In this business, one can find oneself traveling down rabbit trails. A promising bit of news may turn out to be not nearly as engaging or important as advertised, or it may be outdated. That sends a writer back to the drawing board. This happened Monday afternoon. A story I thought was worth investigating turned out to have its origins back on December 5, 2023. I muttered a word that I cannot write here and wondered why no one in the media seems to understand the words “news cycle” anymore. But I kept on reading because, occasionally, the story is not just about the facts but the background.
For some reason, on Sunday, KCAL in Los Angeles decided to report on the December 5 incident in West Hollywood, in which Mark Nakagawa decided to walk up to his neighbor’s door and scrawl a swastika on a case of seltzer sitting outside. That neighbor, Leah Grossman, is Jewish and was understandably offended and frightened. She also has a doorbell cam that caught Nakagawa in the act. She caught up with him a few seconds later and confronted him. He feigned innocence and said he was just walking by. KCAL queried Nakagawa on the matter, and he said Grossman had called him a fascist but did not deny drawing the swastika. Grossman stated that Nakagawa had previously called her a fascist during a homeowners’ meeting because she hung an Israeli flag from her balcony in the wake of the October 7 attacks. Grossman commented, “What’s going on in the world has really opened up a crevasse of anti-Semitism, and I think people feel really emboldened to push Jewish people around. People just shouldn’t get away with this.”
Mark Nakagawa and the swastika he was caught on camera drawing. pic.twitter.com/w4YsXiT2B9
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) March 4, 2024
The station said that Nakagawa also claimed that he was trying to “educate” Grossman about how a swastika is an ancient Buddhist symbol of love. He told KCAL, “The way I went about it, in hindsight, the way I went about it was not the right way to go about it. It was bad judgment on my part. I realize that.”
The symbol to which Nakagawa is referring is indeed a swastika and does appear, sometimes, in an inverted form in some ancient Buddhist symbology. In fact, the swastika and variants of it can be found in cultures across the world, including in some Native American cultures. Those tribes stopped using the swastika in conjunction with the rise of the Third Reich, its bloody history, and Hitler’s deranged, self-appointed cultural scions. Because that is what thoughtful, civilized people do. And some images cannot be salvaged.
KCAL also stated that there is a movement by some to “take back the swastika as a sacred symbol by educating people about its origin.” But as the Daily Mail points out, Nakagawa is a retired pastor in the United Methodist Church. One must ask why he has a sudden interest in rehabbing the swastika’s image.
Let us assume for a moment that Nakagawa really was interested in restoring the “legacy” of the swastika. That sounds ludicrous, but even if it is true, why did he choose to do so by drawing one on his Jewish neighbor’s groceries? Especially a neighbor whom he allegedly called a fascist for flying an Israeli flag from her balcony? And why less than two months after the October 7 attack? That is hardly an action befitting a man of the cloth, even a retired one.
Antisemitism is making a roaring comeback, at home and abroad. And everyone knows why. One could argue that the attempt to soft-pedal or reclaim the swastika is a part of that. Nakagawa’s pathetic excuse when confronted with his actions is a standard tactic when the Left realizes that a statement or an action did not land the way it was intended. It suddenly becomes a joke, satire, or hyperbole, or part of a misunderstanding. But Nakagawa’s swastika leaves no room for interpretation.