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That's a swastika symbol which is common in Asia (where binance and its founder is from). The nazi symbol is tilted, has an opposite image to it and no dots. G

That's a swastika symbol which is common in Asia (where binance and its founder is from). The nazi symbol is tilted, has an opposite image to it and no dots. Gas is used for token in that context and is also a common word in crypto referring to transaction fees. I'm surprised by the connections made.

Mo3 4y ago
I too have difficulty understanding the connection without ulterior bias and lack of knowledge needing to be present. Taking a single look at the second link referenced, it is glaringly obvious that the tokens' abbreviation is GAS. The swastika is a completely different symbol and unrelated to the Hakenkreuz. The swastika has never directly been referenced by the Nazis, they projected their own values into the form of the symbol.
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > The swastika is a completely different symbol and unrelated to the Hakenkreuz. The swastika has never been used or considered by the Nazis. This is not true. "Hakenkreuz" is literally just a German word for swastika, etymologically a descriptive one in German instead of a Sanskrit loan word. Contrary to popular misconception, there is no inherent difference between a swastika as used in religious imagery and a swastika as used by the Nazis. The difference is context.
  - Mo3 4y ago
    Hakenkreuz is not “literally the name for a swastika”. Hakenkreuz literally translates to hooked cross. It has nothing to do with a Swastika which is a completely unrelated symbol that has been around for a long time. The swastika is also visually different (the Hakenkreuz is angled 45°, we could argue about the form itself, but on the other hand its not a very deliberate geometric structure) Furthermore, “Swastika” has not once been mentioned or used by the Nazis. Hitler in Mein Kampf referred to it as a hooked cross, and while they probably knew about the Swastika itself, assigning a completely new symbolic meaning to a symbol results in a new, unrelated symbol. In fact, as far as my current knowledge goes, the in the English speaking world wide-spread mistranslation of "Hakenkreuz" to "swastika" was a deliberate mistranslation by a British Christian priest that has propagated into mainstream “knowledge”.
    - skrtskrt 4y ago
      OK so Hakenkreuz is the German name for the thing that the entire English speaking world calls a swastika?
      - Mo3 4y ago
        No… the Swastika has been around for a long time and has a completely different symbolic meaning. It’s also not the same visually. I’m not responsible for lack of education and mainstream misconceptions, I can only tell you facts.
        skrtskrt 4y ago
        https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hakenkreuz https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hakenkreuz https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Hakenkreuz https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Hakenkreuz
        Mo3 4y ago
        Again, this stems from a deliberate mistranslation of a British Christian priest.
        skrtskrt 4y ago
        It's not a mistranslation. The symbol is the same symbol. One is just "what the Nazis called that symbol". The other is "what everyone else calls that symbol". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika Also translation is not an exact science where the most literal translation like "hooked cross" wins. It's much more often about conveying the meaning to the audience (who all correctly call that symbol a swastika).
        Mo3 4y ago
        The article you linked literally says you are not correct. > The swastika symbol, 卐 or 卍, is an ancient religious symbol in various Eurasian cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis.[1] It continues to be used as a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Indic religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Appropriation and following complete perversion of the original symbolic meaning does not make the resulting output interchangeable with the original symbol. Even Hitler himself in his book Mein Kampf states; > "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black hooked cross in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the hooked cross." Nowhere, ever, was the Swastika and its symbolic meaning mentioned as a direct inspiration for the Hakenkreuz. Instead, the Nazis attributed their own ideology to the symbol, but not even to the Swastika itself, but to its form, and furthermore that doesn't change anything about the Swastika itself. It is not the same symbol. If we're going to argue about the visual aspect of the symbol, please look at this image and tell me if these two symbols look like the same to you. https://i.imgur.com/kK6aBK0.png https://i.imgur.com/kK6aBK0.png
  - E4YomzYIN5YEBKe 4y ago
