Coast Guard Announces It Is Super-Duper Double-Plus Sure Swastikas Are Bad
Apparently there was some confusion.
After some actual debate about this on Thursday, it now looks as if the United States Coast Guard will continue classifying swastikas as hate symbols after all. What a relief. This is good news for anyone who prefers their local Coast Guard base not resemble something out of The Man in the High Castle.
The Washington Post on Thursday first caught some changes in official Coast Guard documentation that seemed to soften the service’s definition of, and policy on, displaying swastikas, nooses, Confederate flags, and any other symbol or icon that makes normal people say Hold on, you believe fucking what????
What caught the eye of the Post was the softening in the language of certain policy documents’ guidance on the display of hate symbols. This changed in November, after the American people in their genius voted in a president who surfaces Nazis wherever he goes like the net on an industrial-sized trawler drags fish out of the sea. First, from the last guidance, in February 2023:
The following is a non-exhaustive list of symbols whose display, presentation, creation, or depiction would constitute a potential hate incident: a noose, a swastika, supremacist symbols, Confederate symbols or flags, and anti-Semitic symbols. The display of these types of symbols constitutes a potential hate incident[.]
Compare that to the guidance as revised and released this month:
Potentially divisive symbols and flags include, but are not limited to, the following: a noose, a swastika, and any symbols or flags co-opted or adopted by hate-based groups as representations of supremacy, racial or religious intolerance, or other bias.
Note the difference: We go from displaying a swastika in 2023 being a “potential hate incident” to calling displaying a swastika in 2025 “potentially divisive.”
Potentially divisive! This is a bit like going from saying nuclear holocaust will kill all life on Earth to saying that nuclear holocaust might disrupt agricultural production and make eating a bit tougher.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, responded on X with mockery. As did the department’s assistant secretary for public affairs, whom we already thought about enough this week:
First, y’all are in Washington DC, so y’all don’t get to say “y’all.” Nowhere north of Richmond gets to use “y’all,” no matter what people who live in Loudon County might say. People south of Richmond? That’s our word. Or contraction, whatever.
Second, we do not recommend y’all take DHS spokesnazi Tricia McLaughlin’s word on this one. Even by the standards of officials in Donald Trump’s government, that woman’s lying is in a league of its own. She makes White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt look like George Washington in the honesty department.
The official propagandists at DHS can complain, but you can’t blame people for being unsure. Not with Donald Trump in power. The list of Nazi-adjacent personnel who work for the Trump administration is entirely too long for them to get the benefit of the doubt.
How did this change even happen in the first place? Like all Trump policies, it seems to have come about from the usual bull-in-a-china-shop approach that this administration takes towards everything. First, Trump fired the commandant of the Coast Guard on his first day in office, because the commandant was a woman and therefore by default a DEI hire to the racists and misogynists who chirp about that acronym like parrots with Tourette’s.
Under the commandant’s acting replacement, Adm. Kevin Lunday, the Coast Guard had reworked its policies “to align with the Trump administration’s changing tolerances for hazing and harassment within the U.S. military.” In other words, it was caught up in the chest-thumping, empty-headed faux-tough-guy posturing about warfighting mentality and ending political correctness that mediocrities like Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth think signals strength.
For all the sneering from DHS and Frau McLaughlin, the Coast Guard on Thursday night recognized that whoops, this needless bureaucratic rewriting had left a little too much wiggle room if you are Nazi-inclined or Confederacy-curious. So the service cleared up any confusion with some new guidance that states unequivocally, “The Coast Guard does not tolerate the display of divisive hate symbols or flags,” and “divisive or hate symbols and flags are prohibited.”
Incredible that it needed to be said, but it needed to be said.
On Friday, DHS was trying to cover its ass by blaming reporters for being idiots:
We have our own issues with a lot of mainstream reporting, but pointing out that official government policy documents have some unclear language that could be misinterpreted is one good thing journalists can do. The Coast Guard took it seriously, even if the bigots and sociopaths running DHS social media sites have to turn everything into the Battle of the Bulge.
Which by the way, we feel compelled to remind DHS, the Nazis lost that one, too.
It’s the holidays, when we ask ourselves WWJD? He would donate to keep Wonkette going, of course.
With apologies to The Onion:
MAGA: Why Do All These Nazis Keep Showing Up At Our Rallies?
I like how the Coast Guard went from denial to "we'll look into it" to kind of correcting the language to blaming journalists in the span of 24 hours.