From the article: This article does a good job at pointing out how egregious this is, as GOG's response on Twitter (CW: Replies have actual Nazis in them) absolutely doesn't fully address this. I...
From the article:
GOG has apologized for a "Slavic adventure" newsletter sent out today that featured a number of very distinct Nazi runes in its subject line.
To be clear, this is not a misunderstanding, or images that look kind of alike, or a misinterpretation of an ambiguous situation: That's a Sonnenrad, a kolovrat, and the extremely unmistakable double Siegrune of the SS—quite possibly second only to the swastika as the most distinctive emblem of the Nazi regime.
This article does a good job at pointing out how egregious this is, as GOG's response on Twitter (CW: Replies have actual Nazis in them) absolutely doesn't fully address this. I can't imagine any method of displaying these symbols in this order would look like anything else. An earlier response on Reddit makes things look even worse to me:
What was displayed in several devices as doppelrune is out of our control. ᛋ was displayed as ϟ on several devices (might display for you differently here as well just letting you know). We should pay more attention to checking it on a different systems and devices. I also recognize that placing two such runes next to each other could create an unfortunate association with symbols used by the Nazi regime. This was noticed before distribution, and out of respect for local sensitivities, the material was not sent to the German community.
Emphasis mine. They saw the problem before distribution, and chose to let it fly anyways, taking only the steps necessary to avoid literally breaking German law.
First, it does display very differently for me on Tildes than on reddit. Second, I found this response very illuminating:
What was displayed in several devices as doppelrune is out of our control. ᛋ was displayed as ϟ on several devices (might display for you differently here as well just letting you know).
First, it does display very differently for me on Tildes than on reddit.
Second, I found this response very illuminating:
The Sowilo rune is part of my cultural and historical heritage.
Then why didn't you actually use the Sowlio as you did in the following paragraph?
ᛋ was displayed as ϟ on several devices
You specifically used the Greek Koppa, ϟ, unicode U+03DE instead of the Sowlio, ᛋ, unicode U+16CB. You could have even used the less confusable variation from Elder Futhark, ᛊ, unicode U+16CA.
Even if that could be explained away, the double usage has zero meaning outside of use by the Schuztstaffel.
Yeah choosing to deliberately send it after reviewing it AND preventing it from going to German subscribers means they absolutely cannot pretend that they didn't know what they were sending. They...
Yeah choosing to deliberately send it after reviewing it AND preventing it from going to German subscribers means they absolutely cannot pretend that they didn't know what they were sending. They 100% knew and decided they had no problem with it
GOG is Polish, headquartered in Warsaw...there's no fucking way they don't know what those mean. (The symbolism may also be illegal in Poland, like Germany, but I'm not sure.) Considering people...
GOG is Polish, headquartered in Warsaw...there's no fucking way they don't know what those mean. (The symbolism may also be illegal in Poland, like Germany, but I'm not sure.) Considering people with the latter double lightning bolt on their uniforms razed the city to the ground.
Oh I didn't realize it's a Polish company. I thought I saw that the "ss" runes are illegal there still but I don't read polish and I cant confirm if that is current law.
Oh I didn't realize it's a Polish company. I thought I saw that the "ss" runes are illegal there still but I don't read polish and I cant confirm if that is current law.
Yeah, CDProjekt got started selling localized discs of English language games in Poland, then eventually started GOG and CDProjekt RED (the Witcher and Cyberpunk game studio). I think GOG was spun...
Yeah, CDProjekt got started selling localized discs of English language games in Poland, then eventually started GOG and CDProjekt RED (the Witcher and Cyberpunk game studio). I think GOG was spun off into a standalone company last year though.
I don't know Polish either, but I've been interested in The Witcher since the second game, so I'm aware of that anyway.
This particular use of these symbols stands in a legally gray area in the Polish Penal Code (article 256). The symbols themselves are not illegal per se and the applicability of the penal code...
This particular use of these symbols stands in a legally gray area in the Polish Penal Code (article 256). The symbols themselves are not illegal per se and the applicability of the penal code varies depending on their intended use (i.e. the legality of the symbol is context-dependent). IMO unless there was any internal evidence (e.g. on Teams/Slack) explicitly showing an intent to use those symbols for the purpose of spreading, rallying support for, or encouraging acts of violence due to nazi (or communist, or otherwise totalitarian) ideology, they may as well be able to argue against it as an "artistic choice", which is explicitly allowed by par. 3.
