Useful Notes / Non-Nazi Swastika

As you can see, this is clearly a Hindu swastika, and not the Nazi one.

"You idiot, this isn't a Nazi swastika. This is a Buddhist swastika."

— Kazemaru, Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged

The swastika is an ancient sun symbol, originating in Sanskrit, a writing system in use during The Buddha's lifetime, and used in many cultures throughout history.

If you see it in either an Asian-themed work, or one from the 1920s or earlier, the symbol has nothing to do with Nazi Germany.

The original swastika stands at a 90-degree angle instead of a 45-degree one, and its arms may point in either direction, whereas the arms of the Nazi swastika (which the Nazis actually called the Hakenkreuz—"hooked cross") always point clockwise. Usually, but far from always, there are lots of variants. See the Real Life examples below for more details.

Note on terminology:

• Swastika is the modern English word for the symbol facing either direction (卍 or 卐), a loanword based on the Sanskrit word for the 卐 symbol, "svastika" (which also has some other meanings). For reference, the Sanskrit for 卍 is "sauvastika".
• Manji is the Japanese word for the counterclockwise version of the symbol (卍). The Japanese language also has a few different words for the clockwise version (卐), most of which translate along the lines of "reverse manji". It comes from the Chinese character for either symbol, man (卍 or 卐)—"manji" means "man symbol/letter/character". In Japanese, it is really only in use in Buddhist texts and the like, hence its meaning as a part of a word can often be unclear even to native Japanese speakers/within the Japanese language itself, therefore the self-referential name.

Polar opposite of A Nazi by Any Other Name: This is about cases where the most famous symbol of Nazism actually doesn't have anything to do with Nazism.

Contrast No Swastikas, though even Non-Nazi Swastikas are liable to be censored, in no small part because neo-Nazis frequently try to dodge European laws against display of Nazi symbols by appropriating Non-Nazi Swastikas and anything else that looks even vaguely swastika-like.

The use of these is still hotly debated, especially since globalization introduced Western audiences to those cultures where swastikas are ubiquitous. Many people from these cultures argue against censorship of their religious symbols, claiming that it's a form of cultural arrogance and a disrespectful attempt at enforcing the Western historical consciousness into other realities. On the flip side, others argue that the legacy of Nazism is still strongly ingrained in the Western world and many people aren't just ready yet to accept swastika as a symbol with a different meaning from Nazism. Even in the best-case scenario, though, someone who displays such a symbol is liable to be Mistaken for Racist.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• YuYu Hakusho has a minor villain with a manji tattooed on his forehead. This was removed in the edited English dub, but kept in the English manga localization with an editorial note for explanation. This is lampshaded in Lanipator's Abridged Series. Yusuke calls the villain a skinhead, and when the villain reacts with wonderment, Yusuke asks him how he couldn't see that one coming, pointing that he is both bald and has a swastika on his forehead. It then gets a further twist, as the villain starts explaining at length how his swastika is not German but Buddhist, and Yusuke attacks him while he monologues, telling him afterwards that he was perfectly aware of the difference but needed a distraction.
• Manji of Blade of the Immortal has the swastika on the back of his clothes as a reference to immortality. The English translation was specificaly not mirrored but rearanged so it would not become drawn in the "Nazi direction". The English translation also includes a blurb explaining that the symbol long predates the Nazis and its use here has no connection to them.
• In Bleach, Ichigo's bankai incorporates a swastika into the sword's guard. The swastika itself is used in writing the word "bankai"—卍解—making Zangetsu's release a kind of Visual Pun. Later during the Fullbring arc, where Ichigo acquires fullbringer powers to replace his lost Shinigami abilities, his fullbring is manifesting a giant swastika of black energy from his Substitute Shinigami Badge. In most western localizations it's censored into an X with prominent serifs.
• In One Piece, a swastika was incorporated in the crest of the Whitebeard pirates. This was changed in the anime to crossbones in a + shape. The manga later Retconned the symbol to match. Viz Media left the early logo unaltered in their English translation, but added an editors note explaining that it's "an ancient Buddhist symbol, not a swastika".
• In Naruto, the Caged Bird seal is a manji symbol in the manga, but the anime changed it to an "X".
• Early in Rurouni Kenshin, there's a Yakuza-like faction called the "Hishimanji". They wear armbands with the manji turned on one of its corners (yes, just like the Nazis), as well as having them printed in a few spots of their robes.
• There is a BL manga set in the Edo period called "Hyaku to Manji" ("100 and 卍 ", with the manji in the title). It has become well-known for its historically-influenced art style, but Western fans often get too freaked out by the title to give it a try.
• The plot of Tokyo Revengers revolves around a fictional gang called the "Tokyo Manji Gang", whose symbol is a manji, which naturally means that manji appear quite often. The title in Japanese is even "東京卍リベンジャーズ". It faced censorship in America for its usage of the manji. Later on, the South and Southeast Asian releases left it untouched, leaving Crunchyroll as the only streaming service outside of Japan to censor the anime.

