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
Same with VW logo spinning at certain speed…
Unfortunately, an actual member of the tribe explaining this on a dedicated car enthusiast site will go unnoticed among the followers of TikTok and believers of TikTok-based conspiracy theories. I’ve seen one version of this myself a few weeks back and had to just ignore the stupidity of it.
Trust me when I that not only is this the only shitty conspiracy permeating the platform, but I have to hear about nearly every single one of them from someone in my household that spends countless hours on that platform.
I will continue to boycott Porsche for as long as I can’t find one with a total cost to own and operate that is less than I’m willing to pay for the joy I expect it to bring me. And not one day longer.
I was loathed to get into this one but, as always, well, to date, Torch is right. Conflating all Jews with whatever is going on in the state of Israel is like stating that all of the world’s Roman Catholics owe their allegiance forst and foremost to the Vatican City, or Italy. Crap like this ‘story’ only perpetuate the divisions in our society, wherever we live. They stoke up sectarianism, bigotry and racism by desperately looking for something that doesn’t exist in order to appeal to small minded populists.
Ah yes social media at its worst. Reason #1 I’m probably the only millenial not on any of the social media platforms.
I get all my news from this website and the NAPA parts counter.
My eyes are always listening to you Torch.
Sadly, this is not new. Lindsay Ellis talked about similar incidents in her video about the Israel-Hamas situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwpanShgOp4
There’s a high probability the people spreading this shit are anti-Semites deliberately trying to make Jews look bad. It’s not an accident or a mistake, it’s the whole point.
Always good to have Torch around
Before long you’re going to have the Jewis Defense League on your ass for all the HOOP fundraising
It’s the Elon Musk salute non-story all over again. Seems we’ve become so addicted to outrage that if we run out of targets we’ll just artificially create them.
Is it?
“…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.” -Jason Torchinsky, moments ago
Nah that Apartheid nepo baby knew what he was doing, most charitably he was blacking out on K and research chemicals
Elon Musk is an actual antisemite though, so I wouldn’t exactly compare these two things
Elon did a Nazi salute on national TV. Not once, but twice, just in case you thought the first one was an accident. For this to be comparable, Porsche would have to change their logo to an actual swastika.
We shall eliminate these wheels by pointing our space lasers at them!
You mean the Jewish Space Lasers? They’ll probably make them look even more like Swastikas!! Cuz, something something…
Funny how these type of stories made to extract some sympathy from the public always seem to come out right when Israel has low public opinion due to them terrorizing their neighbors. Funny how that is.
I didn’t mention Israel?
Are you claiming ignorance that the two are eternally linked?
I know they get linked by many people, but that doesn’t mean every context has to link both. I’m not an Israeli. The issues brought up in the post have nothing to do with Israel. There were a lot of Lutherans working at Porsche when this logo was designed, but I don’t see why I’d think Minnesota Lutherans who enjoy A Prairie Home Companion have anything to do with what their fellow Lutherans in Germany were doing. I’m not trying to extract sympathy from anyone. I’m complaining about stupid misinformation that relates to the automotive world.
My original comment is not directed at you in the slightest bit and rather pointing out that Israel has the most powerful marketing department in the world – also knowing as lobbyist and action committees. Any time that terrorist country gets caught red handed starting another pointless war, commiting genocide or funding pedo islands for billionaires there is always a quick distraction campaign to exploit the image of Jews as a historically downtrodden people. It’s rather sickening.
But…there is no distraction campaign. Someone posted a dumb claim (Jews are boycotting Porsche) and as of now, the distraction campaign is made up of one Jason Torchinsky saying “nonsense.” Unless your claim is that JT is a covert propagandist, what you’re saying makes no sense. Make it make sense.
You left out the most important part… Jews are boycotting Porsche… BECAUSE WHY? Because once again, something, somehow can possibly, maybe look like a swastika even when either it really doesn’t, or was never intended to. That’s the distraction, not anything written on this site.
That – once again – there is always some story that reminds people of the atrocities of those nazi fucks from 80+ years ago, right around the same time that news breaks about those Israeli fucks committing their own atrocities now.
This is not a new coincidence, nor it is some new marketing strategy. A lawyer will lean in on the fact that his client might have been abused as a kid, to justify crimes committed today. A mismanaged company looking for a bailout now, will play-up its patriotic roots.
