what was going through their heads or their conversations, but it does, I mean, what else could it be except like we can no longer abide this, even if it's like a huge important story in our culture. It's like what's more important is no longer allowing this symbol to have a power that we don't consent to, right? It's like no matter what now, I think it's obvious that this this horrible superpower has basically usurped the use of this and it's just not going to. You know, it just can no longer mean what it means to outsiders. And maybe that would have been fine if it were just like an internally used symbol.

But yeah, what it's just like heartbreaking. It's really heartbreaking. It's very sad. Yeah. I do have, there might be a darker reason. And I'm sure a number of things played into the decision that they made. The darker part of my mind says, well, maybe they were concerned. They see what is gearing up. And

they think like, well, if we go to war, you know, this is 40s, this is before the US is in the war. But like, if the United States goes to war with the Germans, it might be dangerous for us to like have this on. Right? Like we might, it's fucking, we might, we, this might cause some of our people to get targeted, right? That may have also been a factor. I don't, it's certainly not like a thing that they write out here. I do think it was probably more just like a solidarity and also like, yeah, just an acknowledgement of the, I mean, a lot of Navajo people, a lot of Hopi people, you know, a lot of Apache people are going to wind up fighting against the Nazis too. So yeah, anyway, it's a remarkable moment

and kind of I think worth acknowledging. So we all know the next part of the story, right? You got your World War II, the Nazis, you know, if you're doing some stuff and then America without anyone else's help, wins the war, right? I think everyone's familiar with the gist of the story. So during the war years, it becomes dangerous to be associated with the Nazis.

And the swastika, Laura Ingles, a pilot and a Nazi sympathizer, is put on trial in 1942, and her swastika bracelet is brought up as evidence of her fascist leadings. Ingles claims it was just an Indian symbol for good luck, but she is convicted of failing to register as an enemy agent, although her swastika bracelet apparently didn't factor into this, but it does get brought up in the trial. The war ends, the swastika gets false, and as a political symbol, you know, it becomes profoundly toxic, particularly after knowledge of the Holocaust becomes more widespread.

This leads to its disappearance from like, you know, anodine normal products that like a person would want to have in their house, but it does not lead to its disappearance from popular products. It just causes a change in the kind of products that it shows up on. Stephen Heller writes, quote,

it was used increasingly on paperback book covers for spy and mystery yards and on covers for men's pulp adventure magazines. Even today, the most common sanctioned mainstream use of the mark is on jackets for fiction and nonfiction books with World War II themes. In the late 40s and 50s, the male public's fascination with things Nazi was disturbingly fetishistic, and to an extent it still is. Yet publishers knew what they were doing from a marketing standpoint. The Swastika was such an identifiable icon, a magnet, so to speak, that a browser could perceive content without

ever reading the title. It is indeed ironic that the Swastika has evolved from benevolent sign to sinister national emblem to a veritable point of purchase display in only a few generations. And he provides a really interesting example of this that Sophie's going to show you from the men's magazine, World of Men! We got the girls, we got the men. So you've got this. Big two-thirds of it is this illustration of like a Nazi, he's sticking his bayonet into a woman's, a very blonde white woman's breast. There's a big swastika, very visible on his bicep. There's another swastika on this train behind him that's full of Nazi soldiers.

There's a woman behind her who's got like a strapless shirt on that's like, she looks like she's being taken into custody or something like that by these Nazis. And then the title of, uh, the, the apparent story that these pictures are for is lust slaves of Hitler's Warsaw butcher. Oh god. Wow. No.

One of the other mistress demands soft flesh. I was going to say that's one of the other big stories. There's a lot of great stories in this episode. Now Chelsea, I'm not a word cop, but I will say, you never need to use the phrase lust slaves. That's never a necessary term. There's no need to ever use the phrase lust slaves. No, it should really be retired from that. Yeah. How to master a sex-starved woman. Yeah, it's another article in the world of men. Jammer with a bayonet. It was a question to have a new call girl. Yeah, yeah. Revealed the syncapers of turned on co-eds. Man, world of men. Yeah.