Art

• Despite the painting's popularity among skinheads, the swastika present on Thor's belt in Thor's Fight with the Giants is not used as a German nationalist symbol. The painting was made around 50 years before the Third Reich came to power, and the German incarnation of the swastika pre-Nazi was originally a religious symbol long before Germany was even officially recognized as a country, various historians believing that it meant "thunder" and "sun" and that it was Thor's official symbol.
• Symbol is featured in eighteenth picture of Alphonse Mucha's cycle Slav epic made as the celebration of slavic history. Mucha later ended up interogated by Nazis which lead to his death .

Business

• There was a Swastika Laundry in Dublin who even painted it in black on a white roundel on their red trucks, adding "Since 1912" in 1940. They stayed in business until the '70s.
• The Coca-Cola company produced swastika watch fobs in the 1920s. They're somewhat rare and obscure collector's items today.
• Carlsberg beer formerly had a swastika emblem. At the brewery in Denmark, there is (or was in 1975) a life-size stone elephant resting one foot on a sphere adorned with a swastika.

Comic Books

• In Sin City, the assassin Miho throws a large shuriken in the shape of a swastika.
• A non-Nazi swastika was used as a weapon against Nazis in an issue of Grant Morrison's run on JLA. In an alternate reality, a non-powered Wonder Woman fights Nazi zombies, who are repelled by a Buddhist swastika.
• One Batman story sees an elderly Jewish man forced to draw swastikas on his friends' graves by a gang of neo-Nazis. Unable to bring himself to obey but too frightened to refuse, he draws counter-clockwise, Hindu-style swastikas instead of Nazi ones, knowing that the gang members are too ignorant to tell the difference.
• In one Radar the International Policeman story, Radar is sent to India on one of his cases. While there, he's briefly shocked to see Indians marching under a swastika flag, until a policeman explains the differences between that swastika and the Nazi one.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Da Vinci Code, Robert Langdon is giving a speech at a conference. He shows part of an image of a swastika, everyone thinks about Nazis, then Langdon shows the complete image, with a clearly Buddhist context.
• In Kal Ho Naa Ho, Naina and Jennifer paint a swastika in the window of their restaurant – in New York – as part of its revamping. No one comments on this, and the new concept is a huge success.
• Subverted in One Night with the King, an adaptation of the Book of Esther. The villain Haman wears the good luck swastika millennia before the Nazi Party existed, yet also happens to be planning to exterminate the Jews.
• In Iron Sky, when the Moon Nazis attack, everyone thinks India is in league with them because the Indian ambassador to the UN happened to be wearing a ring with a swastika on it.
• In Dasepo Sonyo, a swastika can be seen in the background of a Buddhist class.
• Tsogt Taij: Played with. The swastika is a symbol of Tibetan Buddhism...but this film was made in Mongolia, a Soviet client state, in 1945. The Tibetan Buddhists are the bad guys, seeking to enslave and oppress the Mongolians. So while it's not literally a Nazi swastika, it's still A Nazi by Any Other Name.
• Master of the Flying Guillotine: Flying Guillotine masquerades as a Buddhist monk while wearing robes emblazoned with a giant swastika.

