Lithuania Labels Exported Food With Official Swastika – Marketing Fail
LITHUANIA loves the swastika. It invites you to eat the swastika. In Moscow, you can buy imported Lithuanian food with the swastika on it – a kite mark for murderous hate and civic pride. Oh, no. the swastika is not Nazi symbol, adopted by Lithuanian death squads in World War 2. The swastika is part of the country’s heritage. So says the Klaipeda court. Still, as marketing goes, it could be better…
June 16th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I’ve translated the article mentioned in comment 3 and posted it here: http://grainofdruska.blogspot.com/2010/06/swastikas-on-lithuanian-dairy-products.html.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be an apologist for the use of the symbol or the decision of the court in Lithuania. Although I admittedly don’t know the facts in that case, I’m fairly sure that the young men mentioned in the article were facists whose lawyers managed to help them escape punishment by playing the history/culture card, which is disgusting. I did, however, want to point out that no Lithuanian manufacturers would put such a symbol on their products. I believe that the use of that symbol would probably give most Lithuanians feelings of ‘shock and disgust’ as well.
June 16th, 2010 at 9:23 am
thats true, it makes most Pagans blood run cold too.
The Brigid’s Cross is still in use, but it does look dissimilar.
Whatever symbol they used would have had the same effect on people today.
June 16th, 2010 at 8:51 am
whatever it’s origins and despite any previous good intentions, the swastika will never be able to escape from the link with Nazism. It is even today possibly the most hated symbol in the western world and causes shock and disgust to most reasonable, thinking people…
June 16th, 2010 at 8:46 am
The swastika, with its arms extended, also has its roots in Celtic Paganism and is the forerunner of the modern day Brigid’s Cross.
June 16th, 2010 at 8:41 am
I see that I have switched around left and right in my comment. Actually, whether the swastika faces left or right isn’t really important and is not the point I wanted to make.
June 16th, 2010 at 8:25 am
..a seriously backward move, IMO…. are they just still living 70 years behind everyone else? or do they just have a serious memory lapse problem….?
June 16th, 2010 at 8:24 am
An article about this subject, which appeared on 31 May on the Lithuanian news portal delfi.lt, can be found here (article in Lithuanian): http://www.delfi.lt/archive/article.php?id=32970715.
Moderator- perhaps if you could find an English version?
June 16th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Can’t knock it though, apparently the food will last for a thousand years. Might not be kosher though, I’m kinda guessing?
Seriously though, that does look bloody awful. Someone should have a word with the Dziugas company on branding and marketing….
June 16th, 2010 at 8:17 am
Some time ago I read that those swastika stickers were being put on Lithuanian products by a group in Moscow as a protest against the decision made by the court in Klaipeda. Such stickers cannot be found on any products in Lithuania and were certainly not put on the products by the producers or the marketers. By the way, despite the negative associations caused by the Nazi use of a left-facing swastika, the right-facing swastika (predominantly) was indeed a common symbol for the sun in Lithuania (as it was in many early Indo-European civilisations) and remains a common symbol in Buddhism and Hinduism.