Ming Inspector Zheng Shujing
At a glance
- The news that finland supports the "Nazis" is misleading by making a fuss about the Finnish Air Force's traditional "swastika" character. The Finnish Air Force has used the swastika as its troop symbol since 1918, and judging by chronologically, the use of this symbol is not directly related to Nazi Germany.
- To avoid misunderstanding in international communication, the Finnish Air Force revised its troop badge in January 2017 to replace it with a neutral "Golden Eagle" logo, but the country still retains the use of the swastika character on the Air Force flag and some decorations.
Event background
Russia's military campaign against Ukraine has shifted the attitude of some of Europe's traditionally neutral countries. On May 15, Finnish President Niinistö and Prime Minister Marin announced at a joint press conference that the country had decided to apply for NATO membership.
After the news came out, some Weibo and Twitter users posted a large number of pictures with "swastika" character numbers on social platforms, saying that the Finnish Air Force used the "swastika" character as a symbol, implying that Finland supported the "Nazis".
Mingcha
The symbol of the Finnish Air Force?
According to the Associated Press, the Finnish Air Force revised its troop badge in January 2017. The swastika, which had been used for a century, was removed and replaced with the neutral "Golden Eagle" logo.
Left: Former Finnish army insignia; right: Finnish Air Force's revised troop badge in January 2017.
In June 2020, Teivo Teivainen, a professor who teaches world politics at the University of Helsinki, noticed the change made by the Finnish Air Force and disclosed it on Twitter. Tywainin said the Finnish Air Command had confirmed to it that they had unified the flag of the Finnish Air Force defense Branch in 2017, but according to Tejvajnen's own analysis, the force was acting in a low-key manner on the change of the logo and did not appear to have carried out any publicity.
Tejvainin tweeted on June 30, 2020, revealing that the Finnish Air Force had changed its coat of arms.
In an interview with The Associated Press in July 2020, Brigadier General Jari Mikonin of the Finnish Air Command claimed that the change was due to the fact that the use of the swastika character has caused many misunderstandings among the Finnish military among its international peers over the years, but that the Finnish Air Force is not ashamed of using swastika characters because it is part of its traditional culture.
After verification, the logo currently used on the official website of the Finnish Air Force and its official Facebook account is "Golden Eagle", and there is no "swastika" character. But as the Associated Press reported and Teevain himself said, the "swastika" character can still be seen on the flags, ornaments and insignia of the Air Force Academy in some Air Force units.
Screenshot of the Finnish Air Force website.
Screenshot of the official Facebook account of the Finnish Air Force.
For example, on February 7, 2022, the Finnish Air Force posted eight pictures on Facebook related to the oath-taking ceremony for the appointment of new pilots, including one image that blurred the Flag of the Finnish Air Force, but the characters on the flag are still faintly visible.
In February 2022, the Finnish Air Force held an oath-taking ceremony for new pilots. Image source: Official Facebook account of the Finnish Air Force.
The origin of the "swastika" character number?
Why does Finland display the "swastika" symbol on its air force flag and decorations? According to the Associated Press, the matter began in March 1918. At that time, Finland had just declared independence from Russia and started its air force. Count Eric von Rosen, a Count of Sweden, donated a Thulin Typ D to his newly independent neighbors – the first aircraft of the Finnish Air Force. The wing was painted with a blue "swastika" symbol, a personal luck symbol of Count von Rosen, but was adopted by the Finnish Air Force and became the symbol of the unit.
The Finnish Air Force stressed that the use of the swastika had nothing to do with Nazi Germany, despite Finland's reluctant alliance with the Third Reich during World War II and von Rosen himself was the brother-in-law of hermann Göring, an early German Nazi party member. Chronologically, the Finnish Air Force's use of the swastika was not yet established before the end of World War I, when the German Nazi Party led by Hitler had not yet been formed, and the swastika was not used as a Nazi symbol.
On the other hand, although the swastika character is almost widely regarded as a synonym for fascism today, the symbol's appearance in human civilization dates back thousands or even tens of thousands of years. A large number of excavated cultural relics and written records show that the "swastika" or the reverse character "swastika" has a deep relationship with ancient Indian, Chinese, Greek, Persian and eastern, western and Nordic cultures. For example, on the faience pottery of The Majiayao culture in China more than 5,000 years ago, a variant of the symbol depicted in pottery can be found, and in the collection of the National History Museum of Ukraine, a small ivory statue of a female bird dating back 15,000 years by carbon measurement has a similar intricate and meandering pattern on the torso.
Faience "swastika" pattern amphora urn (Majiayao culture)
Ivory statue of a small female bird (in the National History Museum of Ukraine)
So how did a "swastika" character with deep cultural ties become a symbol of Nazi Germany in the first half of the 20th century? According to the BBC, the reasons the Nazis used the word "swastika" dates back to the 19th century, when German scholars, while translating ancient Indian scripts, noticed similarities between their own language and Sanskrit, believed that Indians and Germans probably had a common ancestor, and imagined a race of white god-like warriors whom they called Aryans. The idea was exploited in the 20th century by anti-Semitic nationalist groups who used the "swastika" as a symbol of the Aryans to reinforce the ancient sense of germanic ancestry.