Literature

• Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's erotic tragedy novel Manji (translated to Quicksand). The swastika in the title refers to the love affair between four people and has nothing to do with Nazism.
• One autobiography of the last emperor of Russia mentions the empress being very fond of the Swastika.
• In The Great Gatsby, the Jewish gangster Meyer Wolfsheim operates out of the "Swastika Club" (presumably, like many older buildings, it has that design on it). There is some argument though that this wasn't an innocent usage, as Wolfsheim is something of an anti-Semitic caricature, the Nazi movement had already adopted it as their symbol by the time the novel was written, and F. Scott Fitzgerald was fairly knowledgeable of white supremacist movements.
• UK editions of Rudyard Kipling's books published before the 1930s often have left-hand swastikas on the title pages. Of course, once Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power, he stopped using them.
• "Origin Story", by Dwight R. Decker, uses this; a magical being who's been away for the past century gets turned down when he tries to give a man the superpowers and identity of Captain Swastika (with big swastikas on his costume).
• Invoked in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, where the hero, from a universe where World War II was fought entirely differently, knows no other form and can not understand why a demon in hell is wearing the ancient and honorable symbol of the fylfot. The reader, of course, gets enough clues to recognize a Ghostapo Hitler.
• Carl Sagan's book Comet recounts an instance during the filming of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage where the film crew were greeted with paper swastikas while filming in India during a festival. Several of the crew, including Sagan himself (who was Jewish), were briefly alarmed until they realized it was an example of this. Sagan also theorized the existence of swastika-shaped comets as a possible origin of the symbol.
• One Nation, Under Jupiter: Gottlieb gives a swastika necklace to Diagoras, calling it a symbol of Thor. Justified as the Nazis never existed in this timeline.
• One of the needle monster species in Eden Green looks like an 'X' when standing still; when rolling toward prey, its legs hinge, taking on the appearance of a dizzying swastika.
• In Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out, Richleau hangs a swastika around the neck of the unconscious Simon Aron to protect him from the influence of Satanists, and Rex remarks that it's somewhat dicey to put such a symbol around the neck of a Jew. Richleau points out the history of the device as a symbol of light, and that the Nazi version is the same device reversed.
• In Barbara Hambly's Sun Cross duology, a wizard in a medievalish fantasy world receives a call for help from wizards in another world. Their emblem is the sun cross, an ancient and respectable symbol in his world, which he takes as a good sign. The reader, with the necessary context to spot the otherworldly wizards as actual Nazis with a non-non-Nazi swastika, realizes he's in trouble a fair way before he does.
• In the world of Harry Potter, there’s a fantastical version of this with the sigil of the Deathly Hallows. The dark wizard Grindelwald (who had a reign of terror in Europe from the 1920s to 1940s) used it as his mark because he believed that they actually existed and wanted to hunt them. He had one for about fifty years but believed he would be immortal if he found the other two. Harry briefly sees it in a flashback in the sixth book while learning about Voldemort’s family but he doesn’t pay it much mind. The following book, he keeps seeing it everywhere. Viktor Krum has to be stopped from fighting Luna’s dad at a wedding over him wearing it because he thinks he’s a neo-Grindelwald sympathizer. Harry then sees it on a grave from the 13th century when he and Hermione visit his parents’ grave. At about the midpoint of the book, Luna’s dad tells him that it’s the sign of the Deathly Hallows from a fairytale and he was wearing it in its true sense and hates that Grindelwald corrupted it.
• In Last and First Men (written in 1930) it is mentioned that members of the first world state used both swastikas and crosses as symbols of their religion. They were both seen as stylished images of an airplane, since the religion considered flight to be holy.

