Isn't this where I came in?

Peace, love, woodstock, y'all

The funny thing about this is, I heard it in the late '60's and early '70's, when the Peace Sign wasn't yet 20 years old.*

School board chairman Johan van Puten told Dutch newspaper Trouw that a Google search revealed that the peace sign allegedly contains a Nero cross, which was used in Roman times to represent the torture of Christians, and now apparently has Satanist connotations. It also has connotations with Nazism, as the Teach Peace Foundation writes that it was used as the symbol for Hitler's 3rd Panzer Division. 

It's on Google, it must be true!

It is, of course, all nonsense:

 The peace sign was really designed in 1958 by British artist Gerald Holtom for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which was having its first major march in England. Holtom explained that the symbol superimposed the semaphore letters "N" and "D" over each other.

A quick Google of "Nero Cross" brings up a number of dubious assertions regarding the Peace Sign and this supposedly ancient symbol I've never heard of before.  It's true tradition says Paul was crucified upside down, but I know of no tradition that says that inverted cross became associated with Nero.

What does this prove?  Merely that not much has changed with the advent of the internet:  ignorance and lies still move faster than truth, and that ideas are, indeed, bulletproof**; and more often than not, that's the problem with them.

*I had a pair of leather sandals with leather peace signs on the broad straps across them.  This was over 40 years ago.  I spent 30 vivid minutes one night at a friend's house assuring the mother of another friend that my footwear was neither sinful nor was it Satanic and therefore likely to lead me into sin.  Google "Peace Sign" and if Satan isn't mentioned in one of the first hits your strike, you aren't doing it right.

**Ha!  Get it?