Swastika Earrings In Greenpoint Store A Fashion "Nein"

Swastikas were also prominent in Native American imagery, and I have a few pieces pre-dating 1933 that are adorned with swastikas. After 1933, they got wise and made jewelry featuring crosses instead. 

An artist who calls himself ManWoman also has taken up the cause of saving the swastika: http://www.freewebs.com/manwom... 

I want to go to that boutique and get a few pairs of those earrings while they still have them!

If there's bigotry here, it's directed at the Korean shopkeeper selling Hindu / Budhhist - themed earrings. Swastikas are all over Asia and India, as they have been forever.  You don't get to wag your finger in outrage because you're ignorant to that fact.

And yes, the Nazi ones go the other way, and are tipped at a 45-degree angle. Your serious crazed Neo-Nazis are quite picky about that, I understand.

Every Temple in Japan is mark with a Swastika on maps.

I guess I should have freaked out and gone ballistic when I went to China and Japan and saw swastikas EVERYWHERE??

You should have sent a "tipster" photograph to gothamist, to and then gothamist could have written an equally ignorant story with the headline "China and Japan: The new Nazi empires?"

Well COME ON.  It ALL MAKES SENSE.  JAPAN???/?/??  GERMANY????/??????//!!!1!  ACKSIS OF WWII EVILLLLL!!!!

They're windmills!

miniature ninja stars!

Tiny running men!

Same "tipster" as Gawker.... seriously? 

It's an Asian operated (and I'll assume owned) store selling imported earrings. 

I've been in there a few times and the ladies working aren't 100% with their ESL training... know what I mean? So I'm sure whatever ignorant outrage your "tipster" had in mind when confronting the clerk was lost in translation. 

Way to make it look like some nice people (in my experience) are intentionally profiting off "nazi" merch tho. I see Gothamist is trying to be part of the problem, not part of the solution. 

This is bordering on slander.

We received the same tip as Gawker, but published the post shortly after they did.

thanks to your article, my first generation korean parents are being bullied by reporters because they saw no harm in selling earrings representing asian symbols for peace and prosperity.i suggest you familiarize yourself with the swastika and east asian/ hindu symbols before posting such an article and destroying a business.

Cry me a river, Grace.  It was only a few days ago that Asians were up in arms because of a pizza place that referred to an Asian customer as "lady chinky eyes". I don't see Asians respect that in that persons culture that is not offensive. In the west the symbol represents Nazism. It represents something else in Asia.  You are not in Asia.  Perhaps the word "chink" or "ni**er" means "lovely" in Yiddish, yet Yiddish speakers in America will have to refrain from using it due to what it means in America.  If you want your sensitivities respected than respect others.

man, you're dumb

Let's be honest here, anemic-looking SWPLs might gasp and gentile patriotard types might make some THESE COLORS DON'T RUN remark if they happened across swastika jewelry, but the most hysterical reactions would invariably come from Ashkenazim (and I say this as a Jew under Halakha myself). It's not so much "American culture" (just see how commonplace the swastika was as a good luck charm and emblem in the pre-WWII USA) as a Jewish panic attack at seeing the totem of an enemy tribe.

It's funny that the party line on multi-kulti tells us that it's "un-American" and "racist" to tell Asian immigrants they can't be Hindus or Buddhists -- but that it's okay to forbid the public display of icons of their faiths should they happen to offend Semitic sensibilities. Sorry -- AMERICAN sensitivities!

Chicken-swinging and having the mohel suck the blood from an infant's circumcision wound -- now that's our Judeo-Christian AMERICAN heritage!

When I was in Brazil last year, I used the OK sign with my hand to a waiter when he asked me if the food was good. He was furious with me because that same nice gesture here means "fuck you" there. I could have continued using that gesture while actively defending it by saying it means something different where I come from but I didn't. I respected and understood what that symbol meant to the culture I was in. I did not suggest to them to familiarize with what that means in my culture because at the end of the day it doesn't matter. As for the swastika, it did not bring luck and ended being the symbol behind the killing of millions of people.

