Tina Turner mural in North Carolina defaced with swastika

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/dec/27/tina-turner-mural-defaced-swastika-north-carolina

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Mural on pull-down storefront of Static Age Records was vandalized after shop closed on 23 December

Employees at a record store in North Carolina say a mural of Tina Turner has been defaced with a red swastika.

The vandalism comes as New York police reported five incidents of possible hate-based attacks against Jews in the city over Hanukkah celebrations.

In the latest reported incident, the symbol was painted on a pull-down storefront that Static Age Records in downtown Asheville uses to honor music legends including Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Lemmy Kilmister from Motörhead and Lou Reed, reported the Asheville Citizen-Times. Hawkins’ image was left unchanged.

The singer’s picture was defaced after the store closed on the evening of 23 December when someone drew the Nazi emblem, though incorrectly, with three of four spiraling arms pointing counterclockwise.

The store’s owner, Jesse McSwain, said someone unconnected to the shop apparently covered the mural in a black sheet before he could address the situation. Static Age called police and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

McSwain said that his store is “a widely inclusive, safe space” and that “hate speech will get you out the door”.

Recent incidents in which swastikas or antisemitic graffiti have been used to vandalize property include a high school in Encinitas, California; a Boston elementary school; and a synagogue in Washington DC. In New York, police said they were stepping up patrols in some Brooklyn neighborhoods with large Jewish populations after possibly antisemitic attacks during the holiday.

New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, said after the latest incident on Friday that police would make themselves more visible in Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg, home to a large Hasidic population, and visit houses of worship and some other places.

“Antisemitism is an attack on the values of our city and we will confront it head-on,” the Democrat mayor tweeted, adding: “Anyone who terrorizes our Jewish community WILL face justice.”

In the latest incident a woman slapped three other women in the face and head after encountering them on a Crown Heights corner, police said. Tiffany Harris, 30, was arrested on a hate-crime harassment charge.

Earlier in the week, a Miami man was charged with hate-crime assault after police said he made an antisemitic remark and attacked a man wearing a yarmulke in midtown Manhattan.

After that attack, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, ordered the state’s hate crimes taskforce to help police investigate the attack, which he called it “a horrific and cowardly act of antisemitism”.