Brooklyn Jewelry Store Defends Swastika Earrings As Politicians Pile On

After news of a Greenpoint jewelry store selling swastika earrings made news yesterday, area politicians wasted no time heaping on the outrage. It's good red meat for the base, but there's just one problem: the symbol—which as we noted yesterday, predates the Nazis by thousands of years—isn't the same one that Hitler used. There has been plenty of analysis about this, but if you look closely (below), the differences are undeniable. Whereas the Nazi symbol is angled in the shape of a diamond, the symbol when used in Tibetan Buddhism is oriented as a square. And, more importantly, the branches of the symbol are reversed for the Nazi sign. But whatever, outrage!

City Councilman Steve Levin called on the shop to stop selling the earrings, calling them "totally outrageous. The fact that a young person can walk into a store in Greenpoint and spend $5.99 on a pair of swastika earrings only serves to promote and extend the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism in New York. I won’t stand for this in my neighborhood or in my district and I am calling on Bejeweled and all other City retailers who sell these earrings to remove them from your shelves and help us remove the hate from our City." And Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer—who as you may know is going to run for mayor—unleashed this blistering statement:

Yesterday my office chronicled nine egregious hate crimes that have taken place in the last three months. Today we learn that a Brooklyn jewelry store is openly selling swastika earrings. Let me be clear - a swastika is not a fashion statement. It is the most hateful symbol in our culture, and an insult to any civilized person. It has been reported that owners of this store see no reason as to why the sale of swastika earrings would be offensive - that is in unbelievably poor judgment and shocking to the sensibilities of all New Yorkers. I demand the store recall these earrings immediately and without haste.

Today a Bejeweled manager tells us, "This earring is a Buddhist symbol from India." Asked if they have any more in stock, the manager said, "No, I don't want to make trouble. If people don't like it, I'm not going to carry it." But State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) is not placated by the manager's little semiotic facts. "It’s sick. It’s insulting. It’s degrading,” Hikind tells the Daily News. "The average person, when they see a swastika, they see it as a symbol of hate. End of story." Chalk up another one for the average persons, New York!

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By John Del Signore in News on January 11, 2012 3:18 PM

Comments [rss]

Kate Sudarkina

Girls! let get to a party wearing all these things and diamond earrings we will look gorgeous. But please don't buy such German gammadion. It is stupid.

aktobk

so i guess i can't have a charlie chaplin mustache. oh well.

meh, even if they were nazi ear rings, which they weren't, it's a first amendment issue. and the shop owner could tell people to fuck off. as would be his legal right. if he wanted to i suppose. now don't get me wrong, i fuckin hate nazis. but people have a right to be dicks here in america. in fact there's a whole bowl full of em in this thread even. and that's fine. so long as their speech doesn't incite violence on other people(actual threats not trolling).

the recent spate of terrorism locally is cause for serious concern though. elected officials should spend more time looking into actual crimes than nonsense like this ear ring debacle.

mouse potato

Lets get rid of those plastic Jesus on the lawns around Christmas.

TWaller

Yaaawwwwwn. That's not a swastika. So shut up.

PhotoHarris

Chalk one up for ignorance and stupidity on the part of the public. Some people are stupid and stubbornly so. They probably think Buddhists are terrorists, too.

TheClaw

the real Irony is that Dov Hikindis is up in arms about it.

Kaitlin Martin

What if people used the cross as a symbol of hate and then people still sold cross jewelry...oh, wait...my bad.

UrbanGrilling

Understood. You are all smarter than everyone else who was affected by thier relatives being slaughtered by a group who appropriated a symbol. FYI there were also over 5 million gypsies, mentally ill, gay, and mentally disabled people killed by the Nazis. Yes in the eastern world this is a symbol representing beauty through progress, but no matter how much you flip it around or intellectualize it in the western world it was comendeered by evil. Period.

Politburo

Two things:

1. Why should the people who used the symbol for thousands of years get screwed?

2. Where does this logic stop? The Nazis also used eagles as a symbol.. do we need to throw out the bald eagle as the national bird?

UrbanGrilling

1. When or where have you ever heard of anyone complaining about that? Regardless, yes they were screwed, by the Nazis.

2. You and I both know that an eagle, although used in many forms as a nazi symbol, does not hold the same weight as a swastika. Yes, the logic is not a strong there.

Kevin_Kramers

Buddha hates my people... I should rally my people and go occupy and protest at the closest Buddhist Temple!!!
/s

ElvisShalit

Calling him a Christian is too easy and misguided. His beliefs were clearly Pagan mixed with Teutonic lore . If one claims to be part of a group then follows another doctrine. One thing for sure He was a Socialist , New Ager , Vegan.

Futura Logic

We are a people of different faiths, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls.... We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Passau, 27 October 1928, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf,Swastika is a nice cover for Hitler's genocide, what were his motivations? http://nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.h...

ThereAreNoActorsInThisFilm

More press! Shut this mom and pop shop down and open a cafe!

Futura Logic

ah, another average person!

smorrebrod

Call the swastika a swastika. Call what the Nazis had a 'hate cross'.

Futura Logic

Thank you!

Futura Logic

LOL!! In INDIA EVERY HINDU HOUSE HAS IT i.e 800,000,000 HOUSES and Counting.

http://www.reclaimtheswastika....

Futura Logic

This is BS. Hindus and Buddhists have this as sacred symbol. Just because a perverted Christian Hitler abused it to slaughter Jews after misappropriating it does not mean ban the symbol. In fact there are significant differences. Please read:
http://www.haindavakeralam.com...

Futura Logic

America continues to be Ignorant! "The average person, when they see a swastika, they see it as a symbol of hate. End of story." Time to educate Americans :
http://www.reclaimtheswastika....