This is making me sick now. How could they not have known?
Not an accident. Odal Rune at CPAC stage
So then, why is the CPAC stage shaped like the odal rune?
To make the resemblance clearer, here is the design outlined in green:
The wings of the CPAC stage lead nowhere – they do not lead to stairs, and the stage’s entrances and exits are in the rear, flanking the back wall. The red triangle toward the rear of the stage similarly serves no apparent functional use. This means that the set was intentionally designed this way, not for its utility, but for its visual appeal – an image that looks, unquestionably, like the odal rune.
A skeptical viewer might protest. “Anything with the right amount of straight lines might look like a rune,” one might say. At least one alt-right commentator has already attempted to lampoon the idea that there is any special resemblance.
The reality of planning an event of this size, importance, and scope, though, is that the design for the set and stage would’ve been decided on months ago. Organizations like the American Conservative Union, which hosts CPAC, spend many months planning their annual event. The design for the stage would likely have been reviewed by a number of people, and most likely had to be approved by a committee.
The idea that no one would’ve noticed the similarity to the odal rune and how that might be interpreted by attendees and viewers is a non-starter. This would be especially true when reviewing set designs that include black and white schematics of the layout. The odal design would have been impossible to miss.
The fact that the design so precisely mirrors the odal rune, in particular, is cause for scrutiny. While Norse imagery has been found among the far right for decades – including its recent appearance tattooed on the body of Jake Angeli, the so-called “Qanon Shaman” – the odal rune has a deeper history of use by fascists and white supremacists, being a symbol widely used by the Nazis during World War II and their descendants.
It beggars belief that the design went through approval and construction without anybody realizing what it looked like – and how it has been used, in the past and in the modern-day.
The odal rune’s historical meaning deals with inherited estates, homelands, or the aristocracy. While the rune is not attested in the Younger Futhark of Scandinavia during the Viking Age, the Old English rune poem described its reflex of the rune as “very dear to everyone / if there in their home they may enjoy / what is right and proper most often in prosperity,” according to Robert Bjork’s 2014 translation.
The use of this particular form of this rune, the “serifed” odal, originated in a Nazi Schutzstaffel (S.S.) unit’s flag; the odal rune was meant to assert the unit’s ethnic German identity while stationed abroad in Yugoslavia during World War II. It was based on the standard flag of the Nazi Party, substituting the odal rune for the swastika. The serifed “odal,” is part of the distinctive iconography of the Nazis and their supporters, although non-serif versions of the rune have appeared in far-right contexts as well. This volkisch interpretation of the odal rune has spread among the far-right internationally as a symbol of white power, and white supremacy.
more here
https://archive.is/QH48C
https://wildhunt.org/2021/02/editorial-yes-that-is-an-odal-rune.html