    Hakenkreuz is not the German word for swastika anymore than swastika is the Sanskrit word for Hakenkreuz.
    - chimeracoder 4y ago
      > Hakenkreuz is not the German word for swastika anymore than swastika is the Sanskrit word for Hakenkreuz. In the sense that a dictionary translates one to the other and vice versa, sure, you're correct.
  - mise_en_place 4y ago
    > Contrary to popular misconception, there is no inherent difference between a swastika as used in religious imagery and a swastika as used by the Nazis. This is just plain wrong, I'm not sure what the counterfactual is here. The Nazi symbol is rotated by 45 degrees, the other one isn't. Context doesn't matter one bit, they're two distinct sigils. You could make the argument that the swastika heavily influenced the creation of Hakenkreuz, but they are two distinct symbols.
    - chimeracoder 4y ago
      > This is just plain wrong, I'm not sure what the counterfactual is here. The Nazi symbol is rotated by 45 degrees, the other one isn't. No, you are incorrect. The Nazi one is often "rotated", but it is not always. It's quite easy to find photos where it is not, such as this from Nuremberg in 1937. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nuremberg-rally-1937-units-with-standards-lined-up-in-front-news-photo/548866737?adppopup=true https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nuremberg-rall... The religious swastika does not have inherent directionality; its orientation depends on the context in which it is used.
  - schroeding 4y ago
    You're right, and it's easily provable by looking at old literature. The word "Hakenkreuz" is ancient and was used in the 19th century[1], decades before the national-socialism. I have a hard time understanding why so many people want them to be two different symbols. The symbol is not the problem, but the meaning it conveys, right? The context matters, see the difference between Germany and Finland - both used the Hakenkreuz, but they are not the same, as the context is different, isn't it? Context is everything. The German Army still uses a version of the Iron Cross, but the context is different - using the same symbol on a flag from the German Empire has a vastly different meaning. [1] For example: https://books.google.de/books?id=VbkNkkgHvYgC&pg=PA1&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hakenkreuz&output=embed&newbks=0&hl=de&redir_esc=y https://books.google.de/books?id=VbkNkkgHvYgC&pg=PA1&printse...
    - Mo3 4y ago
      > The symbol is not the problem, but the meaning it conveys, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you take a symbol, rip out its symbolic meaning, replace the symbolic meaning with a completely new symbolic meaning, in my opinion you end up with a new symbol that may share some visual aspects, but has nothing to do with the other symbol in terms of what a symbol actually is - conveying symbolic meaning. It's still going to be a new symbol with different context, and calling a Hakenkreuz (as used by the Nazi regime) a Swastika is more likely incorrect than correct. Appropriation and following complete perversion of the original symbolic meaning does not make the resulting output interchangeable with the original symbol.
      - schroeding 4y ago
        I searched for the original text in Mein Kampf in German, he wrote: "Ich selbst hatte unterdes nach unzähligen Versuchen eine endgültige Form niedergelegt; eine Fahne aus rotem Grundtuch mit einer weißen Scheibe und in deren Mitte ein schwarzes Hakenkreuz" As established[1], the word Hakenkreuz was already used at that point to describe the swastika, including in the original religious meaning. So he wrote "a black swastika". Translating it as "hooked cross" is IMO like translating "kindergarten" to "child garden", technically correct, but weird. > Correct me if I'm wrong, but assigning new symbolic meaning to a symbol results in a new, unrelated symbol. Does it? The German Bundeswehr still uses the Iron Cross. It's the same symbol, it has the same name, the same origin. But doesn't the meaning differ, whether you see it on a German tank now or on a tank of the Imperial Army in WW1 or the neck of a german officer in WW2? I'm not sure whether or not there is a definition of symbol. If you define a symbol as a character or icon paired with a certain meaning, then you're right. But that would imply that e.g. the weird S[2] everyone draw at school was a different symbol every time. Would you agree with that? [1] see my link to the old book, or just search on Google Books for "Hakenkreuz" in the 19th century [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S
- my69thaccount 4y ago
  It's funny how you think being German makes you most qualified to talk about Nazi iconography when in actuality it makes you the least qualified
  - Mo3 4y ago
