Are Confederate Nazi Hobos Coming to Your Town?

Irritatingly true story:

My best friend and I were in our seats, waiting for “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” to start (short review: To get the same effect without forking over nine bucks a head, take your silverware drawer, throw it into a front-loading clothes dryer, set in front and watch it go round and round for 180 minutes or so – popcorn optional, but recommended).

We got there early for our abuse (mini-review: It was like being in a two-and-a-half hour car wreck, with a Lincoln Park soundtrack, with some Nickelback thrown in), as did everyone else, and noticed that the teen in front of us had, of all things, a book on the Biltmore Estates in North Carolina. My friend had just returned from there, and struck up a conversation with him about it. The kid was articulate and well-versed in the architecture – honestly, it was the last conversation I expected to sit in on waiting for this film to start (micro-review: T:ROTF sucked, big time). We we’re feeling oddly buoyed about the state of the youth of America.

And then it happened. The kid got a message on his cell phone – it was a graphic from a friend of his. The graphic was a 3D swastika rotating in front of a map of the United States of America. His friend, he explained (after seeing the look on our faces), had done time in prison and had to join the Aryan Brotherhood (or somesuch) to survive and not get raped all the time. There was a tone of both “whatareyagonnado?” and what I can only categorize as pride in his voice (because he knew someone “edgy,” I suppose) when he said this. He then showed it to the friends he was with several times.

Never having been to federal prison, I can’t speak to what his friend had to do get by, but as bad as the movie was going to be (final anaylsis: I did not care for it), Nazism wasn’t really necessary. Maybe it’s because my father fought in France and Germany in World War II (D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, concentration camps, the whole deal), or because I’ve cracked open a history book or two in my life, but if someone sent me something like that, I would immediately be looking for a way to delete it, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be showing it to anyone. And maybe it’s a snap judgment, but I also knew everything I cared to about the young man.

It did get me thinking, value judgments aside, however, about the powerful effect symbols can have on us. What is the swastika, really? It’s an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles. That’s it. It dates back to the Neolithic period, and has been used as a religious symbol in several faiths. Because of the baggage it carries in the Western world, however, it will never be a neutral symbol. (As a graphic designer, however, I gotta admit that’s some effective branding. More than 60 years after the fact, it can evoke feelings in people who weren’t even alive at the time of maximum use.)

Certain symbols can convey information, sometimes very clearly (the meaning of red octagonal sign on the street corner is pretty clear, and if you ignore it, the flashing lights on the top of the car behind you offer another lesson in symbolism). When a house near ours put out a Confederate flag after Obama won the primary, it was curious; when they put out two more when he was elected president, I’m pretty sure it was a message. At last count, I believe there are five sets of “stars n’ bars” on the property.

Even the Transformers use symbols, so they can tell an Autobot from a Decepticon. Of course, you can’t see them because they resemble a junkyard in a tornado, but I guess they can tell one from the other, kind of like one cat can tell if another cat is a boy or girl, I guess.

Other messages are less clear, known only to those “in the know.” Hobo code is one of these examples. Developed as a way of sharing information between the homeless in the wake of the Great Depression, the code is still in use today. Hobos could use the symbols when coming up on a new area or town to know where a softhearted person would give them a meal, a less-softhearted person would give them a meal if they had a sob story, where law enforcement was, where mean dogs were, and if a beating awaited them there. Good info to have.

So, in summary, if Confederate Nazi Hobos start to get a foothold in your neighborhood, you now know the signs to look for. And stay away from the Transformers movie. If I’ve helped even one person, it’s been worth it.