The official website of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum, education and research complex, includes a document related to the Nazi "swastika" flag in Germany from the National Museum of American History. In 1920, Adolf Hitler decided that the Nazi Party needed its own coat of arms and flag. For Hitler, the new flag had to be "a symbol of our own struggle" and "very effective as a poster." On August 7, 1920, at the Salzburg Congress, the flag became the official symbol of the Nazi Party. In Mein Kampf, Hitler described the new banner of the Nazi Party — "In the red we see the social idea of the movement, in the white we see the idea of nationalism, in the swastika we see the mission of fighting for the victory of the Aryans, and likewise we see the triumph of the idea of creative work, which has always been and always anti-Semitic." ”
The Smithsonian Institution's official website includes images of the German Nazi "swastika" flag from the National Museum of American History.
Finland's attitude towards the Nazis?
Although the Finnish Air Force's use of the "swastika" symbol is not directly linked to Nazi Germany, over the past few years, far-right forces in a growing number of European countries, including Finland, have seen hate speech and even violence against immigrants, ethnicities, and women.
Finland's Supreme Court issued an interim injunction in March 2019 on the activities of a pan-Scandinavian neo-Nazi group, the Nordic Resistance Movement (PVL), in Finland, and upheld the decision in an appeal filed by the group in September 2020 on the grounds that the group had repeatedly made hate speech against foreigners and Jews and used violence.
However, Finnish law has not yet been able to give clear boundaries on the content of the activities that neo-Nazi organizations can engage in in Finland, including the use of Nazi symbols. Take, for example, the conflict that took place on December 6, 2018. The day is Finland's Independence Day, and two parades pass through Helsinki's city centre. According to the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (YLE), a procession of about 200-300 people marched from Kaisaniemi to the Töölö district via Kallio, carrying several Nazi flags with them, who were members of the Neo-Nazis in Finland, Kohti vapautta. Another group of about 2,000 men marched from Narinkkatori Square in Kamppi to the Taivallahti district of Töölö. They belonged to the "Helsinki Ilman natseja" organization and gathered for counter-demonstrations.
Screenshot of the Finnish Radio (YLE) report.
At around 5:30 p.m. that day, riot police separated the clashing neo-Nazis and anti-fascists in the woods behind the Helsinki Olympic Stadium. The helsinki police sided with the anti-fascists, instructed members of "Toward Freedom" to put away their Nazi flags and detained 4 protesters.
Although the far-right confrontation with anti-fascists has almost become a reserved programme of Finland's Independence Day in recent years, the "police confiscation of the Nazi flag" that took place on 6 December 2018 still caused a heated debate in Finland, as Finland did not explicitly legislate to prohibit the use of the "swastika" flag. Former Finnish President Tarja Halonen said in an interview with YLE on December 8, 2018, calling for consideration of stricter restrictions on displaying Nazi symbols, but she believes that banning certain types of symbols may not help because "values must be internalized and legislation is not very effective at guiding people to do good."
On 25 May 2021, the Helsingán Base Tribunal held a hearing on the waving of the Nazi flag "Towards Freedom". Finnish State Prosecutor Raija Toiviainen filed a lawsuit on suspicion of threatening and abusing certain groups. The Helsinki District Court dismissed the criminal charge on 30 August 2021 on the grounds that the case could not prove that the swastika had released threatening and offensive information related to anti-immigrant work. But at the same time, the court acknowledged in its ruling that the flags were particularly relevant to the ideology and deeds of Nazi Germany in the 1940s, including the persecution of millions of Jews, genocide and other atrocities.
To sum up, it is misleading to use the traditional "swastika" character of the Finnish Air Force to claim that Finland supported the "Nazis". The Finnish Air Force has used the swastika as its troop symbol since 1918, and judging by chronologically, the use of this symbol is not directly related to Nazi Germany.
To avoid misunderstandings in international communication, the Finnish Air Force revised its troop badge in January 2017 to replace it with the neutral "Golden Eagle" logo. However, the use of the "swastika" character is still retained on some flags, ornaments and the emblem of the Air Force Academy of the country.
The swastika became a symbol of Nazi Germany under Hitler in the first half of the 20th century, but the symbol was invented and used long before the Nazi Party was founded. A large number of excavated cultural relics and written records show that the "swastika" character has a deep relationship with ancient Indian, Chinese, Greek, Persian and Eastern, Western and Northern European cultures.
Official and mainstream public opinion in Finland is generally critical and opposed to the neo-Nazi wave in finland, but Finnish law has not yet made clear provisions on the activities that neo-Nazi organizations can engage in in Finland, such as the use of Nazi symbols.
Editor-in-Charge: Wang Liang
Proofreader: Liu Wei