You know, I hate that I even have to write about something this insipid at all, but there’s a bunch of social media talking about this, including a TikTok video that has a million and a half likes, so it’s so I feel like it’s widespread enough that it needs addressing. And, fair warning, all of this is deeply stupid, full of rumor and unproven accusations, and the only outcome of it at all is harm. The harm that will come from this is to Jews, and as a member of that tribe, I feel like I need to address why, because it’s not obvious. And it has nothing to do with what these videos or social media posts are allegedly about, which is the claim that the Porsche logo, when spinning, resembles a swastika.
That’s not a thing. The TikTok video has the caption that “Porsche kept this a secret for 80 years” which I can all but guarantee they did not, because you can’t have a secret for something that is very much Not A Thing.
Here’s the TikTok; and, yes, when shot with a camera with a refresh rate of 60 frames per second or whatever, the image formed by the spinning logo does resemble a swastika, sort of:
@roppversioon
But the idea that this was intentional in any way is absurd. Human eyes don’t work like digital cameras, and were you to look at a spinning logo on a hubcap, you would just see a circular blur. It’s no coincidence nobody in the past 67 years (the logo first appeared on hubcaps in 1959) noticed this until recently, because for the vast majority of that time, nobody was watching spinning wheels via a digital camera.
Porsche did not design a logo with the intention that, when spun and viewed via a specific frame rate, resembled a swastika. I’ll have even more reasons to back this up, but before we get to that, let’s get to the part where this becomes harmful for Jews. Not because it resembles a swastika – lots of things resemble swastikas if you start looking, from ancient Greek meander patterns to wrought iron fences to probably some bird footprints. Whatever, it’s fine, visual homonyms are just something that exist, and Jewish people, like anyone else, understand that.
No, the problem is because there are social media posts that are suggesting that “Jewish groups” are “calling for a full boycott of Porsche” as a result of this and I have yet to see any evidence at all that this has happened. I’ve been looking, but there’s nothing. Here’s such a post:
View this post on Instagram
Again, I haven’t found any evidence at all that any Jewish groups are calling for a boycott of Porsche, but the suggestion that there are such groups doing so is what is causing the harm. The suggestion that there are Jewish groups upset enough about this non-event to suggest a boycott is causing backlash against Jews and these imaginary, unnamed groups. Just read some of the comments in these posts (I don’t feel like reposting them), and you can see what I mean. They range from understandably dismissive to outright anti-semitic, and it’s all because of a non-problem and a made-up reaction to that non-problem.
This all just diminishes when there are real concerns that Jews may have with things happening in the world, a world that right now, I’m not thrilled to report to you, feels a little more hostile to Jews than usual, for a wide variety of complex reasons I’m not really qualified to get into here. But I hope you’ll trust me when I tell you things don’t feel great. And this sort of thing does not help at all.
Plus, here’s the real kicker. That Porsche logo? The famous crest with the antlers and the horse? That only is a thing because Porsche’s first importer to America, Max Hoffman, suggested that Porsche needed a logo like that. And Max Hoffman was a Jew.
So, this very logo that these idiotic videos and posts are claiming was designed to reveal a secret swastika was a logo suggested by a Jew. Make that make sense.
The truth is the Porsche badge is an adaptation and combination of the Stuttgart coat of arms and the Württemberg-Hohenzollern coat of arms. It’s no secret; just look at the damn thing. It’s obvious. And it was not chosen because when spun, it looks like the symbol of a horrible regime. Nobody was thinking about how it looked when spun around at high speeds, because who the hell does that?
So, if you encounter any of these dumb posts while you’re online, just happily looking for interesting car things, I’d like to ask you to remember a few things: the Porsche logo does not harbor any decades-old secrets that are only revealed when spinning, there was no agenda to hide a swastika in the logo, there are no Jewish groups outraged or suggesting a boycott of Porsche, and if you see comments from people lamenting about how Jews are trying to play victim or ruining good things for everyone or whatever, know that what you are seeing is the real result of all this idiocy.
The problem isn’t that Jewish groups are somehow offended about something that doesn’t exist. The problem is people have made up that they are and are passing it off as genuine, and the end result will just muddy the waters and make actual concerns feel less important and easier to ignore or sneer at or fuel even more hatred.
This is all so very stupid, and I hate that I felt I should write about it, but here we are. I appreciate you for listening. Or reading. Eye-listening.
