What does that remind me of?
Posted on 01/14/2013 2:29:30 PM PST by nickcarraway
Visitors to Myanmar these days often encounter young men in T-shirts emblazoned with a red swastika in a circle and the word "Nazi" written above. World War II-style motorcycle helmets decorated with the fascist emblem are also en vogue on the streets of Yangon.
Myanmar's most popular rock band, which has thousands of fans on Facebook and has toured the United States, is named "The Iron Cross," in reference to a German military medal that was bestowed by Adolf Hitler. The band's logo is a Nazi eagle holding an iron cross instead of a swastika in its claws.
The popularity of Nazi symbolism among Myanmar youth has raised questions among activists, academics and travelers and is seemingly at odds with Myanmar's hopeful transition from military to democratic rule. "I suspect (and hope) they are popular out of
ignorance rather than ideology," writes traveler Micah Rubin on her blog, where she posted a photo of a teenager wearing a shirt with a big swastika on the front.
"I imagine that people wearing these T-shirts might see them as just cool things to wear," says Sydney University anthropologist Jane Ferguson, who has done extensive research in Myanmar. "Something that's foreign and exotic might just look cool without going into the deep history. They might recognize the swastika as part of Nazi regalia, but associate it with the Sanskrit symbol of auspiciousness."
Ferguson compares the popularity of Nazi shirts in Myanmar to Westerners placing Buddha statues inside bars and night clubs, without realizing that this is offensive to Buddhists, or tattooing Chinese characters on themselves without understanding what they mean.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
The Iron Cross pre-dates Hitler by many decades.
Yes, just like morons wearing Che t-shirts.
It's fashion masquerading as politics for people ignorant in both.
It will be interesting to see how the MSM reports this.
It’s highly doubtful that most people in Myanmar even know what or who Jews are.
Do those Burmese who are into Nazi culture realize that the Japanese, who invaded Burma in 1941 and imposed a repressive occupation regime were allies of Hitler?
Burma had a small but significant Jewish population in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and at one time the capital, Rangoon, had a Jewish mayor. There is also a tribe, the Mizo, in northern part of the country that claims descent from the ancient Hebrews. However, there are few Jews in Burma today.
I didn’t know that. But it is a primarily Buddhist country in SE Asia that has been under an extremely repressive regime for a long time. It’s doubtful that most people there know much about WWII, Hitler or Jews in general.
“The Land that Time Forgot” has trouble remembering the history they didn’t teach in their schools.
The Un defeated evil Charlie Chaplin.
Che t-shirts on campus... one hopes that not more than 62% are aware of who he was, what he did, and admire him for it.
Whenever I see one on a kid, I tell them, “Why are you wearing a mass murderer?” They always look down at the shirt and either curse me or one kid really told me he didn't know because it was his brothers. n/s
I knew nothing about this history.
Where did this Jewish population come from? Did it, as with the Jewish population in parts of India, predate Western contact with Burma? And what happened to the Burmese Jewish population? Was it voluntary emigration due to better economic opportunities elsewhere, or something worse?
The Japanese seem to have taken a somewhat hands-off attitude toward the Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe who managed to make it to Japanese-occupied parts of China, not treating them very well but not dealing with them anywhere nearly as severely as their German allies wanted. I'm wondering if the policy was similar in Burma.
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