The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was underway in late February 2021 in Orlando, Florida, complete with a golden statue of former U.S. President Donald Trump. And it wasn’t long before controversy unfolded.
Eagle-eyed social media users claimed that the stage where Sen. Ted Cruz, Donald Trump Jr., and others made speeches looked eerily like a Nazi or white supremacist symbol.
The stage at #CPAC2021 is in the shape of a famous Nazi symbol. The Odal rune was used heavily by the SS, including on their uniforms. Maybe a coincidence, but white nationalists will see this as yet another overt signal from the @GOP (stand back & stand by). pic.twitter.com/rVEAyB7jQg
— Oren Jacobson 🔯 (@Oren_Jacobson) February 26, 2021
A short thread on #CPAC2021's unusual stage, which is clearly in the shape of a well known Nazi symbol.
It is also a symbol in use today by American extremists.
Matt Schlapp and the CPAC leadership need to explain how this could have happened. https://t.co/TW9r8JXY9q
— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) February 27, 2021
Some even shared images comparing the stage to old uniforms from Nazi Germany. The image below could have been pulled from a Daily Mail article that claims to show a Nazi SS trooper.
We reviewed videos from CPAC and confirmed that the shape of the stage indeed reflects the images in the above tweets. The first three seconds of the following video show the full stage:
But was it truly a Nazi symbol?
The shape of the stage, a diamond with two prongs extending on one end, is indeed similar to an early European Othala rune also known as the “Odal rune.” According to the Anti-Defamation League this is a popular Neo-Nazi symbol, but as it is part of an ancient runic alphabet system, it has not solely been used as a hate symbol. It also appears in different forms, sometimes without the two prongs pointing upward.
It has, however, been used as the insignia of a number of Nazi divisions during the early 20th century. The rune was used as the logo of the Nazi 7th SS Mountain Division that fought in Croatia and the Balkans in the 1940s. One book “7th SS Mountain Division Prinz Eugen at War 1941-1945: A History of the Division,” with photographs of Nazi soldiers collected by Ian Baxter, features the symbol prominently on its cover. Another historical account by Otto Kumm, a Nazi German commander of the SS during World War II, also features the symbol prominently on its cover. This edition, published in 1995, is available on Amazon.
It was also described as a symbol popular with “skinheads” in a 2006 Edmonton Journal article: “In addition to the swastika, skinheads favor two ancient Nordic runes: the Odal rune which looks like a diamond with tails.”
We have reached out to CPAC to learn more about their choice of stage and will update this post as more information becomes available.
The shape of the Nazi symbol is eerily similar to the shape of the stage at CPAC. However, we are presently unable to confirm whether this was a deliberate choice made by the event organizers. At the moment, we rate this claim as “Unproven.”
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February 28, 2021 at 01:16AM
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