So, it's on YouTube. America's bloody order. Yeah, what an incredible magazine. Now, the cover shows, yeah, so it's great stuff. Now, when I saw this incredible magazine, absolute work of historical art, I knew I had a sacred duty to try and find a copy. And unfortunately, I couldn't. But the internet archive does have a collection of men's magazines from the 50s and 60s.

And I will promise you all, we'll do a whole episode going through some of these in the future because they look incredible. Here's one cover that I just wanna talk about. It has nothing to do with Nazis, but it's glorious Chelsea. Look at this. So, for-

Let's see it. I'm sorry, Chelsea. Oh no, this is what I'm saying. I'm so happy. He has content I want. Team sororities, schools for free love, passion, and orgies. Exposed exposed suburban sex coats how they operate exclusive beware the world of lust without love and it's like a

picture of a shake and there's there is a Nazi actually the swastika is not fully visible but there's like a shake and a Nazi tying a woman in a red dress to a palm tree. The lawns for the reds, jabs of stool. And we actually have a real one. So, one's for the reds shafts of steel. Oh. There's also a real picture of a woman. And on this one up in the corner. There is a real picture of a woman. She looks like she is topless.

I'm guessing these are kind of playboy. So, it's great. Yeah. She looks great. Helpless brides of the lash in Satan's hell. That's what I want. I want all that satanic, panic content, all that early sex cult panic. Yeah.

Look, these are, there's problematic aspects of this, but I think we can all agree. The people who wrote these titles use the English language in a way that is unique and beautiful. Hey, everyone. Robert here. As you've noticed, my audio just took a dive in quality. That is because my Zoom recorder died forever, revocably, while we were recording this episode.

And I did not notice it because I was lost in the heat of the moment, which is also a pretty good song by the band Asia. Anyway, I don't know why my Zoom died. Perhaps it was the crypto fascists, trying to stop this episode from airing. Perhaps it was the reds using the crypto fascists as cover in order to stop my investigation into their lust slave cartel. We'll never know. But I do apologize. My audio for the rest of this episode will be the zoom safety audio

we used and is a slightly lower quality. Yes, they definitely knew how to get attention. Are you familiar with Jack Chick? Oh, God, yes, absolutely. We just did a three-parter on Jack Chick. The King, the goat. Yeah, it just reminds me a little bit. You know, totally different, like motivations, but very similar pulpy, you know, extreme content. Jack Chick is actually the primary sponsor of this podcast.

So if you're worried about going to hell, because you've been reading minz magazines from the 1950s, you are. You come on and help you out right after this. Come on and help you out right after this Sacred Skando, one of best new podcasts of 2022, is back with a closer look at the darkness surrounding mega-church La Luz del Mundo and its leader, Na Sons Joaquin Garcia. They believe that he was Jesus Christ on earth. It wasn't even so much that he liked sex. He wanted something to pray.

It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of. For three generations, the Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on his community that began in Mexico and then grew across the United States, until one day. A day of reckoning for the man whose millions of followers called him the Apostle. Their leader was arrested and survivors began to speak out about the sexual abuse, the murder and corruption. This is just a business and their product are people. Listen to all episodes now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts.

911, what's your emergency? You shot her! Oh my god! It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer who is still on the loose. My small town rocked by murder. There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss. In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. One after another, after another, for a decade.

We weren't safe anywhere. We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes. Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids? And why? In that moment, I'll rage. And why do you some want the town's secrets to stay dead and buried forever? and why? In that moment, I saw rage. And why do you some want the town secrets to stay dead and buried forever?

I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again, but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the Murder Years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. From the studio who brought you the number one podcast, the Pigton Massacre. Breaking news out of Moscow, Idaho. It was an unimaginable crime. It's a massacre. There's no other way to say it.

