At one point during this past school year, I was asked a question that I’m very surprised no one has asked me before now, considering I’ve been teaching about Antisemitism and the Holocaust for years from elementary to high school levels. It was a question I knew the answer to, but I hadn’t thought about it in so long that I wanted to look up more about it before responding, just to make sure I was properly informed. In a world overflowing with misinformation, echo chambers, and cries of “fake news” if the answers are not what we want them to be, I erred on the side of being more sure. (And then I sat on this blog post in draft mode for a good six months, because I had a hard time figuring out how to finish it. Oops. Pride Month seems like a good time to finally get this one out into the universe. June also happens to be Jewish American Heritage Month, so, maybe this is kind of a twofer.)

Anyway, the question posed was – why did Hitler and the Nazis choose to use the swastika as their symbol? Why was this the icon of Aryan purity and pride they went with?

It certainly might be considered a peculiar choice, rather nondescript at least. Hitler knew the power that symbols held and wanted an emblem for his reign that would have as much impact as the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union. But at least the hammer and sickle made sense for the Soviets – symbols representing the labor of all for common good, communism in theory if not in the actuality that resulted. By comparison, the swastika is stark and simplistic, not exactly demonstrative of the allegedly illustrious “master race” Hitler was convinced he was trying to preserve and uphold.

Except, as a matter of fact, it had come to represent exactly that. (This is the part where you buckle your seatbelts.)

In 1868, German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann went searching for the long lost city of Troy, using clues gleaned from Homer’s Iliad for his map. He wanted to find the place that dozens of heroes and demigods had come together to fight the most epic of battles, the place where a people’s domination would be proven once and for all. I won’t lie, the literature lover in me really appreciates this kind of moxie! Still, it wasn’t as though the ancient Greeks had left specific coordinates behind. Finding fact in the fiction was unlikely. Anyway, believe it or not, Schliemann actually succeeded in 1871. The discovery made him instantly famous, and a lot of attention was brought to the things that he uncovered – including the swastika. That’s right – a symbol whose origins are frequently attributed to Asia was actually found along the coast of the Aegean Sea! This article from Smithsonian Magazine details the findings better than I could:

“Schliemann found his epic city—and the swastika—on the Aegean coast of Turkey. There, he continued the excavations started by British archaeologist Frank Calvert at a site known as Hisarlik mound. Schliemann’s methods were brutal—he used crowbars and battering rams to excavate—but effective. He quickly realized the site held seven different layers from societies going back thousands of years. Schliemann had found Troy—and the remains of civilizations coming before and after it. And on shards of pottery and sculpture throughout the layers, he found at least 1,800 variations on the same symbol: spindle-whorls, or swastikas.

He would go on to see the swastika everywhere, from Tibet to Paraguay to the Gold Coast of Africa. And as Schliemann’s exploits grew more famous, and archaeological discoveries became a way of creating a narrative of national identity, the swastika grew more prominent. It exploded in popularity as a symbol of good fortune, appearing on Coca-Cola products, Boy Scouts’ and Girls’ Club materials and even American military uniforms, reports the BBC. But as it rose to fame, the swastika became tied into a much more volatile movement: a wave of nationalism spreading across Germany.

“The antiquities unearthed by Dr. Schliemann at Troy acquire for us a double interest,” wrote British linguist Archibald Sayce in 1896. “They carry us back to the later stone ages of the Aryan race.”

Like the swastika, the word Aryan itself also wasn’t originally so incendiary. At first it was used to refer to a subsect of Indo-European language, not some sort of perfect race. Eventually that word too was taken and corrupted.

In a nutshell, for you TL:DR folks, a German archaeologist went on a hunt for proof of Indo-European civilization that was as close to perfect as could be. He found that proof, and thousands of examples of a symbol along with it, which then became emblematic of their supposed identity as a powerful master race of people who have proven their superiority over time by conquering other peoples.

Emphasis on the word “supposed” — because no one person or category of people is superior to any other, and everyone should have the chance to feel comfortable in their own skin without worrying about what others might say or do. Everyone should feel like they are allowed to be themselves, without other people or companies or the government trying to tell them they aren’t who they are, or can’t be who they are without dire consequence. If you’re someone who identifies as part of a minority group (or perhaps more than one), you know all too well that prejudiced people will frequently see only what they wish to see. Schliemann found the proof of a master identity that he was looking for…among archeological evidence of a broad spectrum of societies dating back millennia. (How did no one find his conclusions counterintuitive…? Seems obvious to me.) Schliemann saw what he wished to see. Where he found a symbol of unified racial superiority, others might have discovered a symbol that was passed along through different societal structures, that different and diverse groups found some sort of meaning and utility in from one generation to the next.

No one person or entity should ever get to dictate or gate-keep others’ identities. Frankly, for better or for worse, people are who they are (and attempts at formally regulating people’s identities doesn’t make the world safer, it makes it less so). The truth is, when someone shows you their true colors — whether they are straight or gay or bi or trans or man or woman or non-binary or Black or Asian or Jewish or Muslim or Christian or Atheist or able-bodied or have a disability or hate-filled prejudiced motherfucking Nazi — well, it’s best to take that at face value and believe them.

Happy Pride Month (or as I also like to call it, Make-Nazis-Really-Fucking-Uncomfortable Month). You are wanted. You are loved. Have fun. Be safe. Be you.