Neo-Nazi symbol

A circle containing many crooked rays emanating from a center point (sometimes, but not always, a swastika appears in the center).

Sonnenrad, Black Sun (Schwarze Sonne)

The sunwheel is a traditional symbol representing the sun; variants of the sunwheel appear in many cultures today.

Neo-Nazis, racist skinheads

The sunwheel is used as an alternative to the swastika.

The sunwheel has ancient Indo-European roots; as a result, it appears in the traditional symbology of many countries and cultures around the world, including Old Norse and Celtic cultures. There are many variations of the sunwheel; the swastika (and similar rounded variants) are actually sunwheel forms, as is the Celtic Cross. In Nazi Germany, the Nazi Party, the SA, and the Waffen SS all used sunwheel symbology at times, which has led neo-Nazis and other white supremacists today to adopt sunwheel images such as the one shown above. In Europe, this is often done to get around bans on other Nazi imagery. Because of the wide use of sunwheel imagery in many cultures around the world, one should not assume that a sunwheel image necessarily denotes racism or white supremacy, but should rather analyze the symbol in the context in which it appears.