A clothing design company has been slammed for trying to “reclaim” the swastika as a symbol of peace by selling T-shirts and jumpers branded with multi-coloured swastikas through a US retailer.
KA Designs – a company with the self-professed tagline “questioning boundaries” – tried selling a line of ‘The New Swastika’ products through retailer TeeSpring.
“The swastika is coming back, together with peace, together with love, together with respect, together with freedom,” a Facebook video from KA Designs promoting the products says.
The response has been swift and severe, with The Israeli Jewish Congress labelling the concept “obscene”.
“It is obscene and disgusting that TeeSpring would seek to profit of this in the name of art, trying to turn this irredeemable Nazi symbol of hate and murder, into a symbol of ‘love and peace’,” the Congress posted to Facebook on Saturday.
“This is not only highly naïve, but grossly offensive. What’s next, using ISIS symbol to promote gender equality? Hopefully management will understand the magnitude of their mistake and offense caused, and discontinue these items immediately.”
The T-shirts have since been taken down, with TeeSpring issuing an apology for the incident, Fox News reports.
KA Designs however, are unapologetic, telling Dazed Digital at the weekend they “wouldn’t care” if Nazis brought their product.
“We wouldn’t care. The aim of this project is not to generate profit, whatever the source of the money,” a spokesperson for the company said in an interview.
“We think the message on our apparel is clear: peace, love and freedom win over hatred, war and prejudice. If some kind of neo-Nazi goes out wearing our shirt, he will raise the same kind of questions and discussions as a communist wearing the same shirt.”
Just… Stop.
Top Comments
Right intention, badly executed. Profiting from a symbol that represents the deaths of millions is best left in the past.
I was raised in a Hindu household and we often painted the Swastika symbol on our front door during religious occasions because for us it symbolises luck. The word Swastika is a word from Sanskrit. Although it is rotated and has dots in it. Would never mean to cause any offence to anyone by using this symbol.