Live-Action TV

• Kolchak: The Night Stalker: In the episode "Horror in the Heights", swastikas were being painted on walls in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population. It turns out the culprit is an elderly Hindu demon hunter using the symbol to protect the locals from the Monster of the Week.
• The X-Files : The "Calusari" episode features an old woman painting a swastika on her grandson's hand as a Romanian symbol of protection.

Music

• Haruomi Hosono: The album cover for Cochin Moon features a manji in the upper-right corner, acting as a counterpart to the Sanskrit letter in the lower-left and tying in with the album's Bollywood influences.
• The Hu: In the music video of "This is the Mongol", which celebrates the national Mongolian festival of Naadam, several celebrants arrange themselves around the band members in a swastika formation. For those unaware, Mongols are predominantly Buddhist.

Newspaper Comics

• In a Milt Gross◊ Count Screwloose comic done on November 2, 1930, a canoe with a thick-lined, red swastika is pictured in one of the panels.

Professional Wrestling

• Michinoku Pro Wrestling wrestler Manjimaru used to wear pants emblazoned with the svastika because his name contains the 卍 character. His former partners The Brahman Brothers, however, wore svastikas only For the Evulz.
• Marvelous faction Mabutachi 2 Manjimanji are known for a pose where they make manjis with their limbs, or fingers◊ in the case of Rosa Negra, who initially didn't know what the kids were doing.

Tabletop Games

• One of the Pokémon trading card game cards, the Koga's Ninja Trick card, originally had the symbol on it in mirror image until people complained and it was altered for the international release.
• Duel Masters: As Manji became more common in Japanese slang, they have been showing up on some cards in 2018, and it's even on the name of one card set.

Vanity Plates

• Vidyashree Pictures of India used one for their logos. The 1989 version, if anything, bears a seizure advisory from the wildly flashing colors.

Video Games

• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: An armour that can be found for Sharkungo is the 卍 Armour, described as armour with manji emblazoned on it. A decent defense booster for the early game. As character sprites don't actually change to reflect armour, only class changes, the most manji seen is in the item's name.
• Buddha-Jumps-Over-the-Wall from The Tale of Food formerly explicitly brought up this topic to explain the swastika he wears on his neck, though the term Nazi was not outright mentioned. This line has since been replaced.
• Fate/Samurai Remnant: The Void-infused katana that Berserker (Miyamoto Musashi) pulls out of a spatial tear for her Limit Break has a handguard in the shape of a Buddhist manji.
• Touhou Project:
  • Both Ran and Yukari Yakumo from Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom use a swastika-themed spellcard in their battles with you. Ran's version is Shikigami's Shot "Ultimate Buddhist" and Yukari's is Evil Spirits "Butterfly in the Zen Temple."
  • Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night has Fujiwara no Mokou's Deathless "Xu Fu's Dimension" spellcard.
  • Yukari would later get several other spell cards regarding this. An example being Manji Parasol of the Yakumo from the fighting spinoffs.
• Touken Ranbu:
  • Hachisuka Kotetsu, being from the Hachisuka clan, has the crest of said clan as detailed in the real life folder below as his personal crest.
  • Mikazuki wears a sayagata-print kimono, a stylized swastika pattern.
• This is set up purposefully in Epic Battle Fantasy 2. The Big Bad Lance is portrayed as a neo-Nazi intent on destroying the world to rebuild it. However, if one looks carefully at his uniform, his swastika is facing the other direction from the Nazi swastika to form the Buddhist symbol for peace, an appropriate reflection of his ultimate motives.
• The original The Legend Of Zelda has a dungeon shaped like a swastika, described as "manji" in the manual.
• Another such map is used for the Pretty Base in Bomberman Tournament.
• Appears in the seventh world of Namco's arcade game Phozon. A clockwise swastika appears in the world's second stage and a counter-clockwise swastika appears in the world's third stage.
• In Tengai Makyou II: Manjimaru, the title character's name is written with one.
• There is a video game called Icchi Banketsu where the "ban" part of the title is written as a manji. Despite having lots of gorgeous Bishoujo and Bishounen character designs (and together, for once!), it will likely never become well-known outside of Japan for this reason. The concept is basically to collect pretty anime versions of historical and legendary figures, sort of like the Fate Series, but with more of a focus on Japan.
• Appears as the crest of many Indian regions in Crusader Kings II: Rajahs of India. Hilariously, if you manage to convert the Kingdom of Germany to an Indian religion, it will use a Hindu swastika.
• One of the weapons in La-Mulana is the Keyblade, a mystically-attuned sword with a swastika inserted in the blade. In the remake, however, the design was changed to a more ambiguously square shape.
• Goemon's Great Adventure: the special blocks that can be destroyed by Goemon's chain pipe feature a manji symbol in the Japanese version. The international version changed it to a golden star.

