I’m not going to let the Nazis have the skull and crossbones. Sorry. Maybe you didn’t have a pirate stage as a kid, but I sure did. And I refuse to surrender that symbol to literal Nazis just because they happened to use it as one of the many banners they used for evil. Now, I suppose actual historical pirates were pretty evil too. But they weren’t Nazis. And when we celebrate pirates in popular culture, we’re not actually glorifying the acts of historical criminals. We’re basking in the romanticized version of that time and place.

Remember, there is no difference between a totenkopf and a skull and crossbones. The Nazis used one type of totenkopf, but totenkopf is a generic term that has the same meaning as deaths head or skull and crossbones. It’s no different than Germany vs. Deutchland. They’re the same thing. And skull and bones imagery has been used by people since the dawn of time. It’s part of our shared culture and history of humanity. I’m not going to let the Nazis take that from us. It’s bad enough that the Nazis irredeemably corrupted the swastika. Now no one can use this ancient human symbol without being associated with those bastards. And that is a tragedy. We lost something, a little piece of our past. Certainly not the worst of the Nazis crimes, but one of them.

The Nazis used countless symbols. The Swastika was their main one, so it made sense to just go away from using that entirely. But they had several other symbols. And we can’t just surrender to them and just accept that those are now also theirs. Sorry. I’m not giving up pirates.