Did you read the article? There are no Jews boycotting Porsche, at least not because of the spinning logo. That was JT’s entire point as to why these made-up claims are dangerous–people like you go ahead and run with them thinking they are real.
No one gives a shit if there is a real boycott. That’s utterly immaterial. The news is framing Jews as victims. Always playing them off as victims, when the reality is that a 1/2 world away they are, once again the aggressors starting another pointless war and suckering the US into it.
It’s another distraction and clearly you’ve fallen for it.
What news? The only news I’ve seen today is about a person who tried to kill a bunch of Jews in their synagogue. And clearly you care a whole lot about the boycott being real since you commented on this story to say how it’s somehow connected to world events.
Mods–can we ban this clown?
Also, the reason you see these events coinciding is because when Jews or Israel are in the news, someone inevitably acts on their own antisemitism. Such as TODAY when someone rammed their car into a synagogue with the presumed intent to harm and kill the people inside.
No, the person didn’t do it b/c of some dumb rumor about Jews caring about porsche wheels, but these kinds of false claims–given enough of them over enough time–cause awful people to do awful things.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/michigan-west-bloomfield-synagogue-rcna263210
It’s a tenuous connection. A recent WaPo (z”l) poll found half of American Jews disapproved of Israel’s Gaza campaign and 60% of American Jews believe the IDF committed war crimes in Gaza. I’m not going to evaluate the legitimacy of that belief, I just want to point out there is a very big difference between Jews and Israel.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-american-views-on-israel-and-antisemitism-have-changed-since-oct-7
Heck a majority of ISRAELIS do not like Netanyahu: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1482429/israel-public-approval-rating-of-benjamin-netanyahu/
You have to look very closely at polls before even considering them meaningful.
It’s clear that Israelis are not a monolithic group though.
Who is this guy?
So sad they had to bring an antisemitic conspiracy angle here instead of picking a valid reason to boycott Porsche.
How about their lack of amber turn signals across the entire US lineup? Car crashes are the #1 preventable cause of death in this country yet they can’t even be bothered to include a 70+ year old safety feature that came standard on a Mitsubishi Mirage? Hello TikTok where’s the energy for this scandal???
Yes! And also, I will boycott them until their prices are reduced. Very unfair of them.
This! Which, looking at how they are not selling well is kinda happening? But I just heard (from The Autopian) that the CEO plans on just actually moving to higher priced stuff so I think I will just have to keep “boycotting” Porsche until such day that they make the cayenne Turbo and 911 turbo within reach of normal incomes. I am ready to wait a few dozen decades.
you’re gonna have to wait longer than that…
Hostility towards Jewish people in general? I haven’t seen any of that.
Finding out Epstein was run by Mossad … and now we are in another stupid global conflict for the benefit of said country…. that cannot afford to exist without American tax dollars…. and all their citizens get universal healthcare?
I think a lot of people have thoughts about that.
Iran has been openly at war with us since the 70s, whether we like it or not.
The United States has been openly at war with Iran since the 1950s, when it overthrew a democratically elected Prime Minister and propped up a brutal dictator.
How ungrateful of the Iranians to get rid of the dictator that the CIA freely gifted them. It’s ok though, because I’m sure once they’ve finished bombing the shit out of them this time, they’ll install a ruler who’ll be much more palatable to Iran.
/s throughout.
A coworker, who is Iranian, asked me my opinion on the “situation” which was weird because I’ve never spoken to him before, but I’m friendly with a lot of the other Iranians. He just works in a different department so we only have the cafe in common. Anyway, he said “what do you think” and I think I blew his mind a little because I said “well first let’s go back to the CIA and 1953”, I took a short detour to Afghanistan and arming the Mujahideen, and where that lead. Not sure how many Americans can find Iran on a map much less know we’re here because we put ourselves here. After his quarter ran out he nodded thoughtfully and said “I’ll have to think about that”…
I agree with most of this, but Mossadegh was appointed as PM by the King. PM was not ever a democratically elected position. He was voted into the Majles (parliament), and then hand selected by the Shah to serve as PM. There was no election for that. We still screwed up badly, but the dude was not elected and much like how Torch cannot allow people to go on thinking Mercedes-Benz made the first car, I cannot stand when people keep repeating this false claim.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mohammad-Mosaddegh
You suggest the USA has waged war by ignoring their continued crimes?
Interesting approach.
Some historians blame the failure to respond to their terrorism for the increase in instability.
