A video showing a London police officer debating the offensiveness of swastikas with a woman during a pro-Palestinian rally has sparked widespread criticism on social media. The officer’s responses were met with disbelief and anger, as he seemed to downplay the symbol’s impact and suggested it needed “context.”
“Under what context is a swastika not disrupting public order?” the woman repeatedly asked, to which the officer replied, “Everything needs to be taken into context, doesn’t it?”
The woman pressed, “Why does a swastika need context? Why is a swastika not immediately antisemitism?”
The officer admitted, “I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of signs and symbols,” but acknowledged that some symbols produce “mass alarm.”
The Metropolitan Police responded, stating the video was taken out of context and the officer had offered to assist the woman. However, social media users condemned the officer’s handling of the incident, with one commenter joking, “That officer is qualified to be an Ivy League university president.”
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6 Responses
If the swastika was part of a Hindu religious design, the context would be important. One may assume that this demonstration was not of Hindus demanding the removal of Muslim colonizers (note: it wasn’t just Eretz Yisrael they conquered and colonized).
Sorry, but that whole video is bonkers. Maybe she should have been at home catching up on learning more about what Shabbos Kodesh is all about, rather than having an argument with someone whose job is to prevent violence on the streets.
Britain is fast going down the drain. King Charles III tragically is in throes of Pancreatic cancel, and Price William is totally incapable of being monarch with his drinking issues & his ongoing fighting & שנאת-חינם to his brother as well as his tantrum problems.
“That officer is qualified to be an Ivy League university president.”
Now THAT’s telling it like it is! He should follow in their footsteps and resign.
🤔 Hmm so the truck that was privately driven around a few months ago with pictures of the hostages on it, that WAS a disruption to public order, that did not “require context” and was immediately ordered to stop driving around London. Yet displaying a swastika requires “context”?! Mind boggling to say the least! But no worries, the peaceful Muslims will soon be the majority in England and these stupid people will be dealt with the way Muslims deal with “infidels”. It will be too late then.
It does indeed depend on the context. There are several contexts in which a swastika is not antisemitic.
1. Swastikas at demonstrations are usually intended to accuse someone else of anti-semitism. People carry swastikas in order to claim that the people or entities they are protesting are nazis, or like the nazis.
1a. Sometimes this is a false accusation, and is often used by antisemites to claim that the Jews have now turned into nazis. That has become a favorite tactic of our enemies, to accuse us of everything they actually do.
1b. But usually it’s not targeted at Jews at all. Either it’s a Jew correctly identifying our enemies as nazis, or it’s nothing to do with Jews and it’s one side in a political dispute accusing the other side of being nazis.
2. Swastikas are also not antisemitic if they’re in Jain temples, on Indian ships, or anything else coming from India, where the symbol never gained the associations it did in the west.
3. They are also not antisemitic if they’re on books published before the 1930s, or buildings constructed before then. Until the 1930s swastikas were completely normal, and everyone, including Jews, used them frequently.
4. They’re not antisemitic when they’re used by the Finnish military, which adopted the symbol in the 1920s and has refused to give it up.