Officials found four people dead. The victims were attacked with a large knife. It's a blood death. It's a crompson investigators nightmare. In the early morning of November 13th, 2022, four University of Idaho College students in the prime of their lives were found brutally stabbed to death in their home. We believe it was a targeted attack.

Police investigating the mysterious murders of four Idaho college students now say the threat to the community may not be over. We believe it was a targeted attack. Who on earth would do something like this and why? Listen to the Idaho Massacre on the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts, over ever you get your podcasts. Oh, we're back. Boy, my soul feels clenched. Oh, yeah. You've got even thinking about helpless brides of the lash in Satan's hell anymore. Chelsea.

No, I've got a new Lord and Savior. A new Lord and Savior. Oh, yeah. I could look at these magazines for hours. And we will soon. Don't worry, again. I could look at these magazines for hours. And we will soon. Don't worry, folks. I hope so. While the use of the swastika in Western nations was confined to bad guys and entertainment

media for decades, elsewhere in the world, it did have occasional resurgence. And this brings us back to India. Now India, again, it's both pretty distant from Nazi aggression. The Nazis aren't really a threat in the subcontinent. And it's also a place where swastikas are a very popular religious symbol. One of the weird things I spent months living in Northeast India, primarily Delhi, and one of the things that was always really, I mean at first, at least for this rickshaw to it was weird and then it became kind of normal.

It's like right in the front of like many houses, there's just a swastika. Now, it's not the same, like it's reversed. There's usually like a series of dots and stuff around it, but it's a very common decoration on the front of houses. Now, the fact that the swastika in, you know, Hindu culture, particularly has a history that has nothing to do with the Nazis. Also has co-exist with the fact that there is a very complex modern history of the Nazis in India and their relation to particular like Hindu nationalist political parties. Because the Nazis fought against the British Empire. A good number of Hindu

nationalists were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. This is compounded with the fact that popular Nazi spiritual philosopher Savitri Devi lived in India much of her life, organized with a lot of people who will be the political precursors to the party that is the current party of the Prime Minister of India, N Ingramoti, who is very far right. And kind of even beyond this, the Nazis send researchers to parts of the subcontinent with a group called the Ananerbi, which is like a, it is the group doing a lot of like this cult research and stuff and sort of the prewar Nazi era to kind of investigate the origin point of the Aryans in India, right? So there's a lot of reasons why there's this kind of like complex

history of the Nazis within India. Well, Hitler really admired India. Yeah. And you're like, you're Asia sort of, you know, there's a complex history there. And it's problematic at times. And part of what makes it problematic is like because of distance, there's not really this sense of the immediacy of Hitler's crimes for a lot of folks in that part of the world. And this will cause some complicated problems. In the late 1960s, contemporaneous to American Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell, an Indian Nazi party formed in New Delhi using the German Hagen Kroy as its symbol.

It promised that, if elected to power, India would be the strongest power on the planet. They failed to get any real support, the Indian Nazi party does not take off, but actual Nazi imagery retains a sort of low-key popularity in the subcontinent alongside the more traditional religious uses of the Swastika. And some of this contributed to the rise of a culture of admiration for Hitler as a business guru. Within India, Hitler is one of the best known sort of business influencers. You might say. What? Wow.

This is a more complicated topic than we're gonna talk about today, but it's because of this history, because you can find like management books that are like management lessons from Hitler and stuff. If you Google around, as a result of all this, if you Google around, you'll run into variations of the same story, which is that some Indian business owner

who's kind of mainly aware of like Hitler and the Nazis as a result of this weird kind of business influencer thing will open a store or a restaurant with very weird and specific Nazi branding. It will get covered in a news article. A lot of people will get angry. And there will nearly always be a follow-up interviewing the owner of the store who kind of seems befuddled

