I have been concerned over the argument over Palin's crosshairs and when a caller to the Thom Hartmann show mentioned this morning that they were symbols for the KKK, I got curious. A little googling caused me to find a few websites that explained the crosshairs were called the Celtic Cross or Odin's Cross.
I am not saying that the Celtic Cross is racist in any way. Extremist groups have co-opted Pagan symbols and other symbols from pre-Christian Europe for their own use. I then discovered that the symbol is popular with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups and was adopted as the logo for Stormfront by its founder, Don Black. It was first popularized by the KKK and used by the Nationalist Front in the UK. There is more explanation here;
http://www.adl.org/...
Here is a picture of the Celtic Cross;
I am quite disturbed by this because someone made a conscious decision to use this particular pattern for a crosshair. I did look at some other examples of crosshairs and there are many. Why this one? There are many crosshairs that look like a Celtic Cross, after all it is just a quartered circle. But it just so happens that the one Palin picked is used by neo-Nazi groups? The exact one used by Stormfront? Out of hundreds of crosshair examples it had to be this one? It just so happens that the target on Saturday was Jewish? It just so happens that Palin used the phrase 'blood libel' this morning?
Was the use of this crosshair just a coincidence?
As Palin herself has said in the past "I don't believe in coincidences."