    I've edited the comment as to not include the reference to my nationality, because this reference was originally meant in the way of "I dont see anything wrong with this either", referring to the original twitter links, but I see how this could be taken in a very different context. Obviously nationality does not relate to knowledge or expertise in symbols in any way, and that association is a little bit far fetched to be quite honest with you. I'm not sure why you would project this specific intent into my comment, as I was originally replying to something completely off the topic of symbols and the Swastika or Hakenkreuz.
lm28469 4y ago
> I'm surprised by the connections made. Increasingly more people see the world through a very limited set of prisms. Lots of people online tend to see everything through racism/sexism/whateverism and will make connections where there are none. It's an easy way to discredit the people you're talking with by inferring meaning. Critic Zelensky on a specific topic: you're pro Putin Critic a woman politician: you're sexist Use a company that used the word "gas", you're obviously antisemitic Once it's out there on twitter &co nobody will even attempt to verify the facts (in this case the two obvious explanations you provided) and will just parrot the thing ad infinitum
- hintymad 4y ago
  I view it as a failure of education. Education should produce well-rounded people who are happy, tolerant, and calm. Yet the US, for whatever reasons, has been producing these kind of angry, impulsive, and less tolerant students. Ironically, they are also the bunch who are easily subject to hoaxes and can't tell information from opinion.
  - llanowarelves 4y ago
    The most intolerant (despite calling themselves the most tolerant) win. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
  - noirbot 4y ago
    Some of it is also just the difficulty of differentiating between an intentionally sneaky bit of whatever-ism and an accident. A finance institution using a star of david is borderline enough that any savvy marketing person wouldn't have let that go out. The use of "gas" on top of it is just silly. There's certainly some amount of what you're pointing out, but given how much of modern politics and communication is done in dog whistles, with people making this level of borderline content and then going "how dare you think I'm intending anything by this accident" when they make an "accident" weekly, it's becoming more important to at least be suspicious of "innocent mistakes" by people who should know better. A company with this much money and international reach is crazy to do a major branding move and then be shocked that people misinterpret it. It's unfortunate that people assume the worst, but at this point, personally and in business PR, you have to understand that people will assume the worst, so to release something like these anyways is either an intentional choice or negligence.
chimeracoder 4y ago
> That's a swastika symbol which is common in Asia (where binance and its founder is from). The nazi symbol is tilted and has an opposite image to it. I'll probably get hammered for saying this, but: no, that's not true. There are many variations of the swastika, and it's not as simple as "look which way it's facing" or "see if it's tilted". That's a common meme often repeated on the Internet, but it's not true and it's trivially falsifiable, because it's quite easy to see religious uses of the swastika with various different orientations and directions. It's also not hard to find examples of Nazi imagery - both from the 20th century and contemporary - which uses an untilted swastika. Context is what differentiates them, not the direction or angle. > I'm surprised by the connections made. As someone who works in incident response, I'm more surprised by their statement, because it really falls short on every level, even if we take it at face value. I'm more surprised that nobody on the team managed to notice the obvious Star of David in that image. Even without the text, it's an astoundingly bad look for a company in the financial space to use that imagery, and if their claim is that nobody involved in the design spotted the issue, that's itself quite concerning and raises even more questions. I'm also surprised that an account that currently has 8 million followers is trying to blame this on an intern. Intern projects don't just happen to get publicly presented like that on a whim. Even for small companies, but especially for ones verified Twitter accounts and which are trying to be taken seriously, brand presence is very actively managed and a lot of effort goes into every post. "Blaming the intern" is a tactic that people used a decade ago, but you see it much less these days because it stopped being plausible. And if we're expected to believe it here, then that just raises more questions about how they managed to provide an intern with unfettered access like this to announce a product with (apparently) zero oversight at any point.
- stickyricky 4y ago
  Do you believe then that Binance is a neo-nazi organization?

