An online clothing company is under fire for creating rainbow swastika shirts in an effort to promote LGBTQ inclusivity… because never was there a greater advocate for tolerance and acceptance than Adolf Hitler.
KA design unveiled the new shirts on Teespring. They feature rainbow swastikas with the words “peace,” “zen,” and “love.” In the description, the company said that they were “reclaiming” the symbol to represent LGBTQ people.
“They stigmatized the swastika. They won. They limited our freedom. Or maybe not? The swastika is coming back together with love, peace, respect and freedom,” the description read.
Not surprisingly, people weren’t so into the idea:
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.@teespring You will not escape from the fact that swastika was turned by Nazis into a symbol of racism, hate, antisemitism & mass murder. https://t.co/uejBq5XP2S
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) August 6, 2017
WTF are those even supposed to mean? Swastika + rainbow + peace? I'm more bewildered than outraged. Who & what are they supporting?
— 50+ Gay (@4skinhot) August 7, 2017
Hey @teespring how do you guys like forever being associated with Nazis and Jew-hatred? Great marketing job! #IrredeemableSwastika @Ostrov_A
— Eric Schorr (@EJSchorr) August 7, 2017
who the fuck looks at that and thinks "ahh yes reclaiming the swastika" rather the "look a gay nazi"???
— Shampoo Papi (@eviltwin_) August 5, 2017
A spokesperson for Teespring said that they hoped to “share the beauty” of the swastika:
“We really like the symbol in its shape and aesthetics, and we would love to share the beauty of this symbol detached from the hatred associated with it.”
Um.
The shirts have since been removed from the site.
KaiserVonScheiss
I’m pretty sure it’s a Poe. I don’t think anyone in all seriousness would propose such a thing.
That said, I find it hilarious. KA Designs have a video on Facbook that’s very funny. The music makes it sound like something from a Wes Anderson film.
Also, Teespring doesn’t make or design the shirts as some people seem to think. People design their own shirts and Teespring simply sales them.
And I don’t think the shirts were “removed.” The period to buy them has ended. They were only on sale for a limited time. That’s how Teespring works.
DCguy
What a shock, Mo Bros other screename quotes the full right wing talking point on the Swastika shirts.
JAW
This is very sad…
But then again, some people are trying to reclaim the q word to describe LGBT people… so I guess they can reclaim anything that they want
Fisi
The swastika was appropriated to symbolize a genocide that killed 6 million Jews and millions of others, including 15k LGBT .
The word “queer” has been used as an identity label since the 80’s. Gay has only been used since the 60’s. Is “homophile” better for you? That’s what was used before that. The word “gay” was largely looked down on by “homophiles” just like older gay men dislike the word Queer today. Language changes as we need it to, symbols of hatred dont. these things aren’t the same at all.
1RedHottSexyMama
? personally have never been able to say q×××r. The thought of saying it makes me sick. ? have several gay\bisexual friends and they have no problem with someone calling them q×××r. That will never happen so they don’t push the issue. Nothing will ever make me use certain words or symbols. The swastika is a symbal of intolerability, hate and death. ? take it as nothing more that what the Nazi’s used as a symbal from the most disgusting attrocities ever commited by man. ? personally don’t believe i would have even made it on the train to the mass murder of countless people as ? am a natural redhead. As long as there have been redheads in existance we have been considered souless, undead, supernatural\mystical creatures. So for myself aside from the other atrocities nobody will ever get me to change my opinion of the swastika. There could be pictures of kittens and puppies along with the swastika and even that would never sway my way of thinking. ? hope that the company will have apologize for defending the symbol and if not then i hope there are enough Nazi\swastika lovers will keep their business up and running and those of us find it highly offensive and never buy a thing from this company.
Heywood Jablowme
“The q word,” really? Did you notice that the site you’re reading is named Queerty?
scotshot
Now they’ve taken the product and placed a red circle with diagonal bar across it and labeled them as anti-swastikas.
I wonder how many Kaiser bought since he seems to know all about the company.
Did Peter thief buy one?
Did Log Cabin republicans buy them to fit in better at Trump rallies?
smh
Invader7
Really Teespring. Is your company run by Neo-Nazi fascists? Gay haters? Low life $$$ grubbing scum bags? Totally clueless a-hole d-bags? Is your company really trying to sell this crap? Especially after the BS statement from your spokesperson re: the “beauty” of the swastika… Time for a global boycott !!!
1RedHottSexyMama
You voiced my opinion way better than ? was able to in my earlier post. ? think it’s reprehensable for them to use that symbal of hate much less try to defend themselves over it. ?t sickens me and i can’t say if i heard that their company went bankrupt that i would be very upset by it.
Jonathonz
In a recent trip to S Korea I noticed many swastikas prominently displayed on the outsides of buildings. Apparently they’re a symbol of Buddhism in that country, and not associated with Nazism at all.
1RedHottSexyMama
Wow, from symbolizing negatively with Nanzi’s to peace with Buddha. However ? don’t think North or South Korea had a representation of citizens that were abused, starved, had sick experiments performed on them and then ultimately gassed in his “ovens”. ?f your people aren’t being slaughtered then for the most part there isn’t an association with the horrors that the rest of us do.
paul dorian lord fredine
true, the symbol was around long, long before hitler perverted i. you can see it on temples that are 100’s of years old. but using it after the horrors of wwII, no mater how it’s marketed, it’s only going to be attractive to one group…fascists and neo-nazis. putting rainbow colors on or around it isn’t going to make it suddenly more attractive. you can’t put m&m’ on a turd and say ‘now it’s yummy’.
john.k
The symbol is thought to have originated in India. It is used as a religious symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. But it spread around the world and appears on ancient Greek and Roman artifacts. It was also used by the Celts and possibly also by some North American tribes. I remember seeing the remains of the floor of an ancient Roman villa in the Romisch-Germanisch Museum in Cologne. One thing for sure is that before its perversion by the Nazis it was a symbol signifying good.
john.k
Soory, I meant to say “I remember seeing it on the remains of the floor …”
Rex Huskey
if this was not intended to be ironic or produced as a spoof…someone should be brought in and gassed!
QJ201
Will we know what we can get Milo and kind for Christmas. If they don’t already have them.
Have we completely entered Big Brother territory with all this awful doublespeak?
jhon_siders
The one that says ZEN is the way the swastika was used before Hitler turned it on its side as a symbol of the Nazi party maybe that one could be OK ?? I have seen it that way on temples in the east and there are old buildings here in the US with it that way too .
ethan_hines
The atrocities of the Nazi Regime notwithstanding the original meaning of the symbol as per Wikipedia is as follows:
Schliemann linked his findings to the Sanskrit swastika. The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit root swasti which is composed of su, meaning “good, well”, and asti meaning “it is, there is”. The word swasti occurs frequently in the Vedas, and it means “well, good, auspicious, luck, success, prosperity”.
Heywood Jablowme
Yes – not just in Asia. The “right-side up” swastika was a common symbol for many Native American tribes in the U.S. It was also a feature of Roman art, seen for instance in tile floors in the ruins of Pompeii. It was pretty much all over the world, historically.
But “rehabilitating” it now, post-1945, doesn’t seem like a worthwhile project. Maybe wait a few centuries.
TheGregoryProject
“bringing back the LGBTQ swastika” ?!? There never was one. Are you referring to the Pink Triangle that we already reclaimed as a community ?