Thais And Swastikas?

[Naam]

I have a picture of Stalin as my avatar and yet i consider myself slightly to the right of Gengis Khan on both political, economic and moral issues. It's called irony people.

yep! Gengis Khan was not literate. my great-grand-mother told me so

[Dave the Dude]

Prince Harry (in case you didn't know)

P.S. Can we blame this on the UK educational system?

What is that person to do with the UK educational system? He could have bought his way into any school/university in the world. The average'Joe" on the UK street is worlds away from our privilidged ones, Bless em.

Dave

[Samuian]

Really, what is the deal with these Thais? How can they not know how offensive that symbol is? Unforgivable, and just another example of their cultural insensitivity. That sort of thing would never be seen in Europe or the USA!

Prince Harry (in case you didn't know)

P.S. Can we blame this on the UK educational system?

Blame whoever you want for it, the "evil part" is only of concern to those who have been directly effected by the 2nd WW!

Moroccans and other North africans honor Rommel and think "the Nazis" were "great warriors" ....because they (first) kicked the other occupants out of their country...

It all has to do how it has been percieved...nothing to do with "cultural insensitivity" - I call this nation bashing!

What do the Thais have to do with the symbols and the connected war crimes of the 3rd Reich?

NOTHING!

Today they are at best bad reminders of a long, long past time in history!

Shouldn't we still hate anything Roman because they ones conquered half of Europe, Africa and slaughtered "innocent" Christians?

Or "the Americans", or "the English", or "the French"... doesn't everyone has a corpse in the attic?

Let 'em kids play!

After all it's a game, for fun, nobody here is marching for the NSDAP!

Get real!

Edited November 27, 2007 by Samuian

[jaideeguy]

I see plenty of sweet young Thai girls wearing T-shirts with filthy slogans in English on them, but I realize that they have no idea about the meaning.

[/quote

Yea, a sweet innocent 15 yr old girl who works in the noodle shop my wife frequents was wearing a t-shirt with the windows for dummies logo, only it read 'Bl*w J*bs for dummies' and i told my wife to politely tell the mother that it is not a nice phrase for a young girl to be displaying [outside of Pattaya].

[blizzard]

wot about young gurls wearing playboy shirts. very inappropriate.

[JetsetBkk]

all it is is a bunch of kids being kids in the same way as I've seen punks and skinheads in numerous countries around the world doing it.

Which is basically what I said in the other thread:

Looks to me like a bunch of kids dressing up and having fun. Some people need to lighten up.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?s=...t&p=1605012

[jayjayjayjay]

Has anyone noticed Thai people walking about wearing a big swastika on their T-Shirt or a swastika patch on their jacket?

Today i was out and saw a motorbike parked with a flag pole on the back flying a swastika flag. Bike also had a German style army helmet for the crash helmet?

What is up with that? Did they just skip a few chapters in the history books. You'd think even someone with the most basic knowledge of WW2 (such as "there was a war, lots of people died") would avoiding having this symbol on their person?

I think you need to question education more than ignorance!

[Beavis and Butthead]

I used to see a street stall selling moto helmets with swazis on them but that was a year or 2 ago. I see they sell the same helmets without since. I reckon someone told them or their supplier to put a lid on it. I saw a Thai guy standing on the street about 2 years ago with a Nazi shirt and I took his pic, he was smiling ear to ear. I live in the heart of Bangkok and that's about all I've seen in 5+ years. I can't say I had a problem seeing what little I saw

[Mosha]

Are the Thais taught history in high school like we get in the west? I doubt it so they won't be aware what the swastika means to the western countries. Remember though that a lot of Thais died on the DEATH railway. One estimate being 1 per railway sleeper.

[ignoramus]

I usually seem to come in at the rear-end of most topics, so FWIW, a few years ago I saw a young Japanese guy at a Sydney university wearing a T-shirt which bore the Japanese war insignia. Given that most university students seem to lean to the left, this would doubtless have appealed to their generally subversive natures. The illogicality of this would escape such people. Many wise up decades later, many don't. The dear Japanese people are not taught the truth, like the Germans are, and probably would lapse into instant denial if they were, so one must have understanding.

