I am late to this, but the supposedly merely-decorative ring of swastikas adorning the bases of some antique lamp posts in Chris Burden's #UrbanLight at @LACMA may not have been neutral symbols & certainly don't now offer neutral, historical visual enrichment as the museum and
and @CityOfGlendale assert: latimes.com/socal/glendale… One argument for retaining the swastikas is that they were applied way before the Hitler era. This is false. hragvartanian.com/2008/02/09/gle…
A quick check of @smithsonian reveals that the swastika became a Nazi symbol––an explicitly means an Aryan-supremacist antisemitic symbol––in 1920 before the posts were installed:
LA and Glendale have a pro-Nazi, racist past that btw isn't far into the past and which includes Nazi and KKK activity: butchershop-nobonesaboutit.com/is-glendale-st…
Also interesting is that lamp posts without swastikas were available and installed just outside of Glendale: crescentavalleyweekly.com/viewpoints/05/…
Glendale high & community college had KKK clubs , was a racist, sundown town and as late as 60's had Klansmen in parades. Also had a park devoted to Hindenberg: latimes.com/socal/glendale…
Glendale was a hub for LA's pro-Nazi activity: glendalereckoning.org/NazisinGlendal…
For the definitive history of LA's robust pro-Hitler activity and death-plots, read the HITLER IN LOS ANGELES by Steven J. Ross: pulitzer.org/finalists/stev…
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