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[Rashilul]

Japanese people were allies of the nazis.

[Sensei]

...but it turns out that it wasn't a backwards swastika at all, it was a symbol that represents good luck in Japanese culture.

Which, I think... is called the forwards swastika?

You can find the symbol in a number of ancient documents. People forget that the swastika was a sign for peace and luck once.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I believe that this scroll has a swastika on the inn (I can't find any images of the entire scroll in one place). Guess what? It's an image of good luck, peace, blabbity blah.

[redacted123]

-

[Kagus]

...and the Swastika has been a good luck symbol in all sorts of different cultures for ages before the Nazis even thought about it...

Here's something fun...  Look at this picture and guess where it's from.

Spoiler: Picture (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Answer (click to show/hide)

They're a Native American basketball team.  From 1909

The Nazis just picked up on it.  And from what I can tell, there's no real "backwards" or "forwards" Swastika, they're just variations with slightly different meanings.

And yeah, Swastikas are prominent in Buddhism.  But more so in Hinduism.  Just check out the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

[cowofdoom78963]

I think the real question here is :

Why would the parents name their poor child Adolf Hitler?

It's not like he won the name in a lottery. The only reasons I can think of are:
A) The parents are neonazis
B) It's a family name, and the parents are too stupid to realize why it would cause problems
C) The parents named him that specifically so they could engage in the inevitable discrimination lawsuit

or
D)  They wanted to give their kid a cool unique name that stuck out. How many people do you know named Adolf Hitler?

[LegoLord]

So some guy who just happens to have the names Adolf and Hitler (both of which I believe used to be very common, actually) decides to perform genocide, and suddenly people aren't allowed to name their kids either of those?  Idiotic.  "We make custom cakes for people, but if you have a name we don't like we're not going to do it, 'cause we're jerks like that."  That's the impression this incident gave me; that we're just going to fall to name-based discrimination in the absence of other forms of allowed discrimination.  Ignore for a moment the fact that one of the many people who have had those names (many of which probably weren't racist) decided to do something crazy, and think about the name itself.  It could actually sound like quite a nice name to some people.  And so what if they are neo-nazis?  That doesn't mean that the cake should be denied.  "Normally, we'd make a cake with the name Adolf on it, but since you follow this political belief, we're gonna say screw you."  This gives me the impression that they are willing to act on political discrimination.

Political freedom is an American right.  In case you haven't noticed, being a neo-nazi or communist isn't enough to be jailed.  If it were, that would be one step closer towards being able to discriminate against democrats, or republicans.

And it should go without saying that you have the right to have your name printed onto something that you are paying for.

Honestly, you can find Mein Kampf at a bookstore, and that's far more iconic of the terrors of nazism (seeing as how it actually spells them out) than a name.  A child should be able to have his name on a cake.

[Realmfighter]

I think the real question here is :

Why would the parents name their poor child Adolf Hitler?

It's not like he won the name in a lottery. The only reasons I can think of are:
A) The parents are neonazis
B) It's a family name, and the parents are too stupid to realize why it would cause problems
C) The parents named him that specifically so they could engage in the inevitable discrimination lawsuit

or
D)  They wanted to give their kid a cool unique name that stuck out. How many people do you know named Adolf Hitler?

Two, now.

[Kagus]

I once had a birthday cake made up for me...  They didn't refuse, but the result was so garbled they might as well have.  I have no idea what that thing actually said.

Then again, this was in India, so...


And if the US starts discriminating against Democrats, then we can finally have our very own LCS!  I'd better amp up my guitar practice a notch so I'm properly equipped...

[umiman]

Now that I think about it, it does seem quite plausible. There are a lot of poorly educated asian families (though I doubt these guys were asian) who give their children "cool" sounding western names so they will "fit in" better in the modern world. It's not hard to find Chinese people called Eagle or Flower or Chickensoup (okay, I made that one up).

With that train of thought, we know there are many many uninformed people in this world and many many people who haven't even been to school. Maybe the father, who could be working as a night janitor for a sewage treatment plant for all we know, was watching the History channel in the maternity ward. Since hospital TVs tend to be very soft, he might have just seen the name flash on TV and thought, "wow, what a cool name! I want my child to have a cool and awesome name that would make him stand out." Since his wife didn't know any better, they named their child that and only later found out who Adolf Hitler really was, if at all.

It's not too difficult to imagine such a scenario considering the type of people they are having this spat with. People who overreact to the name on a cake.

[JoshuaFH]

What the...

[Sensei]

No, I saw this on the news... Fox granted, but it seemed pretty clear they weren't poor and uneducated/retarded. I'm pretty sure they were neo nazis.

[Strife26]

If memory serves, they were definite neo-nazis looking for attention.

However, what was the min. wage worker going to do? If the cake gets made and someone finds out that they're making happy birthday hitler cakes, you get a shitstorm. If you don't make the cake, shitstorm.

In this case, I side in the right to refuse service, just like if I were to try to get my custom knife with a burning american flag engraved on along with the caption "Yay hitler!" there's a good chance the custom knife maker would tell me to fuck off.

[LegoLord]

No, I saw this on the news... Fox granted, but it seemed pretty clear they weren't poor and uneducated/retarded. I'm pretty sure they were neo nazis.

But does that make denying the cake right?  No.  That falls back to political discrimination.  And given that restaurant segreation isn't allowed based on race (private business, but open to public), I don't see why a store should be able to segregate or even outright deny service based on political affiliation.

[Footkerchief]

No, I saw this on the news... Fox granted, but it seemed pretty clear they weren't poor and uneducated/retarded. I'm pretty sure they were neo nazis.

But does that make denying the cake right?  No.  That falls back to political discrimination.  And given that restaurant segreation isn't allowed based on race (private business, but open to public), I don't see why a store should be able to segregate or even outright deny service based on political affiliation.

Because race is a protected class and political affiliation isn't.

VVV that too.  This would not be a slam dunk discrimination case even if political affiliation were protected.

[Zai]

No, I saw this on the news... Fox granted, but it seemed pretty clear they weren't poor and uneducated/retarded. I'm pretty sure they were neo nazis.

But does that make denying the cake right?  No.  That falls back to political discrimination.  And given that restaurant segreation isn't allowed based on race (private business, but open to public), I don't see why a store should be able to segregate or even outright deny service based on political affiliation.

It's not really denying it based on political affiliation so much as denying it based on the fact that it's the name of a man in world history who they don't want to be linked to in any way. It's based on a man, not a political party.