Vandals put giant swastika on South S.F. football field

[Behind the Aegis]

Source: SF Gate

It’s unclear if it was an ignorant prank or something more hateful, but police in South San Francisco are looking into who plastered a giant swastika over the weekend in the middle of El Camino High School’s football field following graduation ceremonies.

Residents and faculty members are disgusted by the vandalism and the sour aftertaste it gave to the otherwise joyous celebration for the outgoing class of 2015.

“It’s really dispiriting and disturbing for something like that to happen,” Assistant Principal Gary Gooch said. “We’ve got a great group of kids here, and it just really puts a damper on things.”

The vandals sneaked onto the artificial turf field some time after Friday’s graduation to commit the crime and used removable, snap-together tiles on the turf after the celebration to construct the massive Nazi image, Gooch said.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Vandals-plaster-giant-swastika-on-South-S-F-6302390.php

[jtuck004]

1. We can't breed our way out of this. Have to fix the adults first. n/t

[Behind the Aegis]

12. Education is the only fix. n/t

[Journeyman]

2. Thankfully, it was snap-together "Lego" type tiles and not spray paint (or worse). . .

Disassemble and cart it away, rather than have to replace large swaths of the synthetic turf.

Morons, yes. But somewhat considerate morons, nonetheless.

[xfundy]

3. Probably kids.

Teens constantly test their boundaries, and are too stupid to understand that symbols of hatred like the swastika actually have impact on real people's lives. They know their parents and just about everyone detests it, so they're drawn to express themselves in massively disgusting ways.

IMO, they should have just stuck to drawing giant peckers. Either way, they are losers and assholes. They will most likely grow out of it, but not before inflicting pain on others.

[Wilms]

4. "unclear if it was an ignorant prank or something more hateful"??

Are they nuts asking this? Who would know a swastika and not know it's connected to white supremacy and Nazi? That they are ignorant is self-evident. But not, as in "unaware" of what the symbol represents.

[Amishman]

7. I don't think the article worded it right

I think the question is if it the symbol was picked just solely because of the attention it would draw, or if those behind it actually identify with the ideology behind the symbol.

The person or people behind this definitely get what the symbol represents, they wouldn't have done this otherwise.

[MADem]

5. I agree with the poster who said that some young people don't get

the imagery or symbolism of that thing.

We need to do a better job teaching history to young people.

[Xithras]

8. Last year I heard someone say...

..."World War 2 is as relevant to a modern 15 year old as World War I is to a modern 40 year old, or the Civil War is to anyone in America. They understand that it was an important event, but the horror is gone. Both wars defined generations, but the sharp edges and prickly stings of all wars dull with time."

I grew up listening to my grandfather talk about the war, and the fact that we knew and spoke with people who fought and survived it makes the war more relevant to us. Very few of our youngest generation have ever spoken with a WW2 vet. To them, it's something to read about in the history books, with no more or less impact than any other war in those books.

200 years ago, Napoleon conquered half of Europe, stole its treasures for France, threw treaties and conventions out the window in his lust for power, killed six million people, and committed blatant genocide against groups that he disliked. More than one historian has pointed out that he was the most devastating leader in modern European history until Hitler came along, and many have posited that Napoleon himself was Hitlers model. Today, few people give him or his legacy any thought. Time dulled his edges.

150 years from now, most people will look at Hitler the same way we look at Napoleon, or Ghengis Khan, or Augustus Caesar. Just another entry in histories long line of brutal, genocidal megalomaniacs.

In a way, there's nothing unusual about this. Every generation has events that it defines as "pivotal", and every generation laments the fact that the next doesn't place the same value on those events as they do. That's just human nature.

[MADem]

10. You are quite right.

I am,though, a cockeyed optimist...and I'd just love it if we all decided we didn't want to study war no more! Then, these last few would be the ones to carry the lessons learned forward...!

[Behind the Aegis]

11. You might find this interesting.

What Holocaust? New generation is ignorant of history
Years ago, I got the idea for a novel about the last living survivor of the Holocaust. He would be a child survivor, born in 1939 as a hidden child in a Jewish ghetto, and would live there until his family went to Auschwitz. How a little boy managed to survive that place after losing his parents is the stuff of novels, and it is.

It’s titled “The Last Witness,” and I published it last year.

Along with flashbacks showing how the worst memories of the protagonist’s life occurred before he was 5 years old, the book describes his contemporary struggle in the future, the year 2039, when he is 100 years old. The world of 2039 is one in which people are pretty ignorant and complacent as far as the Holocaust is concerned.

One publisher said he had to “suspend disbelief” with my premise that a generation down the road would know so little about the Holocaust, which prompted me to do a video on the subject. Last fall I interviewed university students in Toronto, asking them about the Holocaust and World War II. What they didn’t know would, literally, fill a book.

Here we are in April 2015, with Yom Hashoah commemorating those who perished in the most heinous crime of human history. At the same time, today — never mind 2039 — it seems that young people know next to nothing.

more: http://www.thejewishstar.com/stories/What-Holocaust-New-generation-is-ignorant,5964?page=1&content_source=

[hr]

It's three pages. I posted it here a little over a month and half ago.

[MADem]

16. +1,000,000. Who knew it would take so little time?

It's sad.

[LeftinOH]

6. I recall a spate of swastika-scribbling in elementary school

that lasted for a few months. No idea how it started; I even recall that there was discussion about which way the arms of the swastika were supposed to point (to the right). There was no political aspect to this phenomenon. It was the mid-1970s - so the WWII era was as far removed as the 1980s is now, and recent history was not a common classroom subject (we were still learning about 1776, the founding fathers, etc). Finally, some teachers had to have a little talk with everyone.

[Nye Bevan]

9. I would love for the perpetrators of that to be introduced to some Holocaust survivors (nt)

[Starry Messenger]

13. Some little asshole student carved swastikas all over one of our tables in the ceramics room this

year. He was also stupid enough to make a clay tablet with more of them and "white power" carved all over it. I handed it over to the school and thankfully he got booted out of classes (wasn't my student, I share a classroom with a teacher who isn't very watchful. )

They know what it means.

[Behind the Aegis]

14. You are right, they know what it means.

The WP movement is awash with Nazi imagery. As much as it pisses me off to see it, it is made worse by those who crow on about it being an ancient symbol and that could be a possible explanation. It is still used today in its religious capacity, but by a very limited group of people, so if one isn't a part of that tradition, it is unlikely it was used in a positive way.

[Starry Messenger]

15. The Bay Area definitely has its share of neo-Nazis

I met my first about 3 miles from my house growing up. If people think Tibetan monks would vandalize El Camino's football field, than they need the clue-train.