Webcomics

• Lotta Svärd: Women of War features the actual Lotta Svärd emblem, showing a blue swastika with white heraldic roses at the corners. Many elements of Finnish military and para-military, such as the Lottas, use swastika imagery. The author has joked about foreigners unfollowing him for posting his comic because they see the swastika and assume it's about Nazis, and even released a bonus comic of Helle telling a stereotypical Nazi soldier to leave because the Lotta swastika had nothing to do with him.

Web Original

• Used for Deliberate Values Dissonance in the Alternate History timeline "Monarchy World" by Tony Jones, in which a swastika is used as the emblem of the United Nations-equivalent precisely because it is such a universally used symbol in many cultures and religions (see below).
• In Look to the West the swastika becomes thought of as an Etruscan symbol because it was found on an Etruscan artefact and then used as the symbol of a Tuscan-based radical movement inspired by the Etruscan civilisation as a result. In reality of course the Etruscans were just one of many cultures to use the symbol, but it's the one that got all the publicity.
• An Internet meme popularized by YTMND makes fun of the general public's ignorance of non-Nazi swastikas and will usually display either an unintentionally swastika-shaped design or a historic/non-Nazi example with the caption "OMG Secret Nazi _____!", often accompanied with a superimposed image of Hitler and German dance-pop music, i.e. the song "Heut ist mein tag" by Blumchen.
• Commented on in a meme that shows a gigantic elephant representing the Hindu god Ganesh attacking a Nazi army with the caption "The Nazis stole the Swastika; Ganesh wants it back."
• In the SCP Foundation, SCP-914 transform objects into other related objects of different quality depending on the setting. When tested with 4 printed swastikas, two turned into Nazi themed objects, and two into Hinduism themed ones.
• Missing Reel, a mini-series about the rise and fall of different Exploitation Film genres. This appears very briefly in Episode 6, "Hong Kong Action." You have to be looking for it to see it.

Western Animation

• Gem fusion designs from Steven Universe are heavily inspired by Hinduism, and take other thematic elements from the religion. This is why the original animatic for the episode which introduced fusion, "Giant Woman", shows Opal arranging her four arms into the shape of a traditional Hindu swastika when summoning her weapon. The swastika, however, was not used in the final version, for obvious reasons.
• Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends lampshades this in an episode with two German minions working for the Red Skull. One of them sees what he thinks is a swastika and even proclaims "Heil Hitler", only for the other to point out that it's supposed to be a Native American tapestry.
• The Mickey Mouse cartoon "The Wayward Canary," from the year 1932, has a brief scene where a baby canary lands on a cigarette lighter with a swastika design on it. This scene was cut from TV airings, but if you watch it, you may notice that its arms are counter-clockwise, rather than clockwise as in a Nazi swastika.

