The Bellevue School District in Washington, like so many others as well as our college campuses, has experienced a plague of anti-Semitism since the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel. The phenomenon has been particularly ugly there, with students taunting Jewish classmates in one episode by chanting “Gas the Jews!” Phantom Lake Elementary in the district discovered a swastika drawn on one of its walls on campus. , someone tagged the west wall on campus with a swastika. Principal Heather Snookal sent a reassuring email to parents about the incident, but then felt compelled to send a woke DEI disclaimer so no swastika-lover from another culture would be offended. She really did this. No, I’m not making it up.
“While the symbol is often associated with hate and intolerance due to its use during World War II, it is important to acknowledge that the swastika has deep historical and cultural significance in other parts of the world,” Snookal wrote. “I apologize that I didn’t acknowledge this in my previous communication.”
After all, she went on to say, the swastika “is a symbol of peace, prosperity and good fortune” in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and other cultures….As a school committed to inclusivity and cultural understanding, we want to ensure that our students from all backgrounds feel welcomed, valued and celebrated. We also want to make sure our community is educated about the diverse meanings and histories behind symbols like the swastika so that we can all avoid misunderstandings that could inadvertently marginalize or hurt our students.”
By all means, we don’t want to marginalize Nazis.
The principal has been put on leave. Good. A better example of how DEI rots the brain would be difficult to find. She must be fired. Her judgment is terrible, her values are warped, her priorities are indefensible, and her historical perspective is absurd. And she’s responsible for educating children.
Yeah, I’m sure there is a chance that peace-loving Hindus scrawled the Nazi symbol on a wall, and it had nothing to do with Israel’s alleged “genocide.” When a symbol has been used as a banner over the murder of more than six million people as well as to advance the mission of enslaving the world, it is fair to assign that symbol permanent infamy and to assume that its use by anonymous vandals isn’t benign. What the symbol conveyed before the swastika came to mean white supremacy, anti-Semitism, genocide, fascism, hate and violence may be interesting from a scholarly perspective, but that history is irrelevant to its display in a public school.
Let’s see, what’s an analogy? Okay—in some early civilizations that began with a matriarchal pagan religious structure, as with the ancient Greeks before a patriarchal set of gods headed by Zeus took over, the middle finger symbolized iron and the Earth, and hence “Mother Earth,” from the earlier pagan hierarchy in which an Earth goddess ruled the roost. Robert Graves, in his definitive study of mythology, revealed that a few thousand years ago raising a middle finger was a sign of defiance by those rebels who still worshiped the older, female-centered gods. Snookal’s rationalization of the swastika’s use on campus makes as much sense as allowing a student to flip the universal “fuck you” sign at a teacher because the lad may have only been expressing his religious preference for a pagan Earth goddess.
I am becoming convinced that the West Coast’s extreme wokeness indoctrination is robbing citizens there of perspective, rationality and common sense. In, I fear, related news, the Oregon Department of Education last month officially recognized a distinction between the Hindu symbol “Swastika”and the Nazi Hakenkreuz.
After all, everyone calls it “the Hakenkreuz.”
the Hindu American Foundation rejoiced that the decision “marks a significant step forward in preserving the sanctity of our symbols for future generations…This monumental decision marks a significant step forward in preserving the sanctity of our symbols for future generations. This victory wouldn’t have been possible without your unwavering support and dedication. Let’s continue to educate and spread awareness about the true meaning of our sacred swastika.”
Oh yes, let’s. Let’s start by educating synagogues and Jewish organizations on college campuses!
The Oregon Education Department ruled, “While the hooked cross image is commonly referred to as a ‘swastika, the actual Nazi and Neo-Nazi symbol is correctly labeled as a ‘hakenkreuz’, the German word for ‘hooked cross. Swastika’ is a Sanskrit word and is used to symbolize auspiciousness and elements of the natural world in many religions and cultures, including in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Jainism, and some Native American religions and cultures.”
My advice to Hindus is to find another symbol that wasn’t permanently tainted by Adolf Hitler. My advice to Heather Snookal is that she has a shot at the presidency of Harvard.
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WordPress’s bot wants me to tag this essay, “Australia.”
Ethics Alarms 
My knee-jerk reaction was that the principal was mocking the current woke insanity, but that’s probably giving her too much credit.
Also, I didn’t know the Nazi version was called the Hakenkreuz.
Technically, the principal may or may not be correct, in that yes there is a Hindu swastika (which apparently has right and left hand variations). Yes, it doesn’t surprise me that some Hindus would like to have it back.
