"Second Life does not allow Nazi iconography as it broadly offensive."

I think that is succinct and well said /clap


oooo lookee lookee, the swastika in traditional Hindu form! amazing how some dots and curves added to the symbol totally changes how it's perceived!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hindu_swastika.png

Well, believe me Eggy, It KILLS me that some Americans have no idea where Iraq is. This is a recent phenomenon though. Within the past ten to 15 years, our educational system has gone down the tubes.

The standards have become SO bad in schools now (so in a sense I suppose I am agreeing with you) that many have no clue or do not care to know where ANY other country is that is not in North America. There is absolutely NO excuse.

However, I am wondering what some Americans not knowing where Iraq is has to do with this particular conversation.

Please note that Mexico and many other Latin American countries did not participate in WWII (certainly not for a lack of the Germans trying to court them in the early part of the 20th century). I have several close friends who are of Mexican, or South/Central American nationality/heritage. Most are non-US nationals working in the US, i.e. the real thing, not tainted by Americanism, not too terribly much anyway, beyond the allure of better wages and "successful capitalism", or nationalism beyond the borders of their own respective countries. Most are fairly proud of their origin/heritage. Yet, they ALL know about WWII. I would think one would have to be raised by wolves or other wild animals to NOT know. Let's be realistic here.

I live in a state that is 90% rural farmland, iron mining areas, fishing areas, or logging forests, they all know about WWII, at least those I have spoken to, which are many. I travel to outlying areas all the time for work, and usually they each know someone who served or died in WWII. Rural has ZERO to do with it. IF there are rural Portuguese who don't even know about WWII, how can you criticize some Americans for not knowing where Iraq is? WWII was in your "back yard".

Please don't turn this into an indictment of Americans.

Past freedom of speech cases in the US have set precedence that the nazi symbol itself is broadly offensive. I didn't read all 5 pages of the thread yet, but you can recall Price Harry of England raised an uproar when he wore the outfit to a costume party a few months ago.

Obviously, an encyclopedia is not a "public place" and it is certainly in context.


It's about context. In public, it's hard to find a context where it may be appropriate. (perhaps an announced historical event) On the Internet, it depends of the content of the site.


I don't ever like blanket bans on any kind of speech. Context is important.
If I wanted to build a World War II Museum in SL, I sure as hell would want the ability to show the nazi uniform.

Now I'll go and read the whole thread.

My answer to all three boils down to intent. I think robotic, unthinking adherence to the TOS is a poor way to run the forums compared to tuning in and getting a feel for what is actually being said.

This holds true regardless of which side of the fence you are on...

a person that who has a benign thread locked because it technically violates the rules
OR
a person that gets a pass for posting harmful content by skirting the TOS on technicalities.

I'm comfortable with having well-trained Linden admins making judgement calls based on a loosely defined TOS. This way they can enforce what they feel will be damaging vs nurturing for the forums. I am not comfortable with admins locking threads because the thread meets some checklist-driven criteria.

I don't think the second question here makes the first biased, as pointed out earlier... Taking away the second sentence doesn't change the question--"Do you consider ALL Nazi symbolism offensive?" An encyclopedia entry is just an example of the most minimal and non-offensive Nazi symbolism possible. If your answer to the second question is yes, the answer to the first is also yes. Perhaps it shows a little bias on the writer's part but I don't think it's effecting anyone's answer, is it?

But my answer is no, not at all. It's part of history, this "ostrich" behavior where people are too afraid to face what happened in the past has to go... If it's erased or nearly invisible to people, how the hell will anyone remember it?

I do think there's a boundry called "common decency" where you do put reasonable restrictions on something like this, of course, but blanket bans or stomping out it's existence is going too far. It's almost always common sense identifying Nazi symbolism meant to be offensive from symbolism meant for another purpose (or coincidental as in war films), usually context helps.



Call me a biased American for supporting an American rights point of view, but no I don't think it should be banned. I think even complete freaking morons that display Nazi crap in a positive light (nonviolent of course) should be allowed to. If you ban that, you set a standard which can expand into banning all kinds of stuff if it gets out of control. Accepting that they weren't perfect, I think the American forefathers wisely allowed for this for a reason. (No offense to Europeans/others who may not have similar laws of course.)