Real Life

• Here's a list of cultures and religions that have used the swastika.
  • Hinduism: A representation of the god Ganesh, as an emblem of good fortune, to evoke "Shakti".
  • Buddhism: As a representation of eternity.
  • China and Japan: China has a separate pattern (萬字不到頭) which represents eternity. 卍 as a Buddhist symbol also arrived in China and their meanings are often conflated. The meaning of 卍 in Chinese varied, with common interpretations including "infinity" or "kindness", or if you're the Tian Tan Buddha, both (萬德). Also used in Japan (as well as in Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) to mark the locations of Buddhist temples on maps. Present in words of chants that are in Old Japanese, and ones that are actually in an old Chinese language/dialect and just read with the Japanese pronunciation of the kanji. The ones in the Chinese language may additionally be the result of Chinese monks phonetically rendering the original Sanskrit into a Chinese language without, in fact, translating it. It does make a case for the manji becoming a kanji in the first place, though.
  • Jainism: Even more prominent than in Buddhism or Hinduism; all holy books and temples must bear the swastika.
  • Iran: A golden necklace of three swastikas at least three thousand years old was found.
  • Ural Mountains: The Bashkir people feature the swastika prominently in their ancient iconography.
  • Armenia: The swastika was prominent in medieval architecture, such as churches and fortresses, and also found in pre-Christian carvings. It was called an arevkhatch (sun cross).
  • Ethiopia: The rock-hewn churches in Lalibela, an ancient town in northern Ethiopia, have swastika-shaped windows.
  • Pre-Columbian America: The swastika has been found associated with cultures throughout North and South America, including the First Nations of Canada, the Navajo and Hopi of the southwestern United States, the Mississippian culture of the east and southeast US, and the Kuna people of Panama. Some of these are still in use today, though efforts are made to distance them from the Nazis.
    • At least one Navajo community explicitly renounced the use of the swastika after the Nazis rose to power (but before the war), stating it had been desecrated.
  • Ancient Grome: A symbol of eternal motion, representing a windmill or watermill. Typically not found alone, but rather as part of a repeating design.
  • Celtic: Pre-Christian Celts used swastikas on their metalwork and stonework. They also occur as an incidental pattern within Knotwork, especially the four-cord style.
  • Germans: Bore special importance in funerary symbols, possibly as an emblem of Thor.
  • Illyria (South-eastern Europe): Represented the sun.
  • Baltics: Pre-Christian. The two versions were called the fire cross and the thunder cross, and represented the thunder god Perkons and the sun.
  • The Basques: Their main symbol is a decidedly curvy variation resembling four commas. It is still commonly seen throughout Basque communities.
  • Slavic: Pre-Christian. Found in ornamentation, usually as a solar symbol.
  • Sami (Arctic Europeans): A double cross or double axe is found on their drums, thought to represent the thunder god, a derivation of Thor.
  • Numerous Cultures: As noted earlier with Celtic Knotwork, variants of the swastika pattern are easily generated within repeating patterns of lines and shapes. Associations both positive and negative aside, four pointed spirals make for eye-catching design elements, and so they can be discovered in tiled-pattern-based art forms ranging from Islamic geometric art to quilting. In addition to making for the occasional awkward antique wallpaper or tile floor, it is also the source of some occasional Everyone Is Satan in Hell drama when a modern designer fails to notice, say, something unusual about the pattern on that Hanukkah giftwrap they're making.
• The Raelians hold an annual "take back the swastika" day to try to rehabilitate the public's perception of the swastika. Given that they're a UFO cult, not many notice and even fewer care. They did however manage to generate quite a bit of controversy in Israel with their symbol, a Star of David combined with a Swastika. Which is itself symbolism that has a long history in Hinduism (though not in the exact form that the Raelians used for their flag).
• Reclaim the Swastika is a website dedicated to try to rehabilitate the public's perception of the swastika. Which is one of many such movements. Some just want an old symbol not to be judged based on a relatively modern and brief movement. Some do it for their own religious reasons. And others think taking away the symbol of Nazism would be a great blow to neo-nazi movements.
• The Finnish Air Force used to use a swastika because that was the personal lucky emblem of Count Eric von Rosen, the man who donated their first plane. Confusing when Finland was in an Enemy Mine-style alliance with Nazi Germany during World War II (and operated American and Dutch planes).
