Hopefully, all of us had similar reactions upon hearing that a swastika was spray-painted on the door of the Islamic Cultural Center last Thursday. This is an undeniably ugly act devoid of humanity, and freedom from religious persecution is a tenet of our democracy.
While both of these things are true, the redundancy with which they are insisted upon is starting to sound ridiculous.
As rational citizens, we unanimously agree that these things must not be tolerated.
There is harm, though, in our tendency to blow them out of proportion. I doubt that the men who painted this symbol on the side of the Islamic center have convinced anybody to change their beliefs on fascism, or racial supremacy, or anything at all. And I doubt that at some point in the brief life span of the graffiti some passers-by looked at it and thought, "Neat symbol. Maybe I was wrong about those Nazi fellas."
The fact that this sort of act threatens people bothers me. Hate is a dangerous substance that is capable of much damage. Graffiti is simply graffiti. It isn't powerful rhetoric - especially when it's sloppy, ugly and hastily done.
Take, for example, the rumors scrawled on bathroom stalls. Go to any bar in town, and you'll see that someone has written something to the tune of, "AMY IS A $#!&@" beside the toilets. Reading this gives you little, if any, insight into Amy's character. It's what one person (probably a drunk one) thought at one time. You are not, on the basis of such inconsequential scribbling, going to start believing that Amy truly is a $#!&@. You probably won't even care that someone else thinks Amy is a $#!&@. Viewing that bathroom-stall graffiti is a forgettable experience, and if you, as an observer, made an issue out of it, you'd be the bigger fool.
Our society must learn to dismiss the swastika as equally generic and valueless as an ugly expletive.
There is no reason to take this incident to heart. It's very sad that some people can't grow up and be rational about the fact that there are a million kinds of people in the world. But the concentration of all of that frustration on an ugly symbol on a building as a pathetic "Take that!" is merely self-defeating. Unless, of course, you believe the ideas of white supremacy or Nazism contain a kernel of truth; And if you're one of those people, you should be embarrassed that your ideas can be paraphrased into a square of nasty graffiti, a cheap logo.
Hitler was a disturbingly talented politician. Historians theorize that the main reason he maintained power for so long was that he persuaded a crippled and bitter nation to believe that his ideas had merit. But a fascist symbol on the side of a building convinces nobody.
Let's not validate these ideas by enabling them to insult us. Words and symbols only hold the power that our culture assigns them. Surely, there are two young men with half a can of spray paint hanging out in some living room right now, elated that their graffiti has been so provocative and newsworthy.
These vandals never aimed to convince anyone: They merely aimed to ignite anger and fear, to cause a burn. If we let such things strike at us so deeply, we have granted them undeserved success.
It's like my parents always said when my brother kicked me under the table at dinner: "If you stopped showing him you cared, he'd stop kicking." In battles of psychology, the patient party will always win.
Emily Lyons is a journalism senior. Reach her at emily.lyons@asu.edu.
