dissing the dissemination of ignorance

From the Facebook community oddly titled "PATRIOT" (sic).

The meme on the right is complete garbage. When I first saw it in my feed, I thought, oh my gosh, where am I going to start with this one? I quickly realized that this merited more than the average share + mock strategy I have used before.


[WARNING: Knowledge follows...]

Now, I'm all for patriotism. I'm all for voters being aware of the values and views of the candidates they support. This, however, does not educate voters. It sucks their brain cells dry. The page that posted this (although I cannot cite them as the originators), simply says "PATRIOT - One who loves, supports and defends one's country." It's a nice thought, but again...how does comparing an American president to Hitler support or defend the United States?

Silly me, I don't even need to bother with that question. This particular instance of Obama=Hitler is predicated on the (sadly) bold statement: "Only two people in history had their own symbols." This is where I can tear this whole thing to shreds. And others have attempted it within Facebook comments, only to be called names, naturally.

Call me art historian. That means I am fully capable of denouncing the statement as blatantly false. Point number one: "Only two people?" Please. The Queen of England has a symbol--her coat of arms. Caesar had his Eagle. But let's cut to the quick here. I'm talking about a man from a backwater of the Roman Empire, born approximately in the year 1 AD. You might know him as Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, or simply Jesus, your Lord and Savior. They say "know your audience," and I know that the main audience for tripe like the meme above tend to be religious. Here are just three symbols used within the same scope of "history" the meme claims:

Chi Rho Iota

Christian Cross

Ichthys (Fish)

So let's examine these symbols and see if they fit the bizarrely ominous tone of the meme. The Chi Rho Iota, which combines the first three Greek letters of the name Christ, is credited for the emperor Constantine's victory at the Milvian Bridge. He had a vision of the Chi Rho Iota in the sky that convinced him to use the symbol as his standard. Constantine went on to declare Christianity a legal religion in the empire, ending persecutions of Christians. Not exactly Hitler material. The Ichthys, also Greek, is a simple fish that Christians would use to identify themselves to fellow Christians before the religion became dominant in the Roman world. It too is based on the Greek name of Jesus: Iesus Christos, Theo Yios, Soter (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior). Again, an innocuous image with a great history. All it takes is a little reading.

Now the Cross, we can really sink our teeth into that. It has also become a major symbol for Jesus and Christianity as a whole, but Early Christians actually preferred the Chi Rho Iota and Ichthys to the Cross. To a Roman citizen, it would be like looking at an image of an electric chair. Crosses were standard execution equipment for political dissidents, and the cross as a symbol, the Crucifix in particular, was quite rare in Christian art before the 5th century AD.

My point is that symbols are not just drawings or letters combined in clever designs. They have many layers of meaning. Some meanings are positive, while some meanings are very negative, like the Cross would have been to the Romans. The Swastika also has many layers. Before it was appropriated by the National Socialist Party in the 1920s, the Swastika was a sacred symbol to Hindus and Buddhists, among other eastern religions. In Sanskrit, svastika means "good fortune," and today you can see it on statues of Buddha. Hardly a sign of impending genocide. Send Heinrich Schliemann to do archaeological work in Turkey, though, and boom, this poor symbol is distorted into an image of Aryan purity. Good luck turns into bad juju when Germans are looking for their ancient ancestors.

Back to the meme version of the Swastika: I think the creator of this image is noticing some basic geometric coincidences. The circular forms of both make for a great comparison; they must mean the same thing! It's a pretty big leap, though, from form to politics. They make that gargantuan jump because they add their own negative layer to Obama's campaign symbol. In it they see progressive, gun-grabbing Fascism/Socialism/any scary -ism you can think of. No symbol is created in a vacuum. We influence them as much as they influence us.

Symbols are all around us. We are bombarded by images that stand for ideas, people, and places, so it is completely ludicrous to narrow the entire visual history of the human race down to two symbols to make a faulty political point. Spreading this as a meme on social media is tantamount to shouting lies on a street corner: "2+2=5! Why? Because Obama is a Muslim!" It doesn't take much to stop and think about what you find online. So I end with a plea: please think before you share such memes in the future. Be skeptical, especially when someone is making a Hitler comparison.