Technology

This is a tricky one.

It really isn't and is, if anything, a "solved problem" in the scientific/medical community.

If a bigot says the sky is blue, they’re not wrong about that.

The reality is that it is almost never one person saying something. And you can EASILY prioritize the other orgs that came to a similar decision. It is more about marketing and less about ideology, but people generally attribute calculus to Newton over anyone else even though it was largely an evolution and codification of existing concepts.

A more timely example might be Einstein and Relativity. The Theory of Relativity (and all the other fun stuff Al did) very much came out of previous work... much of it by the German physicists who didn't flee nazi Germany. But (again, in large part because of marketing) that tends to get ignored in favor of the Jew who got the hell out of nazi Germany and put his brain to good use.

And if the reality is that it truly did come out of hatred and evil (e.g. a surprisingly small amount of medical research does indeed come out of the atrocities of WW2). You don't tell someone "Hey, this medicine came from torturing and murdering Romani twins". You give it to them, maybe think a bit if you are aware, and move on. And any historical discussion provides all the context and uses that context as a thought discussion.

You don't instead say "Okay. if we got all this great shit out of torturing people in the past... maybe we should give money to concentration camps?"

That is to say, we might deliberately use that code for anti-hate purposes, perhaps, subverting the bigot’s preferred goals.

This comes up somewhat often. And, in theory, it sounds great. HP Lovecraft was a RIDICULOUSLY bigoted bastard even by the standards of his time (look up what his cat was named...). And yet, his stories have more or less become synonymous with discussions of homosexuality and persecution. And that is awesome. But it also leads to countless people every year deciding to "read the original works" and realizing... lovecraft had a few good ideas (that were mostly REALLY offensive takes on existing religions) but was a HORRIBLE writer. But they took hold.

Which brings up folk like jk rowling who are also hateful bigots. But because everybody can't stop glazing Harry Potter just because they grew up with it, someone who is a fairly mediocre writer who wrote REALLY generic YA continues to get more and more money to support actively hateful things.

Because the core is that this "We'll use it even though we hate you" is just promoting the idea of a meritocracy. You can be such a good writer/coder/whatever that people will begrudgingly praise you. And, much like "you are a great coder so you don't need people skills", it just makes for a REALLY toxic world.

There’s a really neat and geometrically useful symbol; fourfold symmetry, previously used by Hindus, that picked up an extremely negative association around 90 years ago, for example, and short of humanity forgetting history, we’re never getting that one back.

Similarly, bullshit.

Spend ANY time in Asia or any other region with a large concentration of Hindu or Buddhist people. As a Westerner, it is always a bit of a shock to look at a map of Tokyo and see a LOT of swastikas. At which point you immediately realize "Oh, they aren't Nazis. They are Buddhists. I am an idiot".

Because context matters. An Indian person who has a big swastika on their wall? First off, it probably is drawn differently. But second? It very much is unlikely to mean they actually want to eradicate anyone who isn't aryan. Whereas that white guy with a swastika tattooed on his head? Homeboy probably isn't celebrating the idea of the Buddha stepping on his face.

Which is why fricking Germany has zero problems with swastikas to represent Hindu and Buddhist and Jainist and so forth religion. Walking down the street with one would probably result in a "... Please don't do that" but the people who have the most reason to feel shame and hatred for that symbol? They understand it has multiple meanings.

Also: I don't think a bunch of bigoted assholes wanting to be bigots is at all comparable to usurping/repurposing a holy symbol but you do you.