  • The swastika is square and blue, making it easily distinguishable from the Nazi one. A variant with long central arms was used by the army. While the air force now uses a roundel, both types of swastikas are still quietly found on flags, medals, and war memorials.
  • The official Finnish order Order of the White Rose of Finland had swastikas as part of its collar until 1963, where they were replaced with fir crosses.
  • There is an indirect connection between the Finnish swastika and the Nazis. The benefactor of the Finnish air force, the Swedish Count von Rosen, was a good friend of Hermann Goering when the latter was in exile in Sweden in 1920s. Indeed, Goering would go on to marry the count's niece. It is possible that the Nazi use of swastika drew some inspiration from this relationship.
• The Latvian Air Force during the interwar period used a swastika roundel on their planes as well - tilted like the Nazi swastika, but red rather than black. It was adopted in 1918, well before the Nazis came to power, symbolizing Perkūnas (see above).
• The Isle of Man (in the British Isles) has a time-honoured triskelion – three human legs in armor, conjoined in a swastika-like arrangement – as its national emblem◊.
• The US 45th division (formed from the Oklahoma National Guard with troops from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma) had a yellow swastika on red as its patch until 1939. This was replaced by a gold Thunderbird, designed by Woody Big Bow, a Kiowa from Oklahoma. Interestingly, Bill Mauldin (who was in the division, from when it was still the National Guard) didn't make a cartoon about it.
• A wartime division raised in the south-west also wore the Native American swastika prominently on both arms. In early 1942 they were on the point of boarding ship on the East Coast to arrive in Great Britain as one of the first large American contingents. At the last minute it was suggested that eighteen thousand Americans arriving in Britain wearing swastika arm patches was not likely to win hearts and minds. The Thunderbird patches were provided as a tactful alternative.
• The original highway signs for Arizona had swastikas in an arrowhead at the bottom up until 1942, when it was changed for obvious reasons.
• Red October era Russia: the swastika was used as a symbol on the Provisional Government money (kerenki). The Bolsheviks also considered adopting it but ultimately rejected it in favor of the famous red star. Ironically, the Nazi party chose it to have a strong, identifiable symbol which would counter the Communists'.
• Occult: The "Sign of the Mourning of Isis" in some Golden Dawn derived groups involves taking up a swastika posture.
• The CU (Credit Union) Service Center from Indianapolis, Indiana, has a swastika that is tilted at a 45 degree angle (like the Nazi swastika), but has curved spokes that come to a point (unlike the Nazi swastika)◊ as its symbol.
• The Coronado Naval Amphibious Base in San Diego Bay features a swastika-shaped building... and, just across the street to the southwest, two bomber-shaped buildings 'flying' towards it. (This one was built in WWII.) This caused a controversy in 2007, when someone spotted the swastika with Google Earth but missed the bombers.
• Carlsberg Beer originally had a swastika as part of their trademark. Its use was gradually phased out during the thirties and the swastika finally disappeared completely in 1945; however, it can still be seen on the old brewery buildings as well as on some of the museums and churches in Copenhagen that the brewery's philanthropic owner Carl Jacobsen paid for.
• The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado (famous as the inspiration for the Overlook in The Shining), built in 1907, featured ornamental swastikas in the woodwork. These have since been covered up with wooden plaques, but it's not too hard to point them out.
• The Japanese martial art of Shorinji Kempo, originally used the Buddhist swastika as its emblem. It's now been replaced by a pair of intertwining circles, which are interpreted as spinning swastikas. The Buddhist swastika, however, is still retained in the Shorinji Kempo headquarters in Shikoku island, Japan.
• Crest of the Hachisuka clan, consisting of a thick left swastika inside a circle.
• The sayagata (rinzu in Kansai region), a traditional kimono print. Upon close inspection, the pattern is really a bunch of elongated connected swastikas.
• Dutch martial artist Gerard Gordeau has a swastika tattooed on his torso, which alongside his bald head and his status as one of the most infamous dirty fighters in the world has gained him some serious heat among Mixed Martial Arts fans. However, the swastika itself is actually part of a bigger tattoo which contains Buddhist art, and Gordeau himself is rumored to have Jewish ancestry, so he is far from being a Nazi skinhead.