I was recently involved in a discussion about editions of Rudyard Kipling’s works that have the Hindu swastika on the covers. There are several editions that have the symbol blind stamped in the center of the front cover, in a circle with his name in script I believe. It’s a historical curiosity at this point, but I feel confident that any post WWII edition of Kipling will have omitted this feature.
None of that matters. We still have a handful of living WWII vets in this country. I’d feel safe in assuming that there are still a handful of living Jews who were in Auschwitz or its like. Hitler spoiled this symbol for anyone and anything else for the foreseeable future.
Maybe in a thousand years, people will be able to view swastikas logically and unemotionally. We’re not there.
Sorry Kali, you’ll need to find another symbol.
According to the Jewish Federations of North America, there are about 80,000 living Holocaust survivors in the USA as of 2024. We are a large country, but that number is not insignificant.
The principal IS correct about the many cultural & religious uses of the Hakenkreuz symbol, but as Jack mentioned, those are more in pursuit of historical scholarly interest, not for current consumption in a public school, particularly considering what country her school is located, and those alive and especially affected post WWII. She SHOULD be fired: she is hopelessly addled and the woke has most definitely affected her to the point that she shouldn’t be educating anyone, especially today’s youth.
I doubt most children under 12, which is the highest age in most elementary schools, are they themselves considering the historical use of the Swastika. Nor would they have used it before the most recent wave of anti-Semitic behavior.
Our country, and more specifically those in “education” and oh yes, Congress, have acted & reacted shamefully towards Jews here and in Israel, especially since 10/7/23.
Finally back! It’s been more than a month!
Wow, that is a lot more than I really expected, but of course the Nazis scooped up kids too young to be drafted for their camps.
That means there could well be someone in her town that survived the Holocaust, and whose grandkids might be attending her school.
For shame.
I keep forgetting that even humans in positions of authority aren’t as obsessed with practicing impeccably clear communication as I am. There should be a minimum standard, considering how many humans seem to actively look for ways to be offended by things.
It sounds like the principal was trying to apologize for implying that the swastika was a universal symbol of hatred. She could have acknowledged that the symbol was appropriated by the Nazis (along with Norse mythology and probably many other concepts), and that ideally we don’t want to give the Nazis a posthumous cultural victory by taking away other people’s ability to express their own culture, while also pointing out that it’s easy to tell the difference between Nazi symbols and peaceful swastikas, from context if nothing else. If it’s graffiti, it’s probably Nazi-related.
I figure the most effective way to remove the negative connotations from the swastika is to eviscerate the concept of Nazism so thoroughly that the very idea that someone in the modern day would actually be a Nazi would become laughable. On the off-chance that any actual Nazis did turn up, a multi-ethnic group could connect with them and address the underlying issues and misconceptions that led to them latching onto that ideology.
This wasn’t a communication problem, EC. This was a dead ethics alarms, DEI virtue-signaling problem, like lecturing Jewish students about the “root causes” of Palestinian Jew-Hate after they have been taunted with “Gas the Jews!” It’s a broken mind and conscience, not a malfunctioning metaphorical tongue.
I would posit that the hammer and sickle image deserves the same place in iconography as the swastika. As many or more were murdered to advance that political ideology.
It is telling that our media don’t associate those protesters who carry a banner with that icon with the murderous regimes for which the hammer and sickle are associated.
And the Palestinian flag.
agreed
Am I an awful human being for immediately thinking that Heather Snookal is exactly the sort of name that Sheridan or Dickens would have invented for such a person?
(I am ashamed to say that the exact thing occurred to me. So yes, you are a bad person…)
Members of the Nazi party were obsessed with Aryanism which links back to Hinduism historically. The symbol was culturally appropriated by the Nazis and it seems rather silly to tell a very old & popular religion to just “give up” a symbol they used for thousands of years to a wacko socialism cult that hated Jews.
Like most things,, this is complicated. It’s unfair Nazis used the symbol in such a disgusting way. We also have beem conditioned to view that symbol as one for hating Jews. Which after such an atrocity, makes sense. Yet still, the original symbol meaning had nothing to do with Jews or hate.
A few months back, the use of the raised fist was discussed here. That symbol is widely recognized as one signaling communism and even Marxists gleefully claim they used the fist first. Communism has killed millions more than Nazis. Yet that symbol was defended here because sone people don’t use it that way. If baseball teams and tennis players started using swastikas as a symbol of victory, it might be more acceptable, since some people don’t use it that way…right?
The principal isn’t totally wrong or right. It helps nothing though to dismiss the history of the symbol and those who actually are aware of the difference. Symbols and their meanings are inherently complicated. This situation is simply (and ironically) a symbol of the confusion that comes with labels and meanings expressed as symbols.