Said a letter from a "socially and environmentally conscious" California camp called Hidden Villa, quoted in "Bay Area Camp Suddenly Closes After Staffers Quit Over Swastika Scandal" (Daily Beast).
The swastika on the property is there because a couple who once owned the place, Frank and Josephine Duveneck, spent their honeymoon in Asia in 1913, and brought back tiles with various traditional symbols, including a swastika.
The Los Altos Town Crier reported that camp director Philip James, who is Black, quit because of alleged institutional racism and also took issue with the swastikas. Camp assistant director Mimi Elias, who is a queer person of color, told the newspaper, “Every day I had to go to my place of residence and had to look at swastikas and walk beneath them.” She also resigned....
"The decision to cancel Camp has been heart-wrenching and staff is still triaging care for all involved,” the letter concluded....
Despite the camp’s outward socially progressive ideology, some former campers and staffers believe inequality is embedded in its system. “So your statement is completely blaming the staff for the cancellation?? Take accountability for your toxic white supremacy driven organization,” Alex Roth-Dunn posted on Facebook. “The problem is MUCH MUCH MUCH more than some tiles in the Duveneck house. The fact that you focus on that in the letter is laughable and all too classic,” said former staff member Eve Javey.
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55 comments:
Everyone is so easily offended.
Previous generations were so much tougher than we are.
We are a fat and dumb society and it's not getting better.
Cue the lawsuits...
"Despite the camp’s outward socially progressive ideology, some former campers and staffers believe inequality is embedded in its system."
"Despite"
it'll kinda suck for the kids, but they'll be better off not being exposed for a summer to these lunatics.
Pre-Nazi swastikas are all over Asian temples. Japan's map symbol for a temple is a swastika.
This about diversity, toleration, and inclusion...not rigid lefty ideology....what are your values?
But, humans are so rigid that we have a Red Cross for Christian areas a Red Crescent for Muslim areas.
https://www.icrc.org/en/who-we-are/movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#/media/File:HinduSwastika.svg
What do you think are the chances this is the kind of swastika they're offended at. People really are making up things to be offended about.
We've come a long way from "no culture is superior to another".
I vacation at a house in Maine. There is a little childrens playhouse they built on the land. There is an American Indian rug in there that has swastikas on it. I looked into it, because I was surprised to see it, but found that it was a common symbol for them back then. The rug itself is beautiful. I personally would love a piece like that...but I doubt if you could find one today. https://messieraz.com/the-use-of-the-swastika-symbol-in-american-indian-art/
As Insty calls it, "Annals of Leftist Autophagy." Here, a bunch of Lefty pinheads turning on other Lefty pinheads and destroying "the camp’s outward socially progressive ideology...including LGBTQ+ awareness, Black History Month, and civil rights initiatives of Cesar Chavez."
I like it.
>"It was brought to the community’s attention that the Buddhist symbols (ie., swastikas) were experienced differently and some individuals experienced harm from their presence on the building.""<
The abiding question with this kind of Lefty snowflake rot: What was the exact nature of this "harm?"
Not very resilient.
and some individuals experienced harm from their presence on the building
No, No They DID NOT!
Their poor little brains told them that they "felt" like their "feelings" were hurt
But! Time for a Serious Question: What IF? What IF, the symbol was a Hammer & Sickle ?
If someone (say, a Vietnamese or Chinese person) said that a Hammer & Sickle made them 'experience harm'.. What would be the response? Anyone?
Oh WAIT! what if Armenians said they felt genocidal TERROR from a Turkish flag with its Star and Crescent?
Now, What about an American Flag?
On the couple’s honeymoon to Asia in 1913, they brought back and hung artistic tiles with lotuses and Buddhist symbols, including the swastika, which was later appropriated by the Nazi Party after the first World War to represent white supremacy.
You'd think that this would have been sorted out back in the, I dunno, 1940s or 50s?
Relax, Jake. It's California. Crazy is normal there.
Ticking time bomb.
This is the template for too much of modern adversary discourse, including that of our Wapo pals:
"How evil you are to claim to be virtuous when all should see that it is I who am supremely virtuous."
It just makes me sigh. Virtue isn't all it's cracked up to be. It is so very dependent upon culture and timing that it's possible to select and install beautiful tiles with spiritual resonance and discover a century later that you were somehow affirming Buchenwald.
The problem is-lack of education among the intelligentsia. WHich should be a contradictory statement, but in today's world, isn't.
My grandmother was waisting away in a different type of camp in Eastern Europe in the 1940s. She said she had no shoes to wear during the cold winter months that left her with the crooked, misshapen toes and arthritic feet deformities. She had to wear custom-made orthopedic shoes of muted, muddy colors for the rest of her life. The image of these shoes is forever embedded in my mind.