I just checked the Epstein/Mossad claim. It’s based on a “tip” from a known Holocaust denier who either was or is in prison. As this well-sourced article notes, reputable publications amplified the claim before it could be fact checked. I don’t blame you for believing it–we’re living in a world where misinformation is everywhere and where unbelievable things are happening daily. Here’s the article (and Times of Israel is a legitimate news gathering operation and considered by most to be a credible source):
https://www.timesofisrael.com/epstein-files-source-who-alleged-mossad-links-is-identified-as-holocaust-denier/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell <—Ghislanes’s father, who was largely considered a Mossad agent, was buried in Israel and basically had a state sanctioned funeral.
Thems facts, not something made up by a holocaust denier, and you picked literally the most biased source possible.
“was largely considered” = “some people are saying.” And, even if he was, being a spy isn’t hereditary, at least not to a pseudo son-in-law. To believe that you’d have to believe that there’s some scheming cabal of evildoers.
And yeah, everyone’s credible source is someone else’s biased propaganda. Feel free to show me a source you find credible with a different conclusion.
The casual dismissal of the well-documented and hard-felt rise of antisemetism in the US and abroad is gross. On an article written by a Jew describing how bad things are right now, and outlining the very problem of dismissal of antisemitism.
Yeah, just to be clear, you can be against the actions of the Israeli government while also feeling for the innocent Jewish people who are being targeted because of it, and the whole Epstein thing.
My wife, who has been anti-Bibi since day one, gets daily death threats from people who describe in graphic detail how they’d like to kill her. Some of these people are calling in from international numbers!
That’s awful to hear and I’m sorry for her. While no one is required to make their pain someone else’s teachable moment, it means a lot when folks share these experiences so others get a sense of what it’s like out there. And yeah, there are a ton of Jewish schmucks out there. Roughly the same percentage as Methodist and Muslim schmucks.
While in a cafe in this country with some middle easterners, one said something to the other our translator later told us.
Talking about a girl in average summer clothing, he said at home we would kill her for dressing like that.
He was not joking.
Very likely the most cold blooded men I have ever met. I never saw them smile.
You can be fine with Jewish people in general and be very much against the Israeli government, imho, and that’s all I was trying to convey.
My teenages call these kinds of things rage bait. I think that’s a very covering term, and there’s a lot of that going around. Among old people on Facebook and apparently everybody on TikTok.
We’ve had the internet for so long now, that some people have no idea what a fact actually is, and how people used to check them in the old times.
It’s really scaring how we, 20 years after Mike Judge’s movie Idiocracy, are starting to live it more and more 🙁
I remember, back in the ’90s. Snapple had to change their label, which originally depicted the Boston Tea Party (which they thought was funny/playful for a tea company), due to circulating rumors it was a picture of a slave ship. The new package design has just never looked right to me
The same rumor also claimed that Snapple was owned by the KKK, because of the K symbol for kosher, since the letter K can never be used for anything else, clearly (as an aside, the company was founded by three Jewish guys from New York, a klan connection was highly unlikely)
Around the same time, A-Treat sodas pulled back on plans to expand to new urban markets beyond Pennsylvania when people started spreading urban legends that it was laced with some sterility drug. Which is a shame for anyone who’s never had their birch beer. Also a fan of the grapefruit and the cream soda
Birch beer sales were ended by kroger during the pandemic in my home prefecture.
I’ve never seen A-Treat, but now I want to try it!
Gary Iacocca rolled it out at all of his hot dog places
Deep cut for central Pennsylvania white birch beer was Wible Beverages. I think they went out of business or were bought in the 1980s or 1990s but I spent my childhood enjoying their sodas. The white birch beer was my favorite and I think the best I ever had, but the cream soda and orange flavors were pretty great as well. In southeastern Pennsylvania the Weis store brand white birch beer is pretty good and the famous Shady Maple Smorgasbord serves a version from Reading Soda Works that’s okay as well.
Oh shit! I avoid all social media like the plague. Although I live in the home of Meta, I’ve never had a FacePlant account. We just don’t need more garbage. So much garbage. אוי וויי! That’s Aoy Vey! according to Google translate.
I’ve never had a bookface account either.
They ran into a wall while expecting to keep expanding, with a third of the country just flat refusing their terms.
I can’t wait for a “reporter” to ask Jerry Seinfeld if he’ll give up his Porsche.
Great article, thank you. friend sent me this weeks ago.