No...but maybe yes? From a legal and corporate standard LL may be obligated to ban certain things. I wonder, have the "ostriches" in Germany banned this type of thing yet? That may be enough reason for LL to have to ban it right there if Germany is imposing some sort of internet ban. I can't remember what I last heard, but if I were a betting type, I'd bet that it is banned or blocked strongly. (Or is SL still not officially released in Europe? If not then the European laws may not matter.)

1) Do you personally consider any and all "Nazi iconography" offensive? If you happened to open an encyclopedia on the page about Hitler and saw a big red flag with a swastika on it, would you feel offended by it?

It depends on the context - this is an entertainment medium. What purpose is served by displaying Nazi iconography in this type of medium? The swastika and SS uniforms and unit names that have connections with atrocities in WWII are even banned in WWII Online so why the hell we'd need or want them here is beyond me.

2) Do you believe that, in general people should not be able to display "Nazi iconography" on the internet, or in public? Even if it's not meant to endorse it or portray it in a positive light?

Once again I'd ask you - what is the need? You've found another soapbox here to jump on and start waving your 'freedom of speech' banner thats all this is.Dispalying Nazi symbols would depend on the context - in museums its fine,in books to educate it's fine in 'games' on the internet where its open to abuse it's NOT fine.

3) Do you believe that these things should fall under a blanket ban here on SL in particular?

Yes - without question.

In closing I'll say this, once again your here in SL's forums beating the freedom drum with zero concept of reality.Like a taste of reality?



Your kind of freedom still see's coloured people lynched and shot for no other reason that they're the wrong colour my friend.Your kind of freedom wont allow these people to use the same dam drinking fountains as whites.Your kind of freedom has these SAME Nazi's running all over your country butchering people who THEY deem to be unworthy of breathing the same air as good decent white folks.

So do everyone a favour eh, and stop talking SHITE.

The graveyards of Europe & the Pacific are full of American people who did'nt think like you do thank god. You come in here and talk about freedom and the Nazi's were and are EVERYTHING thats the exact opposite of freedom. The people of Germany once thought like you and they still did'nt beleive what they'd done when the allies showed them films of Bergen Belsen.

History & mistakes CAN be repeated - do we need to stop this happening? GOD yes.

The one thing you somehow fail to realise is that someone will ALWAYS abuse 'freedom' just as Adolf Hitler did in his rise to power. You say it's ok to display this kind of thing in SL and I GUARENTEE you we'd have KKK groups and SS groups running around all over the place.I still have pics of the crematoria that was built here and the two sick f***s that built it dressed in SS uniforms & I still have pics of one group going around clubs in KKK outfits burning crosses and preaching race hate - tell these morons that it's ok and we'd all be doomed.

Agreed. Now people would romanticize it, for the sake of "art". Bleh. Concentration camp ruins preserved as museums serve to remind us of WHAT NOT TO DO, and are one thing. They were the REAL THING. Post war constructs romanticizing Nazi functions and/or regalia are another, and are hurtful to some, therefore I agree with LL's decision. It's amazing how easily folks can become desensitized. I have to agree with the poster who recognized that there should be no time limit on the remembrance of what the Nazis did to Poland, Britain, France, and all the rest.

We have forgiven Germany, i.e. its people, but we will never forgive the Nazi party and the pain they imparted on other Europeans. To romanticize the Nazi Swastika is inexcusable.

Here in Europe we are brought up to critically evaluate our political system. Don’t condescend to us because you gloriously worship your system and are ignorant to its flaws. Every system has flaws.

The only ostrich I see here is you with your head firmly stuck in a quagmire of patriotism. Your country criminalise people who burn your flag, is that not an oppression of free speech? Can you not think that the same horror that you Americans see in this might be the same horror some feel in Europe when they see a Nazi flag?

They are not ignorant ‘ostriches’ but people who obviously feel deeply about the associations the flag has.

Considering Garaod's post was not inflammatory and he specifically framed it with the fact that he's looking at the topic through American bias, I think it's unfounded and unnecessary for you call him condescending and use such hyperbole by saying we "gloriously worship [the American] system"


He's not going on and on about how great America is. Your presumption is false, ergo your conclusion is unfounded.


Do your homework. The US Supreme Court has upheld that this is a legal expression of free speech.

I have finally finished reading the thread, and it seems there are two views of the qustions here, the Real and the Ideal.

