Tag: Swastika

The swastika now shows up so often as a generic symbol of hatred that the Anti-Defamation League, in its annual tally of hate crimes against Jews, will no longer automatically count its appearance as an act of anti-Semitism.

“The swastika has morphed into a universal symbol of hate,” said Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy organization. “Today it’s used as an epithet against African-Americans, Hispanics and gays, as well as Jews, because it is a symbol which frightens.”

Observing the trend, he said that his group had decided it would examine reports of scrawled swastikas for contextual clues. If it appears Jews were not the target, the incident will not be included in the league’s annual audit of anti-Semitic hate crimes.

The Raelians have designated this Sunday (June 27) as “World Swastika Rehabilitation Day,” saying the ancient symbol should no longer be damned by its ties to Nazism.

The Raelian symbol, a swastika merged with the Star of David, has hindered the group’s plans to build “interplanetary embassies” in Israel and Lebanon.

A mosque belonging to a small Muslim community in Columbia, Tennessee, was spray-painted with swastikas and then destroyed by flames early Saturday morning.

An anti-Semitic church formed by white supremacists has abandoned its neo-Nazi imagery, such as swastikas, to make its message more palatable, a change that a leading Jewish group called an attempt to “sanitize hatred.”

A poster advertising a cult UFO conference in Glastonbury was taken down after concerns that a swastika featured on it was causing offence.

A few swastika-emblazoned stickers have been left on a mosque and another building in town, prompting a police investigation, officials said.

Ramesh Kallidai of the Hindu Forum of Britain said the swastika had been a symbol of peace for thousands of years before the Nazis adopted it.