Top photo: TikTok screenshots
Also, if you want a reason for to boycott Porsche, you don’t need to make up facts. Basically every German company still in existence has dark secrets from the first half of the 20th century, and Porsche is no different.
I will argue all day that boycotting any auto brand today for their alignment to an Axis power in the 30s and 40s is both absurd and pointless, but at least there’s a basis in fact rather than this uninformed, manufactured outrage theatre.
In general yes, however I think you can make a case for companies that continue to deny their historical involvement. If you’re gonna play up your “heritage” to sell your widget, you need to own all that heritage (or give your company a new name and start over). Also, if a company benefited as a result of using slave labor, they still gotta settle that debt. Their company’s present day value is based at least partially on that free labor.
caveat: I have no idea what BMW, IBM, Krups and the like have done to address their involvement in the Holocaust. I’d hope they’ve been honest.
IG Farben split off six companies which mostly escaped their history.
Basf, Agfa among them I think.
I’m not campaigning for anyone to actually boycott Porsche. But rather pointing out that it is a whole lot less contrived to boycott them because Ferdinand Porsche was on a first name basis with the Führer than whatever hidden swastika nonsense. There are skeletons in just about every major companies closet, we don’t need to invent them.
I’m with you, and I agree wholeheartedly with your point. Apologies if that didn’t come across.
Not HQM Sachsenring, they didn’t exist until 1957
That’s why I would never buy a Ford, because, you know, old Henry and that thing.. 😉
I recently visited the museum, they have a pretty nice Civil Rights display. But the whole time I was there I kept thinking about Ol’ Hank buying that newspaper to promote hatred.
Do they have anything in that museum that references Henry’s Dearborn bigotry rag, or do they conveniently ignore it?
It is like it never happened.
Just a suggestion for us all: add this post to your glovebox. If you encounter stupid have this at the ready to send to folks to try and combat the stupid.
One person at a time can make a difference.
I forgot about the site feature and thought you were suggesting people (especially Porsche owners, probably) print this out and put it in the glove box.
Your actual idea is far more normal and actually useful.
Another attempt to distract from the Trump Epstein files, again.
There’s ALWAYS some bullshit sympathy story that comes out that paints Jews as victims whenever Israel is seen for the terrorist country that they are.
Many US Jews I know and have known have little love for the Israeli Gov’t, especially in its current form.
Very true, but it is still astonishing that there are groups here in the US who put that terrorist country above their own homeland.
With what other group would that be acceptable? How many Italian-Americans put Italy’s politics above what happens to the US? How many German-Americans would actively push to get the US into a war that really only benefited Germany? Insanity. Yet here we are fighting pointless wars for Israel, getting Americans (as well as civilians) killed and far too many American-Jews support that bullshit.
Some of this a warped Christian Nationalist harkening of the Biblical Apocalypse and Rapture!!
The Israeli ambassador talking to evangelical groups with an eye to the future, mentioned their conflicting versions of Jesus.
He said we will just have to wait and ask him when he returns.
That’s true diplomacy!
I second Tbird’s point, it’s the millions of fundamentalist Christians waiting to be Raptured that have a much bigger impact on these politics. And, in my experience, they tend to be far less nuanced in their positions.
I have a bit of a hunch what the Jesus I learned about would say of all this… Love thy brother seems lost on these people.
Sounds like a distraction from the car company owned by that guy that literally threw a Hitler salute…
Could this be the big response Iran has been threatening?
Next up: JEWISH GROUPS CALLING FOR KYOTO BOYCOTT
Torch, I’m not responsible for it but I’m genuinely sorry you had to write this.
Why do I get the feeling FOX News is going to pick up those social media posts?
We’re in a post-truth era, unfortunately.
Thanks for writing this article Torch. Sadly, it needed to be said.
“people are saying…”
And in news that will surprise no one, that “boycott” image is AI-generated based on the distortions in the Porsche logo.
During a lot of that video, the spinning center looks more like an OpenAI logo than the other thing.
Torch, always by your side.
Especially in these times.
Of all times, we’ve got to have the most imbeciles of the antisemitic troupe. I guess we are lucky, somehow.
Reminds me of the Ukrainian commander in chief with a “swastika” bracelet that wasn’t one. Some Viking rune or whatever that once jpeg-compressed enough times would pixelize into a swastika-like detail.
I don’t know the specific example you are referring to and it may in fact be innocent, but TBF a lot of viking-rune imagery has been appropriated as Nazi dogwhistles.