Ideally I agree with Eggy.

Reality is something else.

I was born in Germany, and grew up in Rhodesia now Zimbabwe. As a German going to school with 99% British kids, in the 60s, I was automatically a Nazi, since I was German. Everyone just about had lost relative in the war, killed by Germans or the war Germany provoked. And I was a German. Simple logic, kids still use that kind of logic.

I told them it wasn't me that did it... the answer was, it was my father/family/country, and I was responsible too.

That disappeared or got a LOT less in the 80's. And when people got to know me, I was no longer a monster, just strange... For being a German, and for what we did.

I did make friends amomg others with several Jewish people in Zimbabwe, because both they and I shared a common German heritage, so we had a lot in common. But it was a distant friendship. Which is understandable.

When I returned to Germany in 1991, I discovered how deeply the wounds of the Nazi era were, and how the country has endeavoured with all possible methods to keep this from ever becoming an open issue again, including the "ostrich like" banning of the symbols in any context, other than purely educational.

Having experienced how inflamed people become when this subject becomes open, and how a general aversion of all things German is the usual result, I can only say, In Reality: The Symbols are in themsleves Inflammatory, and any display of them outside of a PURELY Educational context a) Offends the victims of this era, and their realtives and friends and b) causes a schism between Right Minded People and Germans in general.

I thought the total ban that existed in Germany on any use of the symbols and gestures of this time was draconian, when I came back to Germany. However, seeing the debate surrounding this that is still Highly Charged on all sides, in Real Life, I understand that, in Reality, a total ban is the only way to prevent the Symbology taking on a vicious life of its own.

Okay, I should have added 'Call me European biased but....". It may not have been inflammatory to you, but then it was only Europeans he was calling 'ostriches', which I feel is being condescending especially when giving us the wisdom of the American forefathers. It seems to be okay to say this then as long as you add ‘no offence’ after it.

Was Flag burning not criminalised at the end of eighties? Of course I expect it not to be still criminalised how the hell would you enforce a law like that? I brought it up as example of the emotions some people feel when they see a flag. To imply that the Germans are somehow ignorant because they don’t want to see a nazi flag, I feel, is disregarding the deep feelings that the have towards it.

Fritz, the whole underlying mechanics of this world is that our reality is progressively shaped by human ideals. WW2 itself was a battle of two ideals - fascism versus democracy

Oh and please no pics of ostriches they scare the shit out of me.

And I believe that democracy won. As someone wisely said in an earlier post 'we have forgiven the german people' but to quote McArthur 'You can shoot a person but you cant shoot an ideal', and THAT is what Nazi images represent.

WWII is long over but the swastika lives on and so do the ideals that those Nazi's from 60 years ago held true.This is not about history or freedom of speech this is about the future.The Fascist party in France has a very firm foothold in politics so you cant ever say that lessons have been learned,you cant EVER say that this is history because our world is full of race hate and bigotry - all of this is symbolised by those images from 60 years ago.

Last year on the anniversary of D-Day two frenchmen were arrested for spray painting the swastika & Nazi slogans on the graves of allied soldiers who died to liberate their country - thats not history.What those images represent are a living.breathing cancer in our society that will not EVER be erased as long as something as stupid and pointless as this is debated in a dam internet game.

Just remember ONE thing before you answer this post again - MILLIONS of people died in WWII to grant you the very freedom your screaming about being denied in these forums,under a fascist regime you could be shot for uttering such things.

Show some RESPECT.

Great post.

then show some respect to MY home country (france)

looks like the little bdsm game ran in another post got some peoples nut here, if i find nazi uniforms sexy, am i a nazi ? i dont think, to me it push forward an impression of strictness and dominance. Good? bad? i never said you had to look at it.

Why the hell so many peoples keep bitching about IMAGES!

I detest everything the nazi flags stands for but let them have their nazi private islands. You can't stop people thinking. They know how much it offends everyone so only allow it on the private Islands. See it as f**ked up children playing with soldier sets. There is no way we can convince the dedicated they are wrong. Even when they see the bodies of the thousands of Jews they still deny it.

If people are going to get corrupted by it, there's more chance that it will happen outside this game than inside it. I'll laugh in scorn at the irony of them creating a nazi ghetto on an island.

