Promotional Poster in European Commission Leaves Out Swastikas
UPDATE: This post originally said that the featured poster was produced by a group called Europe4All. In fact, according to Giedrius Sudikas, spokesman for the commission's office in Lithuania, the poster was part of a competition held by the Czech Council on Foreign Relations.
Member of the European Parliament and Youtube phenomenon Daniel Hannan posted a photo of a poster hanging in the European Commission on his blog today.
At first glance it looks like a happy-feely all inclusive tolerance plug, but on closer inspection a more sinister symbol can be seen amongst the crosses, star of Davids, ying-yangs, trisulas, and Torii gates, the hammer and sickle. Hannan remarks on the symbol of an atheist regime that killed tens of millions of people being among religious symbols in a poster promoting tolerance:
For three generations, the badge of the Soviet revolution meant poverty, slavery, torture and death. It adorned the caps of the chekas who came in the night. It opened and closed the propaganda films which hid the famines. It advertised the people's courts where victims of purges and show-trials were condemned. It fluttered over the re-education camps and the gulags.
Nauseating stuff. Whoever is responsible for the poster maybe should have considered the misery inflicted by the Soviet Union on countries that are now members of the E.U. While to ignorant left-wing westerners gripped by middle-class guilt the hammer and sickle might be some sort of pathetic symbolic refuge, to the people of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland it might have a different connotation.
All I want to know is who forgot the swastikas.