Mo3 4y ago

I too have difficulty understanding the connection without ulterior bias and lack of knowledge needing to be present. Taking a single look at the second link referenced, it is glaringly obvious that the tokens' abbreviation is GAS. The swastika is a completely different symbol and unrelated to the Hakenkreuz. The swastika has never directly been referenced by the Nazis, they projected their own values into the form of the symbol.

chimeracoder 4y ago
> The swastika is a completely different symbol and unrelated to the Hakenkreuz. The swastika has never been used or considered by the Nazis. This is not true. "Hakenkreuz" is literally just a German word for swastika, etymologically a descriptive one in German instead of a Sanskrit loan word. Contrary to popular misconception, there is no inherent difference between a swastika as used in religious imagery and a swastika as used by the Nazis. The difference is context.
- Mo3 4y ago
  Hakenkreuz is not “literally the name for a swastika”. Hakenkreuz literally translates to hooked cross. It has nothing to do with a Swastika which is a completely unrelated symbol that has been around for a long time. The swastika is also visually different (the Hakenkreuz is angled 45°, we could argue about the form itself, but on the other hand its not a very deliberate geometric structure) Furthermore, “Swastika” has not once been mentioned or used by the Nazis. Hitler in Mein Kampf referred to it as a hooked cross, and while they probably knew about the Swastika itself, assigning a completely new symbolic meaning to a symbol results in a new, unrelated symbol. In fact, as far as my current knowledge goes, the in the English speaking world wide-spread mistranslation of "Hakenkreuz" to "swastika" was a deliberate mistranslation by a British Christian priest that has propagated into mainstream “knowledge”.
  - skrtskrt 4y ago
    OK so Hakenkreuz is the German name for the thing that the entire English speaking world calls a swastika?
    - Mo3 4y ago
      No… the Swastika has been around for a long time and has a completely different symbolic meaning. It’s also not the same visually. I’m not responsible for lack of education and mainstream misconceptions, I can only tell you facts.
      - skrtskrt 4y ago
        https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hakenkreuz https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hakenkreuz https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Hakenkreuz https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Hakenkreuz
        Mo3 4y ago
        Again, this stems from a deliberate mistranslation of a British Christian priest.
        skrtskrt 4y ago
        It's not a mistranslation. The symbol is the same symbol. One is just "what the Nazis called that symbol". The other is "what everyone else calls that symbol". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika Also translation is not an exact science where the most literal translation like "hooked cross" wins. It's much more often about conveying the meaning to the audience (who all correctly call that symbol a swastika).
        Mo3 4y ago
        The article you linked literally says you are not correct. > The swastika symbol, 卐 or 卍, is an ancient religious symbol in various Eurasian cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis.[1] It continues to be used as a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Indic religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Appropriation and following complete perversion of the original symbolic meaning does not make the resulting output interchangeable with the original symbol. Even Hitler himself in his book Mein Kampf states; > "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black hooked cross in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the hooked cross." Nowhere, ever, was the Swastika and its symbolic meaning mentioned as a direct inspiration for the Hakenkreuz. Instead, the Nazis attributed their own ideology to the symbol, but not even to the Swastika itself, but to its form, and furthermore that doesn't change anything about the Swastika itself. It is not the same symbol. If we're going to argue about the visual aspect of the symbol, please look at this image and tell me if these two symbols look like the same to you. https://i.imgur.com/kK6aBK0.png https://i.imgur.com/kK6aBK0.png
- E4YomzYIN5YEBKe 4y ago
  Hakenkreuz is not the German word for swastika anymore than swastika is the Sanskrit word for Hakenkreuz.
  - chimeracoder 4y ago
    > Hakenkreuz is not the German word for swastika anymore than swastika is the Sanskrit word for Hakenkreuz. In the sense that a dictionary translates one to the other and vice versa, sure, you're correct.
- mise_en_place 4y ago