Not in this case. It’s this one:
https://x.com/osmnactej/status/1579212056795889664/photo/2
https://twitter.com/i/status/1579221142627586049
While I agree that what’s being demonstrated is an illusion due to compression, unfortunately several of the symbols that really are on that bracelet are still symbols that are (unfortunately) commonly appropriated by white supremacists. Again, it could be innocent, but seeing that imagery on anyone who is not obviously culturally nordic is suspicious.
The type of person who would boycott Porsche over this is the type of person who’s already boycotting Porsche due to their very real ties to the Nazi party.
This is the kind of stuff AI will reference as fact. Therefor the resulting AI will be a amalgamation of truth, fiction, fantasy, hallucination, and hearsay. I can’t wait for my robot overlords.
Hopefully it will become so obviously wrong about so many obvious things that people will treat it with as much insight as a magic eight ball.
I hope humans will be skeptical enough and can think on a single subject long enough to question AI in a few years.
Its too late for some.
Oiuja board wants a chat.
F*** those things. I was at a party in high school where some of the other attendees got one of those out. They ended up making a girl cry because they convinced her she was talking to her dead grandparent.
that’s….dark.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Those Jewish boycott groups feel like those click batey news headlines “Home Depot Competitor Files for Bankruptcy” and the story is about a single small lumberyard in Idaho closing down. Like, I guess, you could say three people is a group, so if they found six Jews to say “yes” when asked if Porsche should be boycotted, they could then claim groups with a plural
It’s especially problematic bc most people don’t know legitimate, mainstream Jewish orgs with boards and staff and conferences and the like vs some guy with a website. Even media will occasionally (and I hope unintentionally) quote some group that definitely does not speak for the majority of America Jewry.
Just need to find your equivalent of Bill Donohue
My favorite Jewish human rights group.
Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
https://jpfo.org/
Some great posters
https://jpfo.org/images02/hitler-target-11.5×15.jpg
Well done!
I think your tone in addressing this insipid matter is spot on, and I hope this article gets referenced often by those that trade in such.
Eye listened, eye rolled!
Eye gewalt.
This is exactly what the internet is optimized for today. Going viral = $$$. Posts that are erroneous, offensive, intriguing, and outrageous all drive engagement.
It’s a game even this website has to play, even with all the content being well written and researched, you at least have to drag people’s attention from the latest social posts “I spent months teaching this crow to shit on Jewish people! You won’t believe what happened” (I just made this up to be clear).
I hate this stuff but no sane person should be remotely surprised by it. I try to maintain my sanity by staying off Instagram/TikTok/FB but until we regulate this crap or the masses start avoiding enshitified platforms nothing will change.
Happy Hump Day everyone!
Reminiscent of how people would play vinyl records backwards and claim to hear satanic messages (that weren’t even there)
People were idiots then, and are idiots now.
The big difference there is that saying there were satanic messages just helped sell the music. Yeah, my mom banned rock n roll in the house, but that just made it more appealing. This is actually harmful to a group (Jews) who aren’t even involved in the whole thing.
And yes, people will always be idiots.
Wait, are you saying I’m So Tired doesn’t secretly reveal that Paul McCartney is dead?
No that one is real.
Say what you will, but Paul looks fantastic these days for a dead guy.
…because it’s not really him. Open your eyes.
Absolutely. I was there playing Revolution #9 backwards. It’s clearly why the Beatles broke up right after Abbey Road.
I know whenever I am about to make a major life decision I always leave a trail of breadcrumbs for people to discover after the fact. We all do it.
Well, whoever it is, he’s a good musician.
Better than Keith Richards, anyway. And Keith hasn’t even been dead as long as Paul.
Or in the case of the 45 for “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haa”, they just flipped over the record.
Thank you for writing this. I had no idea that people were spreading this. I think we all have much bigger things to worry about.
I feel that if you spin something at specific speeds, and certain frame rates, you could make a lot of things look like a lot of different things. Like a heart, a circle, a weird blur.
I was thinking about my favorite car butts…I appreciate this site.
Indeed you can! The phenomenon is called aliasing and occurs whenever a signal changes faster than twice the sample rate. It’s the reason car wheels appear to rotate backwards or stay still in videos. Eyes do not have a sample rate in this sense, so do not observe this effect.
