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@StandardPractice
@ Mr Lemon - No, they're two different things. I'm interested in the perception of it and people's attitude toward that. I understand roughly what the swastika is about in different cultures and religions, but none of that overcomes the much stronger ties to nazi Germany. At least in the general public's perception (and mine). It would always occur to a person getting a swastika tattoo that it will be associated with WW2 and perhaps misconstrued. I suppose if you truly just didn't care how you came across then it makes no difference, but I'm not convinced such a person exists in all honesty. Object for instance has a very specific and deliberate personality/outlook and wishes to be understood, by others, as an individual... no? Otherwise why else do we express ourselves outwardly?
There are plenty of tattoos around with skulls and other macabre themes that don't aren't so interesting somehow. They're explicit and figurative in a way, not symbolic but literal. I've always been a bit fascinated with the third reich on an aesthetic level - the insignia, the propaganda, the uniforms, the architecture - but I don't know if it's because the terrible history that imbues it with a nightmarish vividness or purely a visual thing. I suspect the former because I don't really think that anything is purely visual but instead always defined by associations.
Anyway, I'm rambling.