Easy question.
Which World War II participant makes the most use of the swastika to exemplify its current values?
If you said Germany, you’re wrong. It may have been Deutschland Uber Alles back in the days of Adolf, Heinrich and Hermann, but Nazi regalia and particularly the swastika have been verboten in Germany since 1945.
If your second guess was anything other than the United States, you would be wrong again.
For some reason, I’m reminded of a line from Barry McGuire’s 1965 song, “Eve of Destruction.”
“Think of all the hate there is in Red China, then take a look around to Selma, Alabama …”
There are many things we can thank our American freedom for, but I’m not sure one of them is how easy we make it to hate.
It’s as if one of the greatest rights we possess is the right to be an asshole.
Contrary to what some people might believe, the Confederate flag (actually the battle flag of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia) has not been a tribute to the Lost Cause ever since Appomattox. Until the 1940s, it was usually displayed at gatherings of veterans and funerals of the same.
In 1948, the breakaway Dixiecrat Party adopted it as its emblem, and in the civil rights years, it became popular across the South with segregationist groups.
Where the swastika came into it, I’m not sure.
It was popular with a certain set in the 1930s. The German-American Bund consisted of Teutonic immigrants and their descendants who didn’t want their new country going to war with their homeland. It was also a group that believed very strongly in the superiority of white people of a certain type.
In fact, racism has almost always been at least an undercurrent in American life. Remember “No Irish Need Apply?” Or sundown towns? Or Polish jokes?
And we haven’t even mentioned black people or those of different religions.
An awful lot of Americans don’t like each other very much.
It isn’t as if it has never happened before. In the late ’60s and for most of the ’70s, the divide was pretty deep between folks on the left and folks on the right, mostly during the Nixon Era and the healing years after.
By the early ’80s, things were improving some, as witness Charlie Daniels’ song “In America.”
“And you never did think that it ever would happen again (In America, did you), You never did think that we’d ever get together again
(We damn sure could).”
Ronald Reagan helped with his upbeat, pro-American attitude, but others came along later who were less upbeat and a lot greedier. When Newt Gingrich came to fame later in the Reagan years, he was all about winning by trashing the opposition. Things started getting negative on the right and basically never stopped.
Donald Trump and the folks who attacked the Capitol in January were direct descendants of Nixon and Newt.
They have learned to hate. Very well indeed, and anyone who calls their emblems — swastika and rebel flag — anything other than symbols of hate is being naive.
Show me someone who loves the swastika and I’ll show you someone worthless.
Maybe a little less certain if I see the Stars and Bars, but not much.
Neither one is an American symbol.