.Net Meanderings

I had a very strange experience with one of the latest "Critical" updates from Microsoft. I always check to see what's in them and found out this particular one was relating to the symbols in the Bookshelf 7 font. Intregued, I looked it up in CHARMAP.EXE - and found out that one of the symbols was a swastika (amoungst things like chinese characters, various crosses and the star of david). So I was pretty sure what the update was all about and I installed it - low and behold, on reboot, I found there was no swastika.

Now I need to make something very, very plain. I am not coming at this from a "hey fascists have the right to have their symbols in fonts" standpoint. I am a committed anti-fascist and have put limb (if not life) on the line several times to stop the bastards peddling their filth.I will quite catagorically state that as far as I'm concerned fascists have absolutely no right to free speech whatsoever and I will do damnedest to make sure they are hounded from the planet.

<takes a deep breath>

OK, so what about this swastika ... well the guy down the road who runs our local grocery store is an Indian guy call Nanj. A couple of years back I went down to his shop during the Hindu festival of Diwali. Now this was at a time when a Nazi group called the BNP were trying to make an impact electorally in the UK. So when I found a swastika on Nanj's doorstep I was horrified - I went in going "Nanj have the BNP been round?". However it turns out that the swastika is a Hindu religious symbol (and I'm pretty sure it's not a case of which way round the symbol is - but I may be wrong). So removing it from the font doesn't stop fascism as far as I can see, but it does make it harder for Hundu's to find a religious symbol of theirs in the standard font offering. I have also been told that the swastika is a buddhest religious symbol and is also known in native american culture.

Now I am not going to play down the significance of the swastika as a symbol of Nazism is western society and I will argue with people from other cultures that see the swastika as a positive thing that there is another side to the symbol they need to be aware of. However, I do not see the removal of the symbol from a font that Microsoft distribute as anything remotely "Critical"