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 d-usa wrote:
Well, some native american tribes here in Oklahoma used the swastika on their basketball uniforms, and the 45th Infantry Division used the swastika as their symbol 80 years ago. So clearly Native Americans and parts of the army were nazis.

Or we can pretend that context matters and just as the swastika had a different meaning prior to WW2, and still has a different meaning with some populations today, a noose in the form of a gallows or in the broader context of a state-sanctioned judicially administered death penalty has a different meaning than a noose hanging from a tree with the threat of an extrajudicial resolution in a state with a known history of lynchings.

I'm not going to lie. This is the only thing I think I could ever agree on with you. Context is important. In India a swastika has a meaning much different than the one the Nazis perpetuated. Also the direction its going matters, so its easy to tell which is religiously symbolic, and which is not.

Lynchings happened on the spot in what ever means were available to them, most commonly trees. Were used illegally to murder other human beings illegally and horribly based on ignorant criteria.
Gallows were used to execute in a slightly more humane manner criminals found guilty of capitol punishment.

All in all, I think this was probably a very real attempt to scare off people from his law, using what is known to be racially biased imagry, most likely in the thought that the people that stole his trailer were most likely black. However if I were black, and stole his trailer, I would probably come back just because of the nooses and see if he had the courage of his convictions.