Certain types of lighting can make
it visible. If you look at motion under a strobe light you can see the same effect. This is how an old fashioned timing light works. I have heard that fluorescent lights can strobe faintly at 60 Hz, which could make an object spinning at 60 Hz appear stationary, creating a hazard.
Thank you! I learned something new today!
It has been said that a turbocharger compressor wheel on a running engine can appear stationary under some lighting conditions due to this effect. So remember: if the engine is running, the turbo compressor is spinning, no matter what you think you see. If you touch it, you’re gonna get hurt!
It’s the reason they mark aircraft engines and even some fans.
I had a turntable with the strobe pattern on it, so you could adjust it with a 60 hz bulb.
Single fluorescent source worked great.
I had an early strobe black light with an electro mechanical dial to control the arc from zero to 60 hz.
Very rare even then.
Want to discuss saccadic blanking?
I did not know about that.
Yup somewhere in the basement I’ve got a turntable with two patterns around the rim, one for 33-1/3 and one for 45 rpm. It has a built in light.
“Human eyes don’t work like digital cameras, and were you to look at a spinning logo on a hubcap, you would just see a circular blur.”
Wait… does this mean that all the press cars I see in videos aren’t specially programmed to show off with twinkling or scrolling lights? How am I supposed to spot press cars in the wild now? I haven’t even seen one yet!
When we first got a modern flat screen TV our daughter was about 2. She had been given a bunch of old Disney movies on VHS that she loved. They looked fine on the old CRT but looked like dogshit on the flatscreeen. The refresh rate was out of sync. I kept an old CRT VHS/DVD combo around for over a decade just so she could still watch them.
I’m pretty sure you can get VCRs and boxes to correct that.
Some of the last Sony crts were very sophisticated hidef monitors.
Fairly cheap when you find them now.
Up to a 34 inch widescreen that is basically a pro monitor. And there is pro gear, rarer.
I had a 32″ Panasonic at the time. The point is moot as my daughter will be 21 in a few months. We kept an old 20″ combo unit in her playroom for years.
There are still a lot of things on tape that are not available from other sources.
I like Panasonic stuff.
When crts ended, Sony showed off what they could do as others gave up.
The 34 in top line had features that are still rare. So sophisticated many paid a lot for tuners to perfect the myriad settings on them. Mostly only gamers value them now, but for their screen size, in some ways they still outperform other formats, like color.
Oy. 🙁
Vey.
And up next on Sick Sad World, G-string grandmas!!
Ewwww, gross
La la laaa la laaaaaa.
I had to question if I was on Reddit when I read this comment. Lol
Now why would you do that?!
Luckily people who grew up with the internet seem to understand seem to understand what trash the internet is. Social media is like a rapid-fire National Enquirer at this point to them.
Unfortunately people my parents age seem to think this shit is real all the time.
I did lol that this article is now tagged with “swastika”. Y’all gonna have a tag for everything.
Friend of mine has the theory that we jumped timelines when the Cubs won the 2016 World Series and things have gone to crap since. This only lends credence to that.
I’m not 100 percent certain that particular 2016 event is what I’m going to blame. But I can’t argue with the choice of year.
How about breakdancing at the Olympics?
And someone did the bunny hop, which is hysterical!
Wrong. It all started when Sir David Bowie passed away. Same year.
He’s close, it was when Harambe died
Ah, I see you’re a man of culture as well.
Dicks out…
I mean, you could probably spin lots of things and sort of see a swastika if you really focus on trying to see one there. Which is what someone must have done. I wish I had that much free time.
Some car companies ensure that their wheel logos are all vertical at car shows.
I thought that was stupid, but even the idea that anyone is staring at rotating logos is a new level of dumbidity!
If you want to worry about something, the terrorists in NYC weren’t using dummy bombs, but TATP, a potent explosive. They just screwed up the recipe somehow.
The mayor of New York city, CNN and the BBC have expressed support for the jihadists.
That is concerning.
Now I’m going to look for correctly oriented logos in press photos. Honestly not sure how to feel about it (obsessive attention to detail vs absurd attention to detail).
Edit: the Dacia from earlier today has them aligned.
What’s stupid about the internet is I have even read about the NYC bombers this morning and not a single article mentioned what the bomb was made out of. You would think that was important information along with who actually did it (which was also hard to find).
It wasn’t until I found your comment and forced Google to search with that term that it led to the NYC press release. Honestly the coverage on the story is quite small for what could have been a significant terrorist attack.
