Microsoft Corp. said on Friday that its latest version of Office software inadvertently contained a font featuring two swastikas, and said it would offer tools to remove and replace the offending characters from the program.
First of all, the symbol in question is NOT a Nazi swastika as used by the Nazi party. The symbols in question are regular swastikas featuring counter-clockwise rotation off the cross and lying flat on its side. The Nazi swastika features clockwise rotation off the ends of the cross and is rotated 1/8th of a turn (appearing to balance on one of its ends).
The swastika symbol has been used for thousands of years all over the world. It is a Buddhist symbol. It is a Greek symbol. It is a Christian symbol (there are many priests’ vestments that contain this version of the Christian cross). Coca-Cola made a swastika watch fob in 1925. The U.S. Government made a poster with a swastika urging soldiers to regard it as their “lucky star.”
Hitler loved the symbol, but decided to modernize it by reversing its direction and putting it on its corner. It is important to make a distinction between a swastika, which is a symbol of luck, good, and embraced by many religions, and the Nazi swastika which is a symbol of the Nazi party and various racist organizations, inspired by Nazi ideology. But this is not a concrete distinction, as in some cases the ancient swastika was reversed, and in some cases, the Nazi party used the old swastika. The use of the symbol has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. The general policy as of right now is so-called “swastiphobia,” or the complete elimination of the symbol in all appearances.