If you find nazi-uniforms sexy you can play out any fantasy you like with it in your own bedroom. You dont need to expose that imagery onto others.

The person starting that thread reminds me of the girl who started the 20-something pages long thread about having cybersex while playing in an child-AV (search for "a Newbie with a kid-AV". They both dont sound like they meant to hurt people or expected to raise such fuss, it comes across more as if they naively start a thread about AVsex that involves some higly-controversal imagery (in that case a childrensbody engaged in sexual activities, in this case Nazi-imagery), that suddenly explodes in their faces. While i dont think they meant harm, i do think that in both cases they can do harm. So I agree with LL on this one.

why the hell do peoples have the feeling they must talk about things they find not admissible in a reductive way for the person?
now THIS is offense

Much of this thread is sickening because it displays for us the poor state of education of both Europeans and Americans, but especially Europeans, and especially West Europeans in countries that were themselves until only recently under fascism. Trust me, pastoral agrarian societies in Western Europe, oblivious to the very wars and genocides their ways of life helped create, are really nothing to celebrate -- many fled them, and rightly so.

In other words, we've got the usual 20-30-something tekkie smug, arrogant, limited, mainly European point of view (and Asian as well, by way of Europe in some cases), -- the kind of point of view exactly which has historically been responsible for much of the havoc of the 20th century, and is still responsible, and could be taking this havoc to the Internet unless they are challenged. This point of view heartily deserves a challenge, because it's willing to give a pass not only to Nazism and Communism, but just about any ideology that shores up its own bastion of power based on the notion of a limited concept of man and technology at the center of the universe, and the highest value. We've seen what past centuries of war and mass murders have brought us, but they've learned nothing, even if we have.

A particularly specious argument is that the symbols like the swastika had some prior "sanctified" existence representing "balance" or some such. This completely overlooks the fact that the Nazis drew on these old pagan traditions and their symbolism precisely because they offered support for their own pernicious ideologies -- yes, Enabran, pernicious.

So they don't get a pass, and LL is right to ban them. They ought to consider banning symbols of communism in a celebratory context as well. That they don't do this is part of their education gap, and the education gap of many in understanding the Lenin and Stalin Great Terror. They think there's some positive social justice function of communism that you can strip out and keep tied only to something like the flag of the PCI. I'm not for sanitizing symbols of mass murder in that way.

Banning, in the Linden context, isn't so much about censorship -- it's a private club and if people don't like the rules of this private club, let them go to some more raucous game like Sociolotron or make their own game or whatever.

Rather, it's about preventing the celebration, glorification, and even sanctification of these symbols in neo-versions of these ideologies which always involve persecution of minorities and creating unfreedom for all but the "ideological advance garde". LL keeps these symbols out, so that griefers and such don't celebrate them and what they represent by creating replicas of them in the game.

A phrase like this is so typical of the unconscious and even beligerent anti-Semitism we find in Europe today:



I'm quite aware that the poster is somehow disassociating himself from this concept, but the fact that he is willing to put it there and believe there is a sampling of opinion that adheres to this notion -- without also putting a judgement on it-- is typical of the problem.

The Holocaust wasn't just about the Jews, of course, though it is primarily the story of the Shoah, the persecution and mass murder of the Jewish people in Europe. Of course gays, Catholics, Roma, and other minorities were also caught up, as were righteous Germans who tried to oppose the Nazis and help their victims.

The Holocaust was about a Crime Against Humanity, and was recognized as such at Nuremberg and later in the Geneva Contention and the Genocide Treaty.'

I'm confident that some day, when Stalin's henchmen finally die off in the former Soviet Union, the Soviet crimes will also be recognized for the Crime Against Humanity that they were (and are).

Killing of many people isn't just sad because it's a multiplicity of many people's deaths; genocide is a special crime, a crime against humanity, meaning, a crime against all of us. It is a crime that now the International Criminal Court can open an investigation into, and prosecute. Genocide seeks to annihilate a people, their race, their history, their contribution to the story of humanity. As such, it is indeed a crime greater than genocide --and many people had to sacrifice much for decades for this awareness to take root.