• The workers who built The Spirit of St. Louis painted a swastika inside of the propeller's nose for luck along with their signatures. The sign next to the nose cone in its display at the Smithsonian explains that this use of the symbol was Native-American-influenced, but given Charles Lindbergh's later history^note Lindbergh blamed the United States' entry into World War II on an Anglo-Jewish conspiracy., it can be seen as Harsher in Hindsight.
• Corsair LED PC case fans, due to placement of 4 LED strips across the curved fan arms, end up creating a very Swastika-like pattern◊ on the front of your computer when running, complete with the enclosing circle. "PC Masterrace" jokes aside, it's probably unintentional on Corsair's part.
• The entrance hall of the Botanic Faculty of the University of Munich features a rather prominent swastika mosaic on its marble floor. Even though the design, representing flora and fertility, dates back all the way to 1910, it still tends to turn a lot of heads due to the fact that it's in Munich, of all places. The university even considered putting up an explanatory sign next to it.
• Until 1983, the yearbook at New Mexico State University was called Swastika. It was changed in spite of a poll in which students voted overwhelmingly to keep it.
• Swastika is a small mining town in Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1908 and named after the original good luck symbol, the community refused on multiple occasions to change the town's name despite being Overshadowed by Controversy since World War II. In fact, the earliest attempt to change the name was during World War II when the provincial government replaced the sign with a new one renaming it "Winston": the townsfolk tore it down and replaced it with a new sign for Swastika along with the disclaimer "To hell with Hitler; we came up with our name first."
• Similarly, "Swastika Trail" in the small Ontario community of Puslinch came under some fire from B'nai Brith Canada who started an online movement to change the street's name, but were outvoted 4-1 and the name was retained. Like Swastika, Ontario, the name was adopted in the 1920s and has nothing to do with Nazism, but this doesn't stop the street name from generating controversy.
• In still another Ontario example, the Swastika Hotel opened in Muskoka in 1910. There were large decorative swastikas on the front of the building. The hotel started receiving complaints about this in the 1930s, so the owners, Lillian and Fred Sutton, covered up the swastikas and changed the hotel's name to Sutton Manor.
• There have been at least three Canadian minor league sports teams called the Swastikas (and using the emblem on their jerseys), none after 1926. It's not clear if one particular example influenced the decision to name the unrelated NHL team that formed in the city some years later the Spitfires, which is about as un-Nazi a name as possible, but it probably didn't hurt.
• Soldiers of the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt◊, a Free Corps led by Hermann Ehrhardt that operated at the start of the Weimar Republic. It had no ties to the nascent Nazi party, although it had similar ultra-nationalist and anti-communist prospects. It took part in the fightings for the cities of central Germany and the northwestern ports during the late 1918/early 1919 communist revolution attempts and the Silesian uprisings against Polish insurgents, participated in the Kapp Putsch in 1920, disbanded that year and eventually formed a secret society, the Organisation Consul, which assassinated Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in 1922. During Adolf Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Ehrhardt refused to help the nazi party but most of his men eventually joined it, and he ended up one of those listed to be killed during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, but managed to escape to Austria. Ehrhardt then maintained ties with German resistance members who were in the military's high command during World War II.
• A particularly jarring example has to be the Temple of Rats in Karni Mata. It's decorated with a row of swastikas—-and a row of yellow six-point-stars above it. That combination of symbols would be jarring enough from a post-WW2 perspective, but the location makes it even more so since Nazi propaganda so frequently conflated Jews with rats.
• Chinese video streaming site Bilibili has "Creative Treaty" that regulates the use of swastikas to prevent the misuse of it, through a code that bans the use of terrorist symbols including the Nazi symbols. That said, swastikas being used for benevolent or artistic purposes such as Buddhist and Hindu swastikas are permitted for use in Bilibili, while using swastikas as malevolent intents such as Nazism (even including slapping a Nazi flag in a video) can end up getting a banhammer.

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