Do you specifically mean as negatively as the swastika or just incredibly closely tied with a particular group the way the swastika is?
Pirates have always been pretty universally despised (although also romanticized) and by the start of the 18th century various iterations of a black flag or sometimes red flag with symbols (typically related to death/mortality) were flown by maritime marauders of various stripes. According to naval historian David Cordingly in Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among Pirates (pg. 135) most pirates between 1716 and 1726 were part of a few loosely organized syndicates which explains the "comparatively rapid adoption of the piratical black flag among a group of men operating across thousands of miles of ocean", Cordingly suggests that the skull-and-crossbone design became standardized at about the same time as the term Jolly Roger was adopted as its name. By 1730, the diversity of symbols in prior use had been mostly replaced by the standard design. Now I would argue that at this point in history the popularization of pirates/pirate imagery was well underway and thus the Jolly Roger was something that even a landlocked person, so long as they were literate, would be familiar with. (The best selling "The Buccaneers of America" by Alexander Exquemelin was published in 1684) and the hugely popular books by Defoe such as Robinson Crusoe and A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirate came a few decades later.
Hello everyone,
In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, including many asking about the deleted comments, which merely compounds the issue. As such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt to answer the question, keep in mind our rules concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed, and posters who break the rules of the subreddit admonished as applicable.
Additionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread.
Thank you!