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I see a lot of comments that the swastika had nothing to do with anything negative before the NSDAP adopted it in 1920. Largely, but not *quite* the case. There was a reason the Nazis adopted it, after all... https://twitter.com/authordlewis/status/1332236985491214339
Yes, the swastika is an ancient symbol associated with hope and good fortune. The oldest known example is 15,000 years old. But interest in it spiked in the late 19th century when Heinrich Schliemann excavated the remains of an ancient city that turned out to be Troy...
Among the many treasures Schliemann uncovered were 1,800 examples of the hooked cross. This led to the surge in swastika use all over the West. But there was a darker side emerging...
A French Orientalist, Emile-Louis Burnouf, knew that before the discovery of the swastikas in Troy, the symbol's most prolific use was in India, associated with Hinduism. Burnouf claimed to have found in a Hindu text, a reference to a race of ultimate humans, the 'Aryans'...
In fact, the people referred to as ārya were actually people of particular honour or respectability, not a race. But rising German nationalism combined with the association with Troy and discovery of artifacts bearing swastikas in Germany, led to an association with 'Aryans'...
The swastika, then, already had an association with the idea of an 'Aryan master race' in Europe and North America when Hitler adopted it in 1920. Its use in far right ideology did not come out of nowhere. Ends
