Why is the Coca-Cola logo stamped on this swastika unearthed in Tennessee city park?

An enthusiast with a metal detector made an unusual discovery while combing a city park in Chattanooga, Tennessee — a swastika embossed with the logo of the iconic American brand Coca-Cola.

As instantly recognizable as the soda giant’s branding is, the swastika symbol may have it beat for all the wrong reasons, inextricably linked as it is to Nazism both past and present.

So what is the preferred soda of animated polar bears doing on a swastika? While the Nazis had some powerful supporters in the U.S. during the early 1900’s — most infamously Henry Ford — that isn’t what’s happening here.

Meigs Brainard, whose friend dug up the little relic, posted photos in a Facebook group dedicated to discussing historic artifacts, big and small, discovered by its members.

Meigs Brainard bought the watch fob from a friend who dug it up in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Meigs Brainard bought the watch fob from a friend who dug it up in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

It’s a rare find, Brainard said, “scarce as hen’s teeth.”

This piece of metal is a watch fob made in the 1920s, Brainard told McClatchy News.

Coca-Cola branded swastika fobs have sold at auction with price estimates ranging up to several hundred dollars.

For obvious reasons, the sight of a swastika can stir strong reactions. Brainard reminded commenters on her post that the symbol had been around a long time before it was “hijacked.”

“It has been misused and misrepresented by evil people,” Brainard said. “So once again, let’s be civil and look at the artifact for its rarity, not what Adolf hijacked it for.”

Adolf Hitler adopted the swastika as a symbol of the National Socialist Party, or Nazi Party, in 1920, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. But before his rise to power, nobody would’ve looked twice at a swastika dangling from the chain of someone’s pocket watch, experts on the ancient symbol say.

Coca-Cola used it. Carlsberg used it on their beer bottles. The Boy Scouts adopted it and the Girls’ Club of America called their magazine Swastika,” Steven Heller, a graphic designer and writer, told the BBC in a 2014 interview.

The swastika was popular in western branding and advertising, seen as a symbol of good luck, according to Heller. And though it’s commonly believed to have originated from India, it was used by ancient European peoples as well, including the Greeks, the Celts and Anglo-Saxons, to name a few, the BBC reported.

Its popularity spanned geography and time. In Canada, a street dubbed “Swastika Trail” has many petitioning to change its name, which was given in the 1920s, The Guardian reported.

In Colorado, a Denver suburb bore the name Swastika for 111 years before dropping it in 2019, outlets reported.

Despite the symbol’s long history, it seems unlikely to make a positive comeback any time soon in western culture, Heller said in 2019. A significant barrier to reclaiming the symbol is that the misuse of it didn’t end with World War 2 — that warped legacy is kept alive today by white supremacists and an assortment of like-minded hate groups.

“For the Jewish people the swastika is a symbol of fear, of suppression, and of extermination,” Holocaust survivor Freddie Knoller told the BBC. “It’s a symbol that we will never ever be able to change.”

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