Demand grows to replace term 'Swastika' with Nazi 'Hakenkreuz' in Twitter policy on hate images

New Delhi, Nov 09: Ever since billionaire Elon Musk took over the micro-blogging platform Twitter, he has announced several changes including lay offs, $8/month model for attaining a blue tick, content council, advertising, home page, and so on.

The world's richest person posted a series of rules to be followed on Twitter. He also said that the rules "will evolve over time".

"Twitter rules will evolve over time, but they are currently the following," Musk tweeted out a Twitter blog.

Though the rules remained largely similar to what they have always been, some users on social media has pointed out asking for a change in the Nazi Swastika symbol with that of Nazi Hakenkreuz (hooked cross) from the list of hate symbols listed by Twitter.

The policy says Nazi swastikas and other items determines hateful imagery, as well as prohibit their use in any profile photos on its social media network.

However, Author Yann Meridex sought the replacement of Nazi Swastika and said that its inclusion smacked off Hinduphobia and that the Hindu Swastika has nothing to with Nazism.

Taking to Twitter, Meridex wrote,"Could your team replace the word Swastika, which is a Hindu symbol, with Hakenkreuz, which was the real name of the Nazi hooked cross used by Hitler in Mein Kampf before a Hinduphobic translation was made? Hindu Swastika has nothing to do with Nazism..''

Another user said,''Even our Jewish siblings understand this now. The word Swastika comes from "swastir" or well being. Swastika implies the well being all of all living things. It has nothing to do with the Nazi Hakenkreuz.''

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) also requested Twitter to change its rules to delink the Hindu Swastika with the hateful Nazi Hakenkreuz.

Several users also mentioned how 'Swastika' symbol has nothing to do with Nazism.

Hindu Swastika and Nazi Hakenkreuz are not the same

The ancient symbol that was hijacked by Nazi

It must be noted that the ancient Indian symbol of the swastika was associated in the 20th century with the murderous Nazi ideology of hate and antisemitism, particularly in the Western imagination.

In the 20th-century the Nazis' principal symbol was the swastika, which the newly established Nazi Party formally adopted in 1920. The emblem was a black swastika (卐) rotated 45 degrees on a white circle on a red background. This insignia was used on the party's flag, badge, and armband.

Britannica explains, by 1945, the symbol had become associated with World War II, military brutality, fascism, and genocide-spurred by Nazi Germany's attempted totalitarian conquest of Europe.

When Adolf Hitler began to rise in power and looked for a symbol to encapsulate his movement, the Nazi Party and a strong future for Germany, the swastika, or hakenkreuz (hooked cross) became the clear choice. Hitler understood the power of an image believed that a line of pure Germanic ancestry originating in the Aryan race-a grouping used to describe Indo-European, Germanic, and Nordic peoples-was superior and that other, less-superior races should be ousted from Europe.

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler described the symbolism of the Nazi flag as,"The red expressed the social thought underlying the movement. White the national thought. And the swastika signified the mission allotted to us-the struggle for the victory of Aryan mankind and at the same time the triumph of the ideal of creative work ..."

Since World War II, the swastika has become stigmatized as a symbol of hatred and racial bias. It is used frequently by white-supremacy groups and modern iterations of the Nazi Party. Along with other symbolism employed by the party, the use of the icon has been outlawed in Germany, Britannica reports.

Today, certain countries such as Germany, Austria, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, China and Israel have banned Nazi symbols and it is considered a criminal offence if they are displayed publicly for non-educational purposes.

On August 9, 2018, Germany lifted the ban on the usage of swastikas and other Nazi symbols in video games -part of a long evolution in how the country has grappled with its past.