that anyone's pissed about this. Here's one example from a 2006 New York Times article. Beneats Sabbloc, 23 years old and a novice restaurant tour, says he wanted a catchy cafe name to sell his three to four dollar plates of pristine tonneau, pear and ricotta salad in panacotta. So he went with Hitler's cross. He put a swastika in the logo. He named his restaurant Hitler saying Hitler is a catchy name. Everyone knows Hitler. It's again, it's good marketing. I guess it draws eyes. I Know that it makes a money, but it does draw eyes. Yeah, I probably don't need to explain that the local Jewish community was not thrilled with this Later in the article, Sabbalkus quoted as saying, I never wanted to promote Hitler. I just wanted to promote my restaurant.

Well, you know what that reminds me of is not that far from where I live. There is a restaurant called the Soup Nazi Kitchen. And you know, that's obviously a reference to Seinfeld, but it's like, bro. Yeah, I don't know, man. We don't know that. It says Nazi in your name. It's so weird. Part of why these stories tend to blow up is that India has a very large expat population of Israelis.

A lot of young Israeli kids also travel there. In fact, when I was living in Delhi, one of my friends was this dude who had fled the India so he wouldn't get drafted by the IDF. That same year, there was a big blow up because a guy in Mumbai opened a clothing boutique that was just named Hitler. The pictures are pretty wild. It's like a high end mall fashion store with a big glowing Hitler logo. And there's even a swastika in the dot on the eye. And the owner of the shop, Rajesh Shah, expressed shock that people were angry telling the AFP. I didn't know how much the name would disturb people It was only when the star opened I learned Hitler had killed six million people

That's a real that's a real problem for you, huh? That's what Wow, well, it is you know very similarly when I wanted to start this podcast, the first name that I wanted to launch it, launch it under was just Jeffrey Dahmer. Sophie had to inform me that there was actually a problematic context with that name. And what could that be? I, you know, Sophie actually, I forgot. Sophie, was there somebody with that name or something?

Robert Roberts trying to do a bit here, but this is literally a factual story. I believe it. The Jeffrey Domeric cast. Dr. Asimai's, you know. Yeah. And our sales team was like, oh, I don't know.

We do a lot of meal kit services. I don't know if that'll go. But then American horse or I mean, then we just get Domer the TV show with the- Look, I don't support his murders, but I am a big fan of the way and which he used different spices. You know, look, you can divorce the man from-

From the art? It should be the end of the bit. So, let's go. This is all very dumb. No one should use Hitler as a brand ambassador or try to divorce his management secrets from the scrubs Or think he was a bad manager. Yeah, I was gonna say they didn't win for good reason It's not the boss bitch you think it's not the boss bitch you think

This is not a thing a person should have to say right? No, um, but it's when we get back to the US Which has both a large Jewish population and a lot of folks who are descended from, you know, who are Indian, right? Who are Desi, you know, our Hindu or Buddhist. It's when we get here that things get very messy, because in India, again, very normal to see swastikas, it is not a problem, you know, if you've got that as a religious symbol, you know, in your house, you know, in your clothing and in the deporation. And obviously, I don't think no reasonable person would ask that a whole culture stop using

a religious symbol because of some of the assholes used to similar one. But it's a little more complicated in the US where you've got lots of Holocaust survivors and they're descendant who are going to have a powerful gut reaction to seeing something like that. My gut wants to say, look, the Hindu Swastika is not the Hagen Kroy. It shouldn't be, we should be able to like talk about this, but like, it's also not that simple, right? And this is not, I hope, I don't want to come across, let's lead into here.

