The Roman eagle was coopted by the Nazis. It's easy to see how religious imagery could be similarly coopted by other fascists.
Inverting symbols can also invert their meaning. In this way the meaning of a symbol depends on ones perspective.
I could also see how some logographic languages could have very similar logograms for concepts like good and evil, making it easy to misread them if the writing was sloppy, worn, or altered after the fact.