  > Contrary to popular misconception, there is no inherent difference between a swastika as used in religious imagery and a swastika as used by the Nazis. This is just plain wrong, I'm not sure what the counterfactual is here. The Nazi symbol is rotated by 45 degrees, the other one isn't. Context doesn't matter one bit, they're two distinct sigils. You could make the argument that the swastika heavily influenced the creation of Hakenkreuz, but they are two distinct symbols.
  - chimeracoder 4y ago
    > This is just plain wrong, I'm not sure what the counterfactual is here. The Nazi symbol is rotated by 45 degrees, the other one isn't. No, you are incorrect. The Nazi one is often "rotated", but it is not always. It's quite easy to find photos where it is not, such as this from Nuremberg in 1937. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nuremberg-rally-1937-units-with-standards-lined-up-in-front-news-photo/548866737?adppopup=true https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nuremberg-rall... The religious swastika does not have inherent directionality; its orientation depends on the context in which it is used.
- schroeding 4y ago
  You're right, and it's easily provable by looking at old literature. The word "Hakenkreuz" is ancient and was used in the 19th century[1], decades before the national-socialism. I have a hard time understanding why so many people want them to be two different symbols. The symbol is not the problem, but the meaning it conveys, right? The context matters, see the difference between Germany and Finland - both used the Hakenkreuz, but they are not the same, as the context is different, isn't it? Context is everything. The German Army still uses a version of the Iron Cross, but the context is different - using the same symbol on a flag from the German Empire has a vastly different meaning. [1] For example: https://books.google.de/books?id=VbkNkkgHvYgC&pg=PA1&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hakenkreuz&output=embed&newbks=0&hl=de&redir_esc=y https://books.google.de/books?id=VbkNkkgHvYgC&pg=PA1&printse...
  - Mo3 4y ago
    > The symbol is not the problem, but the meaning it conveys, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you take a symbol, rip out its symbolic meaning, replace the symbolic meaning with a completely new symbolic meaning, in my opinion you end up with a new symbol that may share some visual aspects, but has nothing to do with the other symbol in terms of what a symbol actually is - conveying symbolic meaning. It's still going to be a new symbol with different context, and calling a Hakenkreuz (as used by the Nazi regime) a Swastika is more likely incorrect than correct. Appropriation and following complete perversion of the original symbolic meaning does not make the resulting output interchangeable with the original symbol.
    - schroeding 4y ago
      I searched for the original text in Mein Kampf in German, he wrote: "Ich selbst hatte unterdes nach unzähligen Versuchen eine endgültige Form niedergelegt; eine Fahne aus rotem Grundtuch mit einer weißen Scheibe und in deren Mitte ein schwarzes Hakenkreuz" As established[1], the word Hakenkreuz was already used at that point to describe the swastika, including in the original religious meaning. So he wrote "a black swastika". Translating it as "hooked cross" is IMO like translating "kindergarten" to "child garden", technically correct, but weird. > Correct me if I'm wrong, but assigning new symbolic meaning to a symbol results in a new, unrelated symbol. Does it? The German Bundeswehr still uses the Iron Cross. It's the same symbol, it has the same name, the same origin. But doesn't the meaning differ, whether you see it on a German tank now or on a tank of the Imperial Army in WW1 or the neck of a german officer in WW2? I'm not sure whether or not there is a definition of symbol. If you define a symbol as a character or icon paired with a certain meaning, then you're right. But that would imply that e.g. the weird S[2] everyone draw at school was a different symbol every time. Would you agree with that? [1] see my link to the old book, or just search on Google Books for "Hakenkreuz" in the 19th century [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S
my69thaccount 4y ago
It's funny how you think being German makes you most qualified to talk about Nazi iconography when in actuality it makes you the least qualified
- Mo3 4y ago
  I've edited the comment as to not include the reference to my nationality, because this reference was originally meant in the way of "I dont see anything wrong with this either", referring to the original twitter links, but I see how this could be taken in a very different context. Obviously nationality does not relate to knowledge or expertise in symbols in any way, and that association is a little bit far fetched to be quite honest with you. I'm not sure why you would project this specific intent into my comment, as I was originally replying to something completely off the topic of symbols and the Swastika or Hakenkreuz.