Same can be said for the Christian Cross, you're okay with banning that as well ?

Not for banning anything. Just think its bad form. Kind of like when southerners flaunt the confederate flag. They say that it is important to them because it represents their culture.

"I respected and understood what that symbol meant to the culture I was in."

Only problem is, "American" culture is composed of a million cultures blended into one. As an American, I knew what backward swastikas meant, and I didn't panic. Had I seen them in a jewellery shop, the last thing I would have done is take a picture and send it in to a news outlet. Sheer ignorance, not cultural misunderstandings.

Or is the ignorance and beliefs of a few, the definition of American culture which we must abide by?

The problem was that you published the post, period.

This is no different that a "tipster" taking a picture or a turbaned sikh walking in NYC and sending it to gothamist claiming that the Taliban scouts were spotted in New York, and Gothamist publishing it as a fact.  

Any prior knowledge by gothamists "editorial" staff that these are in fact are not swastikas would have prevented this story from being published. The tipster would have been dismissed as being an ignorant, and we could have moved onto the article.

And yet, the title still reads swastika, when in fact, its not.

But hey, its the page hits that matter.   

Um,.....
"And yet, the title still reads swastika, when in fact, its not."

I beg to differ, sirrah.
Any search of images (whether in a library proper or online) will bring up more than enough renditions that look exactly like the picture above, and which are identified as 'swastikas'.

Q.E.D.

I stand corrected. You are right, they were called swastikas before the Nazis began using them. Damn Nazis!

Apologies Chris Robbins.

My people call the symbol, Rishi. We have used this for thousands of years before the Nazi's took it and incorporated out symbol of peace and literally, turned it backwards to a symbol of hate.

I don't know this store, but the "tipster" and writer of this article looks to be quite ignorant of this particular symbol's true meaning.
And as another commenter stated the workers at the store are Asian, so to us its a non issue. Its not the symbol of hate the "tipster" wants to to be to satisfy their pernicious attitude that the store is practicing racism.

Great. I've been looking for jewelry to go with that white hood I have in my closet.

This non story failed.

I suspect that in that hood it might be a fashion "tak."

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the Poles tend to be Nazi sympathizers.  Something about history...

Excellent point. That's why swastika graffiti is so rare in Poland, and why Greenpoint isn't a notorious hub of neo-Nazi activity.

Yes swastikas predate them being associated with the Nazi party.   The symbol is thousands of years old.

Well just like the toothbrush mustache the Nazis ruined it for everyone else.

Not for Ron Mael from the awesome band Sparks! http://www.thechap.net/content...

Maybe they were imported from India. The swastika originated as a Hindu symbol and some Hindus still use it today. Also, the swastika's depicted in this photo are the more traditional and not Nazi swastikas; Nazi swastikas face the other direction.

it's still in use all across asia, not just india.

Yup, look at any map of Japan, and you'll see that the countryside (and cityscape) is dotted with "swastikas"...  No, they're not nazi training camps.

So the real story here is:  "Super Whiny and Clueless Reader Gets Confused in Jewelry Store"

Not the first time, I'm betting...

They're backwards.

Good point, because German national socialists turned their symbol in the S-direction to represent crossed S-letters for their "socialism." German national socialists did NOT call themselves nazis and they did NOT call the symbol a swastika. They called the symbol a Hakenkreuz, which means hooked cross, because it was a type of cross. See the work of historian Dr. Rex Curry. If people called the German national socialist symbol by its name (hakenkreuz) and distinguished it (as alphabetical S-letters for "socialism") from the "swastika" then these controversies would not develop based on the widespread ignorance. The term "swastika" is used deliberately to defame a foreign symbol to cover-up the German socialist symbol's connection to the christian cross and socialism. The media are also part of the vulgus profanum who deliberately perpetuate the widespread ignorance and misuse of the terms/words.

They go well with brown shirts.