Playing Tough by Abrams Roger I.;

Author:Abrams, Roger I.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Northeastern University Press

Symbols—both objects and people—have always had potent political significance. Kings and queens carried scepters and wore crowns as symbols of their authority. Priests in all cultures possessed relics of significance that often were said to have originated with the gods. Persons born into influential castes needed no physical representation of their power, which came as a matter of their birthright. Society, whether ancient or modern, had always been segmented by dominance and influence, where symbols played a prominent, differentiating role.

Hitler’s twisted cross, the swastika, was the powerful representation of his savage regime. The future fuehrer had selected the Bronze Age symbol for his new Reich while incarcerated in the Landsberg prison after the failed Beer Hall putsch in 1923. The symbol became ubiquitous in Nazi Germany. Together with the extended right arm salute and forceful declarations of “Heil Hitler,” the Nazis had devised a triad of devotional representations with which to confirm loyalty to the regime and its omnipotent human embodiment. Even after the demise of the Third Reich, the swastika remained so potent and terrifying a symbol that its display is banned by law in Germany. It remains a crime to publicly display the swastika and other Nazi symbols, salutes, songs, pictures, and slogans.

Not all symbols represent evil. Churchill’s “V” symbol of eventual victory rallied the British people to the cause. It was borrowed later by antiwar protesters as a symbol of triumph over militarism. The greatest symbol of all time, the simple cross, unites the world’s millions who believe that God’s son sacrificed his earthly life to save us from sin. People fight for their country as represented by its flag, more than a designed piece of cloth, a telling representation of a nation and its people.

Over recent decades, millions of Muslim immigrants have been drawn to the European continent seeking economic opportunity. Muslim religious law requires that women dress modestly in public, and that means being covered from head to toe. Europe now faces the challenge of integrating these newcomers into societies that have become overwhelmingly secular in nature. In 2009, the president of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, denounced the wearing of the burqa by Muslim women. He said: “In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity.” The following year, the French National Assembly officially banned wearing the Muslim garb. Other European countries have considered similar actions.

In 2009, Poland joined the symbol censorship parade by enacting a law that criminalized the possession, purchase, or distribution of any material containing Communist symbols. Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania have similar strictures. Having suffered under the Soviet “hammer and sickle” for decades, these Eastern European countries continued to worry about the disruptive effect such symbolic representations could have on their societies.

Not only signs and clothing but men and women also can become powerful symbols of good and bad. Every nation has its djinni, those mystical and mythical creatures who must be faced down. Hitler’s demonic obsession with the Jews was only the most devastating of these lunacies.

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