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Xbox Live Enforcement — No Swastika Logo
itwbennett writes "It's one of those questions that really should never come up, but as blogger Peter Smith points out, Stephen Toulouse, the head of Xbox Live enforcement, is used to fielding all sorts of strange questions. Recently, one of those questions was apparently 'Can I use a Swastika as my logo in Call of Duty: Black Ops?' When Toulouse responded with the obvious answer ('No, of course you can't, we'll ban you.') he was met with some pushback by people he refers to as 'contrarians' and 'internet pundits' who decided to educate him on the long and storied history of the swastika as a symbol of good fortune and how just because the Nazis used it, it doesn't make the symbol itself a bad thing. Toulouse covers the topic on his blog in a post titled Context and it's an interesting read if for no other reason than to get a peek inside the day-to-day issues the Xbox Live Enforcement team deals with."
While the symbol (and the name) are older, there are many ways to draw the original symbol that barely or superficially resemble the Nazi emblem: From orientation (right or left-facing; the Nazi flag always faced right) to the rotation (the Nazi flag stands on end at a 45% angle) to the color (the Nazi flag is red-white-black).
That implies a hazy line, but it redefines the offense as one of intent, context and of what a reasonable observer would see.
If you draw something like this, you can use the "traditional symbol of luck" defense; if you draw this, then it's a fairly obvious lie.
Believe it not (and apparently you don't), his view is normal and commonly held. People arguing in this way for something like the use of swastikas tend to be immature or lying about their motives. There's nothing cool about swastikas, even for Hindus (it's a sacred symbol after all).
What the hell? I really can't scroll down on your site without javascript enabled?
I'm sure your content was compelling though.
His view is commonly held. The people who are arguing, most likely, are only doing so for the sole purpose of arguing. I can't say whether he "knows best" as a general principle, but it's a good call. And an obvious one.
When's the last time you heard the word "swastika" and didn't immediately think about its role in Nazi Germany? Here's my stream-of-consciousness: "NAZIS! HITLER! WORLD WAR II! DEATH CAMPS!" and then, if I think about it a little longer, I might think, "Hindu mythology? Wait, was that Hindu or something else? Maybe Sikh? I don't think that's really a Sikh thing...they've got the turbans but I'm not sure what else...what other religions are there in India? Jainism? No, that's not right...it's not the Buddhists, I don't think...must be Hindu. Doesn't it point the other way, though? Do they do it both ways? I should check out the Wikipedia article. Maybe I should look up Sikhism, too."
When's the last time you saw a swastika in a movie or a flier or a tattoo or a T-shirt, and it wasn't this bad boy or a reference to it?
These people live in the same universe as we do; it's merely a matter of being contrarian, and a video game (correction: this video game, I won't speak for all possible video games) is not really an appropriate platform for reclaiming the symbol.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
When's the last time you saw a swastika in a movie or a flier or a tattoo or a T-shirt, and it wasn't this bad boy or a reference to it?
The last time I saw a swastika, it looked something like this: http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/images/symbols/swastika-chinese-amulet-cc-rubicon-200.jpg
Let me try to list all the recent times I've seen swastikas:
- once, in a screenshot of 4chan trying to be funny
- three times, in a world history textbook, talking about the Third Reich
- at least fifty times, at the local Buddhist temple
- at least thirty times, in various good-luck charms sold at local flea markets
- once before every important exam I take in school, in a good-luck charm passed down to me from my mother (it looks a lot like the one I linked to)
- at least twice, in friends' houses, where they are said to bring good luck
Perhaps, wherever you live, swastikas aren't commonly used, and perhaps you have no interest in other cultures. There's nothing wrong with that. But to assume that your experience holds true for the entire world - and that the swastika universally no longer holds any meaning besides that which was ascribed to it by Nazi Germany - is laughable.
In Western Europe and North America, the swastika didn't have very much meaning before World War II, so after World War II, it became strongly associated with Nazism. But in Southeast Asia, the swastika has been a symbol of good fortune for thousands of years, and a fleeting decade-long regime in some far-off country did very little to change that.
Even in the West, such as in the United States, there are many immigrants from Asian countries. I am one of those people, and if someone showed me a swastika (and it wasn't enclosed in a white circle on a background of red), I would think "good luck" before I thought "Nazis", and I bet a significant number of other people in Western countries would, as well.
I'm not saying that banning swastikas in Xbox Live was a bad decision. It was probably the correct decision, especially if the majority of the Xbox Live users in question are American - though I agree with metrix007 that this guy could have had a better tone about it. I am, however, saying that the association between the swastika and nothing but Nazi Germany is far from universal.
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I guess they do this to try to keep people from spamming in different languages, but it can be annoying.
It is.
The reason, BTW, is that when Slashdot allowed all Unicode characters, trolls started using RtL markers to mess with the site's layout, so the admins
a) created a whitelist of allowed characters to prevent not just current but also future control characters from hitting the site (good)
b) made it so that pretty much no characters other than the Latin1 ones were on that list (bad)
c) never updated the list again (worse).
Speaking as a Buddhist... most of the Buddhists I know avoid using the symbol for two very simple reasons: 1, it's a symbol of pain and hatred for those around us, and 2, there are other symbols that carry the same essential meaning. The fundamental rule of Buddhism is "do no harm", and that symbol has become a symbol of harm for a great many people.
It's also worth mentionning that Hitler's use of the symbol was a little borked... he actually used a mirror image of the actual symbol.
So yeah. Anybody who's playing that game and wants to use the symbol is probably doing it for the shock value, or to try to piss people off.
Reread what was written. I didn't say the symbol is bad, I said that it's become a symbol of hatred for those around me, and that out of respect for those people, I don't use the symbol myself.