before it gains power, e.g., Dalgetty against the Actionists in "The Sensitive Man";
after it has gained power, e.g., Hollister against the Venusian Federation in "The Big Rain."
The first is preferable. A quotation often attributed to Hitler is:
"Only one thing could have stopped our movement — if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement."
-copied from here
- although, if you read that entire blog post, then you will find that quotation put back into its original context.
The image of two swastikas, one Buddhist, the other Jain, shows this symbol as it was before the Nazis distorted it.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I read with interest the "quote" from Hitler and then the fuller discussion of that quote at the link you provided. Here my point is that in one of his letters to me Poul Anderson wrote that, after the Beer Hall Putsch, the Weimar gov't should have shot Hitler and a few other Nazis (Goring, Goebbels, Rohm comes to mind). Anderson believed that would have nullified the National Socialist threat.
Btw, the swastika symbol LONG predates either Buddhism or Jainism. It did not originate with either of them.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course, the swastika is old. Jains claim, rightly or wrongly, that Mahavira, contemporary of the Buddha, did not found but reformed Jainism. It is certainly an older version of the same meditative tradition as Buddhism. I regard Buddhism as a reformed version of that tradition.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But the swastika did not begin as a Buddhist or Jainist symboe. It began simply as a symbol meaning auspicious, prosperity, good luck, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
It's a solar symbol originally, IIRC.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I recall how Kipling, before the Nazis rose to power, was fond of using the swastika. I have a pre-1933 copy of his two JUNGLE BOOKS adorned with the swastika. And after Hitler came to power Kipling instructed his publishers to discontinue using the swastika for his books, because of his contempt for Nazism.
Ad astra! Sean
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