A Hasty Conclusion?
By Peter Allen, Library Special Collections
Published on Wednesday, November 6, 2002
To the Editor:
I am writing to you in response to the swastika incident in the Rockefeller Center. While it is clear that the swastika symbol has been used in the past to represent evil, to label it automatically as an "anti-Semitic sign" is inaccurate. The swastika is an ancient symbol that has been used by different cultures and races, worldwide, for thousands of years. The vast majority of these peoples and the ideas that the swastika meant to them were anything but anti-Semitic. It can be found in Hindu mythology, Hopi Indian art and ancient, pre-Christian, northern European heathenism.
While it is possible that the perpetrator is a follower of National Socialism and perhaps is anti-Semitic, to just assume such things is, in my humble eyes, inappropriate and irresponsible.
As a person of northern European descent and a practicing heathen, I found your automatic assumption of anti-Semitism insulting. Next time you shouldn't jump to conclusions quite so quickly.