The failure to grasp what Nazis and their pagan symbols mean; the failure to grasp what Communism is by its very nature; the lack of awareness of what genocide is -- these are all horrible gaps in education. They're yet another example of how tiny, provincial minds without sufficient education, far from opening up and gaining awareness on the Internet, in fact replicate themselves like kudzu, and create a bastion of conservatism and a substrate for the success of more totalitarian ideologies in neo-cyber clothing.

LL is right to try to keep some of this in check, and to consciously -- or unconsciously -- help in finishing the education of many ignorant people.

How do people get ignorant like that? Well, it might have something to do with playing hours of video games instead of reading the classics, especially history books. It might have to do with the arrogance and insularity of youth. Only the people on this thread who can bring forth actual relatives who have fought in World War II or died in it (as I can) or who died at the hands of Nazis as Soviet guest-workers, or in Stalin's labor camps (as I can) seem to have any grasp of why this is "wrong".

Someone asked in another thread whether Second Life creates greater tolerance.

Answer: it doesn't.

To paraphrase..."I'm not making a reference to the Nazis in a mass genocide type of way, just in a sexy-busty-outfit way".

That in itself is what is causing a lot of offense. To many people, viewing the third reich in any manner other than as butchers and genocidal murderers is to downplay the seriousness and tragedy they brough unto the world. The atrocities committted in the name of Nazi Germany are so extreme that for many people there is no room in to even entertain the concept of looking at it in a lighthearted or humourous light.

Nazi icons are not the only example of this. To this day, it is my understanding that Americans are not allowed anywhere near the nuclear-devastated city of Hiroshima.

It is not about the image of some busty blond in a parody of a nazi concentration camp that is the offense here. It's the consideration of Nazi Germany in any light other than in the context of the millions of lives they tortured and snuffed out.


- Newfie

In the real world, the only speech that requires protection is unpopular speech. That's why the American Civil Liberties Union has in the past sent Jewish lawyers to defend the right of the Ku Klux Klan to peacefully assemble and speak. That's why black author Alex Haley published an interview with the head of the American Nazi Party. That's why pornographer Larry Flynt won acquittal by the courts for his vitriolic attacks on televangelists and other pious hypocrites. Either freedom of speech applies to morons, monsters and smut-peddlers, or it can be taken from anybody.

But in the virtual world (as in most private venues), you play by the rules set by whoever is hosting the party. If they tell you not to use the word "froobish" and you construct a tower of froobish, they have every right to toss you out on your ear... and nobody's free speech rights are even scruffed in the process. You can argue that the froobish rule is unfair, but it doesn't change the fact that the company has an inalienable right to make and enforce any rules they see fit.

Let me know if that changes. Some friends and I would like to crash one of Bush's private staged and scripted "Town Hall Meetings".

the fact is most countries diabolise the nazi as supreme outrage to humanity to hide their acts of the past, i can give a few examples of what was as horrible than this even in the "oh so great american nation"

maybe some forgot the black peoples slavery, when they where considered like animals and treated aswell, tortured and mutilated at the sadistic will of theyr owners, in a much older fashion catholics where sending soldiers to slaughter the 'infidels" based on theyr origin and religion does it makes the cross symbol a banned thing?

as said before the staline was also known as a bucher considering he executed more,peoples than hitler in a shorter period of time

lets talk also about the apartheid in africa or the massacre of christians in japan

the whole humanity is building itself in bloodshed every nation had his dark holocaust time because its engraved in humane nature, so dont hide yourself behind the nazi holocauste, the history of your country is as soaked of blood as mine, its just the neverending story about "i am smarter than you and you are the nazi" . on this point of view everybody is guilty.

You think that picturing a nazi flag in sl is sick?
Then USA flag is aswell considering all the bloodbaths it is associated to, and i have nothing agains americans it can be applied to Japan, France (my country) , Russia .... the list is endless.

as someone else said only the winners write the history, and they do at as it fit to them, making their war crimes "acceptable" and "needed sacrifice" and other's "crime agains humanity" and "holocaust".

Congratulations. That manages to be simultaneously false, inflammatory and surpassingly ignorant.

By extension, most of biology is tainted because the Nazis also twisted it to uphold their ideology of a master race, and Christianity is evil because people like Jim Jones and David Korresh used it to justify their own ends.

The swastika is and was a religious symbol denoting harmony. Its misappropriation by evil men doesn't alter that.

Blessed be.

Here's the newest offensive flag, made personally by me