lm28469 4y ago

> I'm surprised by the connections made. Increasingly more people see the world through a very limited set of prisms. Lots of people online tend to see everything through racism/sexism/whateverism and will make connections where there are none. It's an easy way to discredit the people you're talking with by inferring meaning. Critic Zelensky on a specific topic: you're pro Putin Critic a woman politician: you're sexist Use a company that used the word "gas", you're obviously antisemitic Once it's out there on twitter &co nobody will even attempt to verify the facts (in this case the two obvious explanations you provided) and will just parrot the thing ad infinitum

hintymad 4y ago
I view it as a failure of education. Education should produce well-rounded people who are happy, tolerant, and calm. Yet the US, for whatever reasons, has been producing these kind of angry, impulsive, and less tolerant students. Ironically, they are also the bunch who are easily subject to hoaxes and can't tell information from opinion.
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  The most intolerant (despite calling themselves the most tolerant) win. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
- noirbot 4y ago
  Some of it is also just the difficulty of differentiating between an intentionally sneaky bit of whatever-ism and an accident. A finance institution using a star of david is borderline enough that any savvy marketing person wouldn't have let that go out. The use of "gas" on top of it is just silly. There's certainly some amount of what you're pointing out, but given how much of modern politics and communication is done in dog whistles, with people making this level of borderline content and then going "how dare you think I'm intending anything by this accident" when they make an "accident" weekly, it's becoming more important to at least be suspicious of "innocent mistakes" by people who should know better. A company with this much money and international reach is crazy to do a major branding move and then be shocked that people misinterpret it. It's unfortunate that people assume the worst, but at this point, personally and in business PR, you have to understand that people will assume the worst, so to release something like these anyways is either an intentional choice or negligence.

chimeracoder 4y ago

> That's a swastika symbol which is common in Asia (where binance and its founder is from). The nazi symbol is tilted and has an opposite image to it. I'll probably get hammered for saying this, but: no, that's not true. There are many variations of the swastika, and it's not as simple as "look which way it's facing" or "see if it's tilted". That's a common meme often repeated on the Internet, but it's not true and it's trivially falsifiable, because it's quite easy to see religious uses of the swastika with various different orientations and directions. It's also not hard to find examples of Nazi imagery - both from the 20th century and contemporary - which uses an untilted swastika. Context is what differentiates them, not the direction or angle. > I'm surprised by the connections made. As someone who works in incident response, I'm more surprised by their statement, because it really falls short on every level, even if we take it at face value. I'm more surprised that nobody on the team managed to notice the obvious Star of David in that image. Even without the text, it's an astoundingly bad look for a company in the financial space to use that imagery, and if their claim is that nobody involved in the design spotted the issue, that's itself quite concerning and raises even more questions. I'm also surprised that an account that currently has 8 million followers is trying to blame this on an intern. Intern projects don't just happen to get publicly presented like that on a whim. Even for small companies, but especially for ones verified Twitter accounts and which are trying to be taken seriously, brand presence is very actively managed and a lot of effort goes into every post. "Blaming the intern" is a tactic that people used a decade ago, but you see it much less these days because it stopped being plausible. And if we're expected to believe it here, then that just raises more questions about how they managed to provide an intern with unfettered access like this to announce a product with (apparently) zero oversight at any point.

stickyricky 4y ago
Do you believe then that Binance is a neo-nazi organization?