The woke Regressives (TM)are just noticing now all of these alleged issues (“institutional racism”, the non-Nazi swastikas, “toxic white supremacy”) after all these decades? REALLY???!!! The camp prided itself and brags about its Diversity, Inclusive, Equity agenda for staff and campers. And yet, some staff felt there was racism against POC and non-inclusivity against trans-people. Yet, I didn’t see specific examples in the article, just generalities as the ex-staff whine about what they see as “issues”. I feel sorry that the young campers are missing out on the experience even if I have some issues with the curriculum not teaching the kids anything about the real world life. I don’t feel sorry for the woke Regressive (TM) directors of the camp since they are finding out that they can never be “woke” enough in the eyes of the staff they hired or attempt to hire. “Wokism” has become the snake that swallows its tail, while also swallowing the rest of us, unfortunately.
SWAstiKa.
“Nazism co-opted the swastika as a symbol of evil, and has taken it away from Asian cultures."
That's not correct. Asians don't view swastika as a symbol of evil. They are completely indifferent to the fact that the Nazis "co-opted" it.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Buddhist+temple+swastika+&form=HDRSC2&first=1&tsc=ImageHoverTitle
Why is saying "experienced harm" instead of simply saying "were harmed" so annoying to me?
“They should be scrupulous in how they use evidence or they ruin their own credibility.”
Yes, and perhaps they shouldn’t disregard or hide any evidence, because everybody knows this is a sober, fair-minded search for the truth.
WTF.
It's a shame no Navahos were present. It means good luck to them.
You'd think that this would have been sorted out back in the, I dunno, 1940s or 50s?
It was. I know of at least federal one building built before WW II that has small swastikas carved in it. The building wasn't razed and a new one put in place. People realized that it was an ancient symbol used by pretty much every culture on earth and probably originated as a sun symbol. So, they just didn't worry about it.
Tiles on buildings from 1913? Get the California State Historical Society to declare the tiles and the buildings to be historic, thus preventing any change, pretty much forever. And then anyone complaining will have to deal with the state government, which won't ever admit it did such a stupid thing.
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) breeds adversity. Deny your Twilight faith, lose your Pro-Choice "ethical" religion, curb your progressive liberal ideology. #HateLovesAbortion
Pass the popcorn.
"Despite the camp’s outward socially progressive ideology, some former campers and staffers believe inequality is embedded in its system."
Diversity [dogma], likely rabid, is an integrated philosophy of the Pro-Choice "ethical" religion adopted by Progressive camps.
I should be glad if this means these people will never set foot in India!
How many of those "injured" by the tiles were wearing Che t-shirts?
It seems more like competitive wimpiness. I'm more sensitive than you because I put up a fuss about......while you're so insensitive you didn't even notice how I was harmed.
Mike Yancey said...
We've come a long way from "no culture is superior to another".
***********
Who is the "we" who believes that nonsense?
As someone said a long time ago, "putting a man on the moon is a lot different than putting a bone is your nose."
And the use of the hakaristi in Finnland predates nazi germany by decades.
Joe Smith said...
Everyone is so easily offended.
Previous generations were so much tougher than we are.
We are a fat and dumb society and it's not getting better.
Cue the lawsuits...
************
Cue the motions to dismiss based on failure to state a cause of action.
American planes in WWI often had swastikas on them. It was a good luck symbol, and with no parachutes pilots needed all the luck they could get.
The Roman and later Fascist, symbol is found in the US Capitol, and also on the US dime.
There’s no downside to claiming offense. Until some institution, like the Washington Post says, that’s enough.
Take it someplace else. We’re all stocked up here.
Off with some heads.
That's not correct. Asians don't view swastika as a symbol of evil
The same with a hammer, a sickle, a scalpel, even a vacuum when present in different contexts. Most people... persons do not exercise liberal license to infer knowledge from special, peculiar, modeled, and handmade tales past, present, and progressive.
Those snowflakes having the same conniption fit you people have about the rainbow flag.
We’ve all been on the lookout for White Supremecism, only to discover it’s been hiding out the whole time at a house in Los Altos, California, and also across the country at Washington Post headquarters.
There's nothing lamer than Fylfotphobia, and as others have said, it is an indictment of our schools and culture that this sort of thing makes news.
But, symbols for the symbol-minded.
So, how many of these people or others like them will show up the next time we need to climb Pointe du Hoc under fire from real Nazis? They are all very ferocious when there is no real danger to themselves involved.
There was a bar in an old building in my home town in Wisconsin that was completely renovated a few years ago and the original floor had a repeating swastika design all over it (very much pre-Nazi). The new owners left it there. A Friend of mine thought it should be removed. I find that to be rather. . . .well, I hate to say "ignorant". . . .but, something.
Education is useless.
I took my family to DC for the cherry blossoms one year. Did you know there is a federal building with a band of swastikas carved into its facade? It was built in the 1920s, apparently. No one is boycotting the US government over it, although, perhaps they should.
Flat Tire said...
Why is saying "experienced harm" instead of simply saying "were harmed" so annoying to me?