Neither sides wrong here. I'm not going to come down like condemning either group. This is like a really messy problem, but it is interesting to me. And I don't think enough people know that this is a thing that is an issue. So there have always been a significant chunk of Indian people, of Hindu people I should say, it was a lot of Indians or Muslim,

who took Umbridge at the thought that most of the world had kind of tossed the swastika aside because of the Nazis. In 1979 a Sanskrit scholar, PR Sarkar, claimed that it was the symbol of permanent victory and that like any symbol, it had positive and negative meanings. His argument was that the right hand swastika was the symbol of Vishnu while the left hand, which is kind of the one that the Nazis used was the symbol of Kali. Starting in the early 1990s, with the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian far-right organizations and other fascist political groups in the former Warsaw Pact nations started to revive the Swastika for different reasons. Obviously, for whatever, for all of it's, you know, the different things that were culturally problematic in the Soviet Union, one thing they're good about is,

you're not allowed to display swastikas in the Soviet Union. One thing they're good about is you're not allowed to display swatzikas in the Soviet Union, right? Shouldn't have to explain why, but once the Soviet Union falls, because it had been banned for so long, and because the right had been in their eyes suppressed for so long, it gets taken up as this symbol for all of these different right-wing national movements who are trying to revive it. Stephen Heller writes here, quote, the Soviet Union and Zara's Russia before it

was riddled with anti-Semitism. Similarly in the early 1990s, they emerged a virulent strain among ultra-right wing groups calling for old-fashioned pogroms and new-styled, ethnic cleansing. While Nestle went the fringe, this decidedly organized melange of monarchist, neo-fascist, and pamiat are memory organizations

openly hawk their ideologies on the street. Until Boris Yeltsin's October 1993 emergency decrease banned opposition media, polimical newspapers with the titles Russia Arise, the Russian New Order, and People's Business, featuring realistic drawings of heroic-looking black-shared and Russian stormtroopers, scabrous anti-Semitic caricatures, and portraits of Adolf Hitler himself were unashamedly displayed at sidewalk tables throughout Moscow and St. Petersburg. Various iterations of the swastika, sometimes combined with historic Russian folk iconography, were also in full view.

A visitor to Moscow reported that it was impossible to walk a block without running into at least one of these displays. And this will feed into a lot of the issues that we have in Ukraine and in Russia right now with different Nazi organizations, right? This is where a lot of that has its kind of origin point. And while it is coming back into use in Eastern Europe, it is also starting to get revived in the 80s and 90s in the United States as a symbol for the right. Now, the Swastika has this really awkward position in US counter-culture since the end of the Second World War.

The first place, obviously, George Lincoln Rockwell attempts to bring it back with his American Nazi party, but that's always decidedly fringe. The first kind of place where you see it commonly is Biker Games. And specifically, 100 Thompson is actually the journalist who did some of the first good reporting on this, and his book, Hell's Angels. But Biker gangs in the post-World War II era

form primarily out of like that. Skies who had never been able to integrate into post-war society, and a lot of them had fought Nazis, and they had medals and helmets, and other booty taken from the Germans, some of which had swastikas, which they would wear on their motorcycle gear, both to shock and to signal like, yeah, I'm an outsider, I'm on the fringe, but I did my time from my country, too. So it's kind of a symbol of valor at the same time. It's a complex, it's a complicated symbol. Yeah, very, but that was part of of the intention at least, was like,

not like I am a Nazi, but I fought Nazis. Yeah. Yeah, part of the intention, some of them are Nazis, and then we're getting to that. Sure. So this means that a number of the first proto-punk types, because a lot of punk culture in the United States does come out of these vicar gangs,

war swastikas and stall helms because they had fought Nazis, but also a lot of these guys are violently anti-communist. And so it becomes complicated. Another group that wears the swastika commonly in the 1960s are surfbums, right? Like surfbums have a lot of different swastika. You get a lot of surfing equipment shops, have swastikas or variations of Nazi iconography in their logos. It is not uncommon in the 60s, and a lot of this kind of translates to some of the first punks in the 1970s, some of whom are Nazis, and some of whom are just trying to like trigger people in the book.

Like transgressive behavior, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. In the book's subculture, the meaning of style author Dick Hebridge relates that one female punk explained to him, Hunk's just like to be hated. Sure. Sure. It's the quickest way to get hated.

