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For many people in the West, the swastika is associated primarily with the Nazis in particular and fascism and evil in general.
The Nazis adopted the swastika in 1920, but it was already in use as a symbol of German volkisch nationalist movements.
The use of the swastika was associated by Nazi theorists with their conjecture of Aryan cultural descent of the German people. Allegedly, the Nazis believed that the early Aryans of India, from whose Vedic tradition the swastika sprang, were the prototypical white invaders. Thus, they saw fit to co-opt the sign as a symbol of white supremacy.
The Nazis used the black swastika or Hakenkreuz in a white circle on a red background, black, white, and red being the colors of the old Imperial flag. The Nazis also used the swastika without the circle and background. Adolf Hitler stated in Mein Kampf that he chose the final design of the Nazi flag based on a large number of submissions from Nazi supporters.
Two versions of the Nazi swastika commonly occur, one with outer bars pointed counter-clockwise, and the mirror image with outer bars pointed clockwise. Although the Nazis do not appear to have made a symbological distinction between the two, the latter is more common in their usage. In both it is usually depicted rotated by 45°.
In modern times, the symbolism of the Nazi swastika has been used by neo-Nazis and other hate groups. Because of this, its use outside historical contexts has become a taboo in much of the world. Nowadays, German law makes the public showing of the Hakenkreuz and other Nazi symbols illegal and punishable, except for scholarly reasons.
For many hundreds of millions of people worldwide, the swastika has associations which have nothing to do with Nazism, and hence it is still in common use in primarily non-Western countries. However in recent years controversies have erupted when consumer goods bearing the symbol have been exported (often unintentionally) to North America. For example, a few years ago a plastic toy showing an animal sporting a swastika was pulled from shelves after complaints from consumers, although the Chinese-based manufacturer claimed the symbol was presented in a traditional sense and not as a reference to the Nazis. Due to its association with Nazi Germany and Hitler, the swastika, whatever its significance may be in non-Western cultures, is now considered a taboo symbol in North America and Europe.
In 1995, the City of Glendale, California scrambled to cover up over 900 cast iron lampposts with swastika-like symbols throughout the downtown portion of the city; the lampposts had been forged by an American company in the early 1920s, and had nothing to do with Nazism.
In 2004, Microsoft released a "critical update" (Knowledge Base Article 833407) to remove two swastikas from the font Bookshelf Symbol 7. The font had been bundled with Microsoft Office 2003.
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