These were shrapnel bombs.
If they had detonated, many would have been killed. I think it was a significant attack. The formula trades stability for violence.
The press tends to steer clear of granularity in stories like that for a couple of reasons:
1-They’ll probably get it wrong.
Lethal weapons are seen in newsrooms as an icky thing to even have a clue about, and not caring is almost a badge of honor. It’s a running joke:
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1o1swy/journalists_guide_to_firearms_identification/
For instance, early reports about Alex Pretti’s gun were wrong (SIG Emperor Scorpion instead of P320 AXG) but spread quickly. This was of no concern to 98% of readers but offensively misleading to gun nuts because the handgun that stories initially said he was carrying was a gimmicky version of a 115-year-old design rather than what it turned out to be: a recently developed pistol heavily tweaked for gun nerds. This seemed relevant for a moment because the P320 has developed a nasty reputation for firing on its own, which briefly became a straw that many grasped at until the timeline became clearer. Ultimately these details became chaff in the larger context of the story. Also…
2-They’re unlikely to rate pyrotechnic details as news you can use.
In this case, a lot of initial reporting showed pictures of one device and mechanical descriptions of its rudimentary construction. There was some mention that the explosive involved was advanced and therefore a hint at the involvement of forces beyond two teens attempting mass murder, but even kids (ahem, “young men”) can use the internet to find bomb recipes as easily – or more so – than the public can find technical details about a bombing. Very few journalists want to do anything to change that.
All great point. Only quibble is I believe there are certain explosives that no civilian could make or likely acquire. You know more about this than me, so correct me if that’s wrong. If it’s right though, I think it’s extremely important to the story. But, to your point, most of us know nothing about explosives and I can appreciate journalists being overly cautious at first. But, eventually, lab analysis will come out and if it’s an unexpected finding I’d hope it would be covered.
I don’t know much about explosives at all because I’d rather not have that in my search history. From just a quick look it seems like the stuff they used doesn’t take exotic ingredients but definitely requires chemistry skills and… how to put it… reduced sensitivity to consequences at every step.
Any evidence can become important evidence, even the easily dismissed sort. I’m definitely not saying the explosive’s chemical signature is an unimportant detail, I’m saying that traditionally there was a lot of care taken with the presentation of information that is literally volatile and deadly. Whether the bombers made the explosive themselves or were supplied by someone else is critical information, but rushing to say “hey it’s this stuff you can make with Windex and an onion but you’ll probably blow your house into toothpicks” isn’t the most solid move for a news org. “Investigations into the sourcing and composition of the device continue” sounds boring but spins a yarn without wild hairs that are tricky to snip away later.
EDIT: I really screwed up the last sentence of the comment you replied to. I meant to say that journalists tend to avoid amplifying or proliferating dangerous information, not that they’re cool with the status quo, which is how it reads.
Secrecy about TATP has been bypassed once it was determined we cannot restrict the materials. Also instructions have been widely published. There may be a decision somewhere that if they chose something more sophisticated, it would help them more than us. It’s a serious threat to anyone mixing or carrying it.
There are many valid reasons for a government to suppress news of terrorist events, often just to deny strategic information to the enemy. Other not so good reasons, and there is the tendency of news to cater to local pressures. I have been a technical advisor to tv news. An example was a suicide in custody, family claimed lack of fingerprints and powder residue was damning. Knowing the model, I could tell them nothing about the event was significant as the handgun is easy to conceal, molded and unlikely to hold fingerprints and not being a blowback design, unlikely to leave powder residue.
Many TV news people are not equipped to do investigative stories at all.
TATP is a formula designed to bypass obstacles, with instructions that are often followed by people with no chemistry background or access to special chemicals.
An afternoon in a kitchen is enough.
Being near suicidal is a desirable attribute as it’s volatility is high and increases once finished. These are usually mixed close to time of use, as in Paris. Reportedly the clock is ticking once mixed and less is required to set it off the longer you have it.
Do NOT mix this stuff up even to test it!
What’s even more worrying, is that the major media tried to make it seem that the bomb chuckers were aligned with the protesters demonstrating against the Muslim mayor, rather than Isis trained radicalized Muslim terrorists.
Hey um, there was like two more terrorist attacks like a day after you posted this comment. No news sites had the same unfortunate truth in their headline
This just makes me want to insert the meme/gif from SpongeBob when the guy ask Patrick asking if he just blew in from stupid town.