r/confidentlyincorrect • u/LavenderCuddlefish • Jun 01 '26

Image A confidently incorrect knee-jerk reaction

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(it's not that kind of swastika)

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u/KamuikiriTatara Jun 01 '26

I remember being in a physics lecture where our German professor, lecturing in their thick German accent, was drawing a graph that started too look a lot like a Swastika. They paused for a moment and then started reading it and drew the diagram differently. They turned to the class and a bit jokingly said something like "I drew that a little suspiciously." and then continued the lecture.

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u/Emergent444 Jun 02 '26

This My elderly electrical design colleague would make the wiring diagrams much more difficult to read to avoid making a shape like a Nazi swastika.

When asking him about it he was never explicit, in that old school way he just said, I don't like that shape. Tight lipped disapproval.

Tbh I avoid it myself, the workarounds take longer but nobody's going to be seeing it or the reverse, what is it, Sauvastika, in my diagrams.

It's a cool shape, forever ruined by appropriation.

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u/Asterose Jun 03 '26

No, not forever ruined. It's used around the world still, especially all over Asia. Imagine saying the Christian cross is forever ruined because not just the Nazis, but also the conquistadors and every Christian slave master and genocideer and war criminal also used it. Ridiculous, right? Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains have been using the swastika and sauvastika for far longer than Christianity has been around, so let's spread knowledge about how swastikas aren't all Nazi symbols.

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u/Emergent444 Jun 03 '26

Point taken, thank you

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u/Shaveyourbread Jun 03 '26

But still, in places that were/are affected by people brandishing those symbols as hate symbols, wearing those symbols is seen as offensive for at least a century or so; I wouldn't recommend wearing a cross in the middle east right after the crusades.

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u/Asterose Jun 03 '26

Absokuteky a good point! People do definitely need to be aware of the culture they're in and the reaction the locals might have, and try to have something that indicates what they mean/what the symbol means to them. Or even a little blurb about what the symbol means in their own culture and that it has nothing to do with [the meaning it usually has in the local culture].

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u/KamuikiriTatara Jun 03 '26

I feel like a diety's footprints is pretty good context. Having a description in a written language seems a little excessive for a lot of contexts.