Yeah. Yeah. And so there's all these weird like surf brands and spurgly skating brands that are used pieces of Nazi iconography and will claim they don't have far right sympathies. Some of them do and like become part of, you know, kind of, and some of them don't and are just kind of being edge lords. You know, we didn't have that term at the time, but all of this is mixed and the people

who are just kind of being edge lords do, it's fair to criticize, provide cover for the actual straight-up Nazis. They provide sort of space for this to get accepted among people that allows some recruitment. This is all happening alongside a surge in the late 80s, early 90s, and actual Nazi organizing and the establishment of groups like White, Aryan, Resistance who ape aspects of a pump aesthetic. The, you might say pseudo-ironic use of the swastika gives cover to real Nazis. Now all of this makes the issue of Hindu people, of Buddhist-signate of Americans in the United States

and elsewhere in the West, trying to reclaim the swastika, very complicated, right? Because you do, you get people who are Hindu, or Buddhist, being like, I should be able to utilize this symbol that is a religious symbol for me. That's a cultural symbol that I saw as a kid. And you do have members of different indigenous tribes who had used the swastika, some whom are saying,

like, well, maybe we should be able to go back to it now. It has been like nearly 100 years. Like, we feel like we did our bit here. And this is complex. I'm gonna quote from a 2022 AP news article here. It sort of sets up the stakes. She tell Dio was shocked when she got a letter from her Queen's apartment building's co-op board,

calling her Diwali decoration offensive and demanding she take it down. My decoration said happy Diwali and had a swastika on it, said Dio, a physician who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights. Theo believed she and people of other fates should not help to sacrifice or apologize for a sacred symbol simply because it has often conflated with its tainted version.

To me, that's intolerable, he said. And like, yeah, that's a fair point. Yeah, absolutely. Well, they're fighting against 90s edge lords who were like spray painting it at the skate park to be like, oh, look at this. Like, you know, this is complex. Yeah. Very. And among the people who had issue with theos display for DeWali decoration was Shelley Wernick, who was the managing director of the Jewish Federation's Holocaust survivor, Kairwing. And she points out that seeing a swastika at home or out and about can be re-traumatizing for elderly survivors, which is also a fair point. But yeah, of course, seeing that in any context, I really mess you up, you know. I, nobody's, I don't, I'm not,

there's not like a, you know, no one's in the wrong here, right? I'm not like. I'm not. It's complicated. It's complicated. Um, you know what else is complicated? Kelsey, what is that? The moral dimensions of advertising products and services in order to support a podcast. See you're telling me. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And that's why we're just going to ignore it.

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Oh, we're back. And feeling good, feeling good. So, one of the people quoted in that, really quite fascinating, AP News article, is a New York based Buddhist priest who was disturbed when he heard somebody at an interfaith conference called the swastika, the universal symbol of evil. And whatever your stance on the matter is, that simply can't be correct, right? Like this is still, there's like a billionaire or more people for whom this is still a religious

symbol. Hitler doesn't have the power to make that a universal symbol of evil, right? Like that is, I think, a bad way to phrase it. Widely recognized as a symbol of evil is true because a lot of people do recognize it this way. You know, that, anyway, complicated. This Buddhist, the Reverend T. K. Nekagaki, wrote a book in 2018 called The Buddhist Swastika and Hitler's Cross, rescuing a symbol of peace from the forces of hate. And one thing that he points out, because he's a big advocate of, we should call the symbol

that is sacred to all these different peoples, the Swastika, or presumably when you talk about like the Navajo, you would use the term the Warling Log. But when we refer to the Nazi use of the symbol, we should call it the Hagencroy, right? And one thing he points out that I was unaware of is that in newspapers across the United States, the Nazi cross was referred to as the Hagencroy until the early 1930s when they used the term swastika. Now I get his point here. I don't think that that's like necessarily wrong, but it is worth noting that the Nazis call it a swastika a lot of the time too, like it is being used by them

at that point in time. And I, to be quite frank, at this point, I don't know how you get people to stop in the West to associate Hagen Kroey with the Nazis, but not swastika. Yeah, I'm so impossible to ask, yeah. Like you have an easier time with like, whirling law, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Now, there are legitimate harms that all of this causes for members of faiths who have done nothing wrong. In California, public the slave of the swastika has been criminalized.

