Brockyman said:
Octorok said:
Iwata said:
If you ban the swastika, then you also have to ban the hammer and sickle, no if's, ands or buts. Double standards much?
No, not really. The Hammer and Sickle was representative of a series of leaders and time periods in the 20th Century Soviet Union, many of which varied from Stalin. However the Swastika is associated (primarily, any fucking idiot who says it has a different meaning is wrong. I don't care what it meant before the Nationalist Socialists, it's a Nazi symbol.) directly with the one leader and regime - Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.
And to "boil it down" and suggest that Stalin killed more people than Hitler, I counter by saying that Hitler's actions caused more deaths than Stalin's. World War 2, a conflict which was driven by Hitler, resulted in 70 million casualties. 70 million. That's like if you executed literally everyone in the United Kingdom, and then the population of Scotland once again.
Hitler was, indisputably, more of a "bad guy" than Stalin, and his symbol represents that.
OT : Yes. It's one thing for the Nazi soldiers to be wearing them. They did wear Swastikas and had Swastika flags on their buildings. But the players who have them as their emblem are, bluntly, trolls. Or possibly Nazis, but far more likely to be people trying to be "edgy" and get a rise by using on of the single most recognisably terrible symbols in the world.
I see your point about Hitler being more of a "bad guy" (even though I disagree). WW2 did result in more deaths then Stalin's goologs (spelling?) However, the point was that when compared apples to apples, i.e. people the regime killed via work camps, ethnic cleansing, and other things not considered to be on the battlefield, Stalin did kill more of his "own" people.
As far as your comment about the hammer and sickle.... even though it was used for a series of leaders for 60ish years, doesn't make the emblem any less offensive. Soviet Communism/Socialism was just as evil and destructive as Nazism, and could have been worse. Had the United States and its NATO allies not have held strong, then another world war would have been inevitable, maybe with wide scale nuclear destruction.
I would put Hitler and Stalin about on the same level...maybe a little bit more toward Hitler b/c of the more deaths via war, but any defense you can provide of Stalin is petty at best. They were both evil monsters, and Nazism (which did have it's roots in National Socialsim) and Soviet Communism/Socialism are both horrible, failed forms of government, forms of oppression.
AS FAR AS THE TOPIC: Neither the Swastika or the Hammer and Sickle should be banned. They are parts of history. However, the developers SHOULDN'T have made them either available to use as a player emblem. I do think that's in bad taste..mainly b/c a player (even in ignorance) is wearing the colors of our enemy (all be it long dead enemies.
Out of the several times I've been quoted, I'm only responding to this post because it's the only one that seems to see any sense. People just seem to be acting like because they personally aren't "offended" by Swastikas, it should be fine for players to have it emblazoned on their Playercards. A message to millions of players around the globe.
As for those stating that the Nazi zombies wear Swastikas? Play the German version. It'd be a big problem if a Swastika got displayed in Germany, and there's nothing at all stopping me from playing with Germans with an illegal symbol.
Also, this was the first post that didn't try to make the ridiculous point that Christian Crusades were a terrible series of wars, and as such, the cross should be banned.
I'm going to put this extremely simply - You can't ban the Cross. You can say, "Double Standard" all you like about the Hammer and Sickle too, but the fact of the matter is Germany started and propagated the single worst thing ever to happen in human history, and this symbol is demonstrable of that.
I'd actually say, even though you present a nice enough way to describe both parties when comparing them, an ugly act to do well, that Nazism is more offensive than Communism. Partly because Communist Russia never started such an Earth-rending war of total European and Oriental destruction, partly because frankly, the Swastika is associated with the attempted extermination of an entire race and the single most unethical, tortuous experiments ever carried out by man. And frankly, it's unfair, but history is written by the victor. The Nazi's crimes were known throughout the globe long before crimes of the Soviet Union came to light.
A lot of the people responding are from the US, too. Well it might not be bad for you to see a Swastika, but seriously, go to France, or Russia or better yet, Germany and try explaining how it's harmless.
Whew. And if I could be bothered going back to find it, I'd like to point out that directly insulting me is different than pointing out that anyone who thinks that a bloody Swastika isn't a Nazi symbol is one of two things. 1) From some remote culture or location where it means something to their religion and they were not touched by WW2. 2)An idiot.
As for your last bit - well, only the Hammer and Sickle is "available". The Swastika can just be made with pretty basic shapes. Red square, white circle and 6 black rectangles of varying size and rotation.