Because "experienced harm" means your feelings were hurt, whah! "Experienced" is an internal thing, so there can be no objective judgement of if.
"Were harmed" implies an real claim that can be objectively judged. Lefties have those
wendybar writes, "There is an American Indian rug in there that has swastikas on it. I looked into it, because I was surprised to see it, but found that it was a common symbol for them back then."
It goes back much further than rug weaving. Swastikas and related symbols appear on rock cravings dating from the Late Archaic to the Late Paleo-Indian* period, roughly 5,000 to 10,000 BP, which provokes the question: How is that American Indian peoples and various Asian peoples share the same symbol? Beringia, the isthmus joining Siberia to Alaska has been submerged for 11,000 thousand years, so the simplest explanation is a Paleolithic Eurasian people, perhaps by now completely vanished, bequeathed the swastika to the ancestral cultures of both prehistoric Americans and prehistoric Asians before Beringia was lost to the oceans.
*I dislike the term "Native American" when used to exclude me, and I refuse to employ it. I'm American and native-born, though my ancestry is entirely Northwest European. Besides, why should Native American be preferable to Indian? One falsely implies they are South Asians, the other falsely implies they are Italians. Because those prehistoric settlers never got around to naming their continental discoveries, they screwed their descendants with whatever generic names the later arrivals with mapping concepts firmly established chose to give them.
The Nazi swastika and the Buddhist swastika are drawn in different directions so they are not the same. Despite that people have pre-optioned the bent arms as a symbol of evil based on the Nazi plastering it everywhere. Other cultures also have used the bent arm symbol in different directions. The symbol is so basic and catches the eye especially in geometric patterns such as seen in blankets.
There used to be a tire company that imprinted hundreds of millions or billions of of national Socialist images on roads all across the country.
She picked out the track of the one motor car that had been through here recently. It was marked with the swastika tread of the rear tires.
There ought to be a federal law! Think of how many snowflakes must have been triggered by those images. Think of how many people were involved, wittingly or unwittingly in propagating that vile symbol across the land!
I suspect donald trump was behind this somehow.
Oh, wait. Belay the above. That passage is from Sinclair Lewis 1914 novel "free air". Nevermind.
Excellent book btw. I highly recommend it
John LGKTQ Henry
Can people think a little deeper. Why are the people owning this place, who didn't care about the swats stickers for 40 years, suddenly upset about it?
And imagine they are NOT snowflakes and NOT stupid.
Bueller? Bueller? anyone? anyone?
I fly my rainbow fylfot every day.
The NYC subway's Cloisters stop had swastika pattern tile when I was there in the early 1980s, and the Greek frieze pattern is common--a numpty wrote to our campus paper some years ago to complain about the Nazi symbology he (xe?) had to endure to get an education.
During WWII, Indians were called to reject their swastika symbol because of the Nazis:
https://youtu.be/WBlZxbZB16g?list=PLNZ_mQMp7gMZ-U5T5TO9YeuJjO0oH9ojT&t=405
The stupidity never ends.
Hidden Villa -- organic farm and summer camp -- is about as unracist as it's possible to be. I live nearby and hike on their trails sometimes.
The land was donated by Frank and Josephine Duveneck, very liberal and lovely people. They began a summer camp on their Hidden Villa farm in 1945 to welcome Japanese-American children returning from internment camps, World War II refugees and black, white and Mexican-American children. They were pals of Cesar Chavez.
These last-minute resignations have denied 900 children a chance to hike, do archery, care for farm animals, plant crops, learn "stewardship of the land" and find out about all those LGBTQ+ flags planted by staff.
There’s a restaurant in central Idaho which once was a bank. Built in 1903. Beautiful architecturally and it has a swastika tile floor. I asked the owner if he gets any pushback. He replied that occasionally someone will complain. He explains the history of the place and the fact that it was that way from 1933-45. If they still complain he refuses to seat them.
“Nazism co-opted the swastika as a symbol of evil, and has taken it away from Asian cultures."
Culture appropriation. Not that they realized social justice through rabid diversity, inequity, and exclusion (DIE); that they relieved their "burden" through mass campaigns in abortion chambers; that they normalized social progress through redistributive and retributive change; that they realized medical progress through Mengele mandates; and experienced an economic transition with progressive prices.
We had a really beautiful Vietnamese temple with swastikas on the gates in our neighborhood, which, ironically, was once a WWI internment camp for Germans (yes, we had those too), in Atlanta, by the federal prison. Barbed wire, starvation, and all. The men were imprisoned and the wives and children were allowed to grow vegetables and sell little poured lead soldier toys and cakes and stollen once a month and buy necessities through the gates.
We approached the Vietnamese monks politely and explained why people were upset with their golden swastikas. They were tremendously gracious and apologetic and moved the symbols inside. We also asked them to remind us when Tet was coming because all the dogs in the neighborhood went nuts, and some of the gangbangers took advantage of the chaos.
History is just one thing after another.
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