There are exceptions for this, including the sacred swastika used by Hindus, but it does not call the illegal swastika a hagan kroy and instead uses the term swastika used by Hindus, but it does not call the illegal swastika a hagan kroy and instead uses the term swastika, which could confuse law enforcement and might conceivably lead to problems. Even the worry of this itself could cause a chilling effect on religious expression. Quote, Pushpita Prasad, a spokesperson for the Hindu group, called it a victory but said the legislation unfortunately labels both Hitler's symbol and the sacred one as swastikas.

This is not just an esoteric battle, Prasad said, but an issue with real-life consequences for immigrant communities whose members have resorted to self-sensoring. Vicus Jane, a Cleveland physician, said that he and his wife hid images containing the symbol when their children's friends visited because they wouldn't know the difference. Jane says he stands in solidarity with the Jewish community, but is sad that he cannot freely practice his Jane faith because of this lack of understanding. He noted that the global Jane symbol has a swastika in it, but in the United States, the Jane community

has deliberately removed the swastika from its seal. Jane wishes that people would differentiate between their symbol of peace and Hitler's swastika just as they do with the hateful burning cross symbol and Christianity's sacred crucifix, which I think is a really good point. That is a really good point. Certain uses of the Christian cross are definitely offensive and frightening, but we don't say nobody should be wearing a crucifix.

There's also a growing movement in some indigenous circles to, in the years long pro-admission on their use of the swastik or the whirling log. The consternation over this by some Jewish organizations is understandable, as is the desire of people to return to their use of the symbol. Again, no one's wrong here. You know, it's complicated. And I'm going to continue with a quote from that AP article. For the Navajo people, the symbol shaped like a swirl represents the universe in life, said Patricia Ann Davis, an elder at the Choctaw in Dina is the term

for the Navajo people that is actually used by them for themselves. It was a spiritual esoteric symbol that was woven into the Navajo rugs until Hitler took something good and beautiful and made it twisted, she said. And I think again, I want to say here, I'm not saying either that like Jewish organizations have like a black and white necessarily view about this. Again, there's a lot of appreciation on both sides about what a complex and thorny problem this is. And I don't think anyone's really behaving unreasonably here. Jeff Kelman, a new Hampshire Holocaust historian, often lectures to Jewish community organizations about the fundamental differences between the Swastika and the Hakan Kroi. And he told the AP he feels like his message about the possibility of

redeeming the symbol has gained recent ground among many Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors. But when they learn an Indian girl could be named Swastika and she could be harassed in school, they understand how they should see these as two separate symbols, he said. No one in the Jewish community wants to see Hitler's legacy continue to harm people. One of the people quoted in that article is Greta Elbogen. She's an 85 year old Holocaust survivor whose grandmother and cousins died at Auschwitz were murdered at Auschwitz. And she says she was surprised to learn about the symbols past. Elbogen was born in 1938 when the Nazis forcibly annexed Austria. She went into hiding with relatives in Hungary and immigrated to the US in 1956 and became a social worker.

