Finland’s air force has quietly removed the last swastikas from unit emblems after over a century in use.

Until recently the country’s Air Force Command emblem depicted a pair of wings around a swastika, a symbol which pre-dates its associations with Nazism.

Full story here.

Wow they almost jumped the gun on this one! Would have been a baaaaaaaaaad look to remove it, say, right after it was adopted by a crazy guy who owned headlines between 1936-1945!

…

Finland, NOW?

This is a story from now?

I’d argue that the most important part of removing swastikas from anything related to your nation is not telling people you ever had swastikas associated with your nation. 

Look, if it’s 2020 and you’re just NOW deciding to stop flying vehicles that have swastikas on them- you do that quietly. You make sure it doesn’t make the news. 

A spokesman for Finland’s air force told the BBC, "as unit emblems are worn on uniform, it was considered impractical and unnecessary to continue using the old unit emblem, which had caused misunderstandings from time to time."

“Caused misunderstandings” is the lightest way to put “Every once in a while people thought we were Nazis.”

We’re out here arguing about whether to topple statues related to the Confederacy, and Finland’s still impersonating the Luftwaffe! How did it take this long? How did one person with a half a brain not think it was time to s

We’re out here arguing about whether to topple statues related to the Confederacy, and Finland’s still impersonating the Luftwaffe! How did it take this long? How did one person with a half a brain not think it was time to start brainstorming a new emblem until now? 

The symbol’s association with Finland’s air force dates to its founding in 1918, when Swedish count Eric von Rosen donated a plane painted with swastikas to the newly independent country. 

The German Nazi Party adopted the swastika as its logo in 1920. 

I hear this argument and lump it in with everybody who says, “well the swastika was an ancient symbol in Nepal.” And that’s fine, but you don’t hear people defending their swastika tattoos using that logic! If you like the culture of Nepal that much, you can find a different symbol. That’s the way I feel and we’re talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of years separating these two different uses of the same symbol. So Finland sneaking out here and claiming that they’d started using the swastika TWO YEARS before the Nazis adopted it in 1920 rings a little tone deaf. That’s only 24 months, you dumb motherfuckers! I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but the default association for this symbol was cemented the second a psychopath murdered six million jews and millions of other people who didn’t look like a Ken Barbie clone.

I’m sorry that the “well, we got here first argument” doesn’t hold any weight, but you’ve had a hundred years to find a different picture to put on your dumb planes, like does it really matter what other logo you settle on? This is Finland we’re talking about. I literally found out they had a military two words before I found out they were casually rocking imagery from the greatest scourge of the 20th Century.

This is subtly my favorite part of the article:

Professor Teivainen has coined a phrase in Finnish to explain how the use of a swastika could be problematic despite its innocent origin. Roughly translated, "visuaalinen natsahtavuusaste" means "how much something exhibits visual cues that are associated with Nazis".

I can’t read this and not laugh. I feel like the line here is pretty clear. The conception of an academic phrase to explain how much something has to be associated with Nazism to be wrong is a joke.  The answer is any association. 0.1 association. Who are these people? What are we doing to do next, start breaking down how many millimeters short a mustache has to be before it’s considered a Hitler ‘stache? When you know you know!