Coast Guard enacts policy calling swastikas, nooses 'potentially divisive'

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Source: Washington Post

The U.S. Coast Guard has allowed a new workplace harassment policy to take effect that downgrades the definition of swastikas and nooses from overt hate symbols to “potentially divisive” despite an uproar over the new language that forced the service’s top officer to declare that both would remain prohibited.

The new policy went into effect Monday, according to written correspondence that the Coast Guard provided to Congress this week, a copy of which was reviewed by The Washington Post. The manual is posted online and makes clear that its previous version “is cancelled.”

Spokespeople for the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the military service, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The symbols issue is expected to come up at a House committee hearing Tuesday.

The Post was first to report on the Coast Guard’s plan to revise its workplace harassment policy last month. The Trump administration called the article “false,” but within hours of its publication the service’s acting commandant, Adm. Kevin Lunday, issued a memo forcefully denouncing symbols such as swastikas and nooses, and emphasizing that both remain prohibited......

The Coast Guard’s policy softening the definition of swastikas — an emblem of fascism and white supremacy inextricably linked to the Nazis’ extermination of millions of Jews and the deaths of more than 400,000 U.S. troops who died fighting in World War II — comes as antisemitism is on the rise globally. At least 15 people were killed over the weekend at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/12/16/coast-guard-swastikas-nooses/

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Coast Guard enacts policy calling swastikas, nooses ‘potentially divisive’

— Freedom Writers Collaborative (@fwcollaborative.bsky.social) 2025-12-16T20:03:34Z