This new knowledge about the Swastika, Elbogen said, feels liberating. Be no longer fears a symbol that was used to terrorize. Hearing that the Swastika is beautiful and sacred to so many people is a blessing, she said. It's time to let go of the past and look into the future. And I'm not saying that that's the only way to think about it either if you're on the side of this is like a person who is a descendant

of Holocaust survivors going like, I don't feel comfortable with this. That's perfectly reasonable too. This is like, again, is very complicated. And what all of this speaks to is like, just the incredible power of symbols to the human race. It's just so amazing that the same or a riff on a similar symbol

can mean both good luck and this huge hero's journey and this powerful religious story. Well, on the other hand, it's a symbol of actual mass murder and horror and deaths, but it's the same symbol. It's just the power that we have as humans to project onto that, whatever we need to or want to or believe and accept the symbols that are given to us by people in power who have a you know an idea about what this symbol can mean and what it can do. It's wild. Yeah, there's a lot coming on here. So I just wanted people to be aware of that, not to take

you know one side or the other or not that the sides I've presented are the only ways to feel about this. This is a tremendously complicated thing to think about. But it is worth thinking about. This is something you should, as it just as a person, not even as just like somebody who's, who's Jane or somebody who's, you know, Navajo, somebody who's Jewish, that you should be thinking about, but just as like a human being. Because this is

One way or the other regardless of where you land. This is everyone simple It is universal to the human race more or less, right? It appears everywhere every place in the world And it always has very very insipis, huh? And it always has Yeah, they don't wait everywhere that Wild it was no higher Was in fucking Ohio. It's all over. It's in China. Gosh. God, it's everywhere. It's all over the city. I'm not over that. That's was to go Oregon. Yeah. Gosh, and it's so hard because you can't be in solidarity with

everyone in this situation. I mean, you can try to be by just solidarity for like, wow, this is messy. Yeah. and I'd say that's the best way to have solidarity is just to say like, I actually can't say the answer. I can't say that's right. Yeah, I know what we do, yeah. I can respect everyone in the situation who's trying to like make a better world through either re-adopting a symbol

or making it disappear. It's like, woo. Yeah, I think it's probably the kind of thing where the only real solutions are ad hoc, you know? Yeah. If you've got a situation where members of a local Jewish community and are sitting down with members of like a Jane community or whatever, and they're talking about how

to allow, you know, how to have the symbol expressed in its original religious meaning in a way that's not going to make people uncomfortable, That's fine. If you've got somebody who wants to display a Diwali thing in their apartment building and there's an elderly Holocaust survivor and they decide, well, I guess we won't put this outside because it might scare this elderly person. I'm like, we don't want to do that. I think that's also reasonable.

I think if another thing happens, there's not, I don't have a clear, there's the wrong or the right thing to do here. This is just like one of the legacies of, you know, World War II, but also just a thing that human beings always have to deal with is the, yeah, it's complicated. Very complicated. It should be aware that it's a thing, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I am so happy that this was the topic that I caught because I just, I can't believe I didn't know this.

I'm absolutely just shocked and awed at all of this. Yeah. If you want a really good book on the subject, the Swastika symbol beyond redemption, question mark by Stephen Heller. Very readable. Whenever this comes up, whenever there's an issue of somebody displays a swastika for religious reason and it causes a conflict,

Stephen usually gets interviewed by the journalist writing about it because he's just like the guy who writes about this. Very good book. I do recommend it if you're interested in more detail. Anyway, Chelsea, do you end the plug? Sure, I mean, I'm just, you know what I will specifically plug an episode of my podcast American hysteria called Astrology and the series we did because it deals with not only astrologers as they existed in the White House and advising for some reason, which is a yes, yep, you know, you know, but it also goes into how the Nazis used astrologers as like secret agents as well to sort of push propaganda. And that just seems like kind of in the same vein of this, this series here. And yeah, American hysteria, you

can find it anywhere. We study moral panics urban legends conspiracy theories and how they've affected American history Oh, yeah, yeah, well you can find me Right here. You can find my novel after the revolution wherever books are sold Just type after the revolution and any book thing or again Screech it from the top of your lungs while waving some sort of carved war club At the guy who runs the Barnes and Noble, you know, or Applebees or Applebees, yeah, or Applebees, whatever. That's the episode.

Bye friends. Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 911, what's your emergency? It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer? We're still on the loose. In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. We weren't safe anywhere.

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