The wikipedia contribution produced by keying 'reverse swastika' in Google is vaguely confusing, but not totally uninteresting. Inter alia, it features a pic of a Roman swastika. As someone has said, the nazis (I avoid the capital N - they don't deserve it), merely pinched the symbol and, it seems, reversed it.

Objectively speaking, it is graphically stunning, though not the best ever created. The nazis pinched and perverted it - the low decadent perverted/perverting shites that they were.

This isn't, as someone, said, a trivial subject. Here in LOS, however, I think it might be a trivial matter. Young people like to have an impact, at any cost - that's why they make so much noise in public, in Oz anyway. "Please notice me" - I exist. It's an adolescent's version of a tantrum, and is merely quaint, and usually harmless.

The young care about history, but only their own. 'Before they were born' is an irrelevance, a nuisance. Some great comments; love your work.

[chanchao]

Yea, a sweet innocent 15 yr old girl who works in the noodle shop my wife frequents was wearing a t-shirt with the windows for dummies logo, only it read 'Bl*w J*bs for dummies' and i told my wife to politely tell the mother that it is not a nice phrase for a young girl to be displaying [outside of Pattaya].

Spoilsport..!

wot about young gurls wearing playboy shirts. very inappropriate.

LOL.. One more for the queue.

[jaiyenjohn]

Ok, toward the end of the thread but makes this little scene relevant to the topic.

Thai's and swastikas are pretty much just due to ignorance. There are no Thai Nazis.

I was walking by a school sports field in Bangkok, and in the bleachers there were about 150 kids with red, blue, and green shirts, all broken up into teams.

As the sports were going on, I noticed these children, not more than 6 or 7 years old, in red had a swastika AND a picture of Hitler silk-screened onto their shirts. The Blue team had photos of Stalin, and the Green team had a photo of Churchill on theirs.

All these little Thai kids running around playing in these awful, tasteless shirts made me laugh so hard, I could barely control myself. What's more I knew that this had to be the idea of one of their teachers, so that made it just more hilarious.

This was within my first three months of living in Thailand, and became the image I think of when someone says TIT.

I still wish I had a camera that day.

JB

[kankaroo]

I think it's great, really makes you know your not in the west.

My little brother is fascinated with WW2 and Hitler, Stalin and the likes and I have bought him many "souvenirs" over the years. Rubber Hitler masks, Swastika flags, t-shirts etc etc.......Actually now that I am writing this it seems a bit weird LOL, but he's not a nei nazi or anything, and anyway my Mum has made a lot of it mysteriously disappear in the washing machine.

Also as one poster made out, most western kids couldn't tell you much about what happened between 1939-45, much less Thai kids!!!!!!

One of the coolest things I ever saw in Thailand was an old granny in her late sixties riding a moped with an SS Soldier helmet.

Wish I had a cameraphone back then !!!!

[Ping]

Yet another echo...

(Some of the) previous threads on this subject:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=58635

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=48862

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=47121

Happy reading...

[Big A]

Time to close up shop on this thread, eh?

[sriracha john]

Time to close up shop on this thread, eh?

75 posts late, but yes.

[GreenShone]

Isn't Swastika some sort of symbol for Buddhism?

[chanchao]

Yeah, close, close!! Must.. not.. discuss..!! Discuss is evil, close it!!

[AjarnUan]

Isn't Swastika some sort of symbol for Buddhism?

hahah brilliant!

[sbk]

Time to close up shop on this thread, eh?

I agree, we've had the swastika is a hindu symbol pointed out on at least every other page and the note that there have been numerous threads on this even in the recent past.

New members really need to learn to use the search function before posting. It is located on the bottom left hand side of the forum you are in or in the upper right hand side, where it says "Search"

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