evilthecat said:
The sig rune is not a generic symbol. It doesn't depict anything, It has no meaning whatsoever outside of German occultism and fascist imagery, apart from the common misconception that it's a letter 's'. The historical rune upon which its based doesn't even look anything like that (and in fact looks much more like an 's').
I'd just like to make something clear(er); the sig rune (alternately, sigel or sowilo)
has meaning and depicts something (that's why the Nazis chose to use it). It's a rune, and each rune stands for one letter and has specific meaning that goes along with it (because runes were not just a writing system, but were also used for divination, because they were of "divine origin"; given to people by Odin). The sigel rune is a symbol for the Sun, wholeness and victory, and is of course the letter S. The Nazis adopted it and changed it a bit, so it doesn't look the same as the one from the elder futhark (or other runic scripts), but it still is the sigel rune and it's very similar, and it fitted their needs. They were very thorough and specific about symbols and they adopted many other runes too (for example the odal/othilo rune and hagal/hagalaz, and other). Each rune was somewhat re-designed, but they were taken from the varying runic scripts of the ancient Nordic peoples and were taken exactly because of that. The SS symbol is a perversion of the sigel rune, just as the swastika is a perversion of the swastika symbol (which dates back as far as the beginning of the metal ages, maybe even further back). Not all Nazis were obsessed by this, but Himmler was, and he had his... personal "occultist" practically design the SS symbol.
What I'm trying to say is, the sig rune is not meaningless, same way the Nazi swastika isn't. That's both good and bad; the good being the fact that they changed it just enough so you can differentiate between a Nazi symbol and a non-Nazi symbol, while the bad being the fact that they perverted an otherwise ancient, beautiful and meaningful symbols, used by people throughout the world. Still, people will probably forever link the runes and swastikas with Nazis.
Obviously, these marines either never went to school (or watched a movie) or they knew what the SS symbol is and they didn't care or they got it on purpose. I don't know which one of those is the truth, however, I agree with you with the fact that you can't get that kind of a flag in your local mall; you have to get it specifically from a Neo-Nazi site (or from a person who got it there). I have nothing against people using runes for their logos (I personally have two runes tattooed on me, and a sigel rune (not the SS one, obviously) carved in a little piece of wood as a necklace). However, due to the fact that the SS symbol is very well known (maybe I speak from my European background, but seriously; if not in school, you can see the SS symbol in just about any WWII movie), I am reluctant to believe that they just accidentally stumbled upon this symbol and failed to find the description for it. Or maybe they did, and they didn't care. Which is almost just as sad.
