Page 1 of 1

[Inquiry] Is The Wolfsangel Symbol a Hate Symbol

PostPosted: Wed Sep 11, 2019 6:00 pm
by Kiez
Hello Moderators of NS, I come to you tonight bearing an inquiry that I would like answered. I am currently making an Emblem for one of my Air Force Squadrons and am intending on adding the Wolfsangel Emblem onto the Squadron Emblem. My question is: Is the Wolfsangel Emblem banned under the rules of NS?

Source to Review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsangel

PostPosted: Wed Sep 11, 2019 10:06 pm
by Kyrusia
[violet] wrote:As per the FAQ, we don't permit content that is obscene, illegal, threatening, malicious, defamatory, or spam. The "malicious" category includes material that a reasonable person would believe endorses or celebrates violence against real-life people.

It's fairly clear how this applies to forum posts, but can be ambiguous when it comes to nation pages--in particular, nations that refer to the real world. An example is the use of a swastika as a national flag. The swastika isn't specifically banned on NationStates, because we don't ban particular references or arrangements of pixels. But since it is widely seen to symbolize specific real-life events--in particular, the Holocaust--it is usually unacceptable, as an endorsement of violence against real-life people. (This is regardless of how it's intended: We don't try to peer into minds to judge intent, only how it appears.)

Similarly, there is no ban on mentioning Nazis, or Hitler, or espousing ideological beliefs. However, a nation made up as a cookie-cutter Nazi Germany in its name, region, and custom fields (e.g. motto, currency), with no contrary context or redeeming content, is hard to interpret as anything other than an endorsement of that real-life nation's most well-known acts. So this is unacceptable, too. This is the kind of content that has been getting through lately, and shouldn't have.

That should answer your question. If your usage is malicious, we don't care what the image(s) is, it'll be removed; $some_symbol isn't uniquely banned in a vacuum.