Uff, honestly I have no idea that double Siegrune is a Nazi rune. Also,
Uff, honestly I have no idea that double Siegrune is a Nazi rune.
Also,
The Siegrune (a single lightning bolt rune also known as the Sig or Sowilo rune) is banned in Germany when used as a hate symbol or in a Nazi context.
The ban does not apply if the symbol is used for art, historical research, education, or countering anti-constitutional activities.
Using two in a row has no plausible reference to anything other than the SS, even if you ignore the presence of other runes that are well-known Nazi symbols. It very much is a situation where the...
Using two in a row has no plausible reference to anything other than the SS, even if you ignore the presence of other runes that are well-known Nazi symbols. It very much is a situation where the only more recognizably Nazi reference they could have included would have been a proper swastika/Hakenkreuz. The fact that they held this back from Germany is evidence that they were aware of this, too.
Devil's advocate: if you had shown me that subject line without further context, I would not have been able to tell you it was problematic. Even after reading the article, I can see the...
Devil's advocate: if you had shown me that subject line without further context, I would not have been able to tell you it was problematic. Even after reading the article, I can see the association of the last 2 symbols with the SS but the first two mean literally nothing to me.
Given the rest of the conversation about how they specifically didn't sent it to German recipients though, this is pretty inexcusable.
I keep broadly abreast of hate symbols for work related reasons. I'd have clocked that line, but not everyone does. However that sort of proves this was intentional, or at minimum directly sourced...
I keep broadly abreast of hate symbols for work related reasons. I'd have clocked that line, but not everyone does.
However that sort of proves this was intentional, or at minimum directly sourced from Nazi sources. Slavic runes aren't really a thing and this is about a Slavic game. So why use runes? (Well the Polish person says they're his culture.)
And then out of all the Futhark you could use you coincidentally use just the Nazi ones? You specifically use two of one "important to your culture" in a row? You're Polish and didn't think two in a row was a problem? Even though that's also illegal in Poland? Even if you give grace to the "sun" someone put those specific runes in there on purpose. Unless you look up a Nazi source to put your "Slavic" runes in your email header, I find accident hard to buy.
The reddit response is also damning IMO. The game makers knew better and said as much; GoG knew better and sent it anyway for no reason other than "we shouldn't let modern usage override the meaning of these runes that I used without actual meaning".
Even a passing familiarity with either Norse runes or hate symbols would result in knowing about the Nazi uses of at least some of these. There are more obscure runes used by neo-Nazis who aim for...
Even a passing familiarity with either Norse runes or hate symbols would result in knowing about the Nazi uses of at least some of these. There are more obscure runes used by neo-Nazis who aim for more plausible deniability, but this isn't even that. The only thing these runes have in common is their use as Nazi hate symbols and they have no association with Slavic folklore, what the game in question is ostensibly about. So while I can understand a given individual not recognizing what those weird symbols in their email are, there's really no excuse for GOG not catching it.
Even if they hadn't already demonstrated their full awareness of the problem by holding this email back from German subscribers to avoid breaking the law, letting this email go through by accident would still demonstrate a despicably negligent screening process, since these are unicode characters that are easy to copy-paste into your search engine of choice and doing so would reveal their use as hate symbols very quickly.
I also don't know if I would have automatically made the assumption without knowing the context. I've seen the double-sig, but it's been a while, and I definitely can't remember seeing the first...
I also don't know if I would have automatically made the assumption without knowing the context. I've seen the double-sig, but it's been a while, and I definitely can't remember seeing the first two. So I showed it to my mom, and she recognized the double-sig from tattoos coming up in true crime shows. (And seriously, having that one twice has no plausible excuse.)
Though uh... The first two runes remind me of the article "Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?" So I wonder if we can somehow get some traction on that to either mock the symbols when used by neo-nazis, or get AI companies to hastily rebrand.
This was exactly my thoughts. There's a lot of runes available and they chose three in a row that are used by nazis. To me it makes it rather unlikely. And to know all three and to choose to use...
having multiple Nazi symbols is more damning, and the more obscure ones may suggest someone deeper into the ideology.
This was exactly my thoughts. There's a lot of runes available and they chose three in a row that are used by nazis. To me it makes it rather unlikely. And to know all three and to choose to use them doesn't paint the best picture of the person doing so.
I like extending the benefit of the doubt, just in general. But the repetition really stands out to me. If it were just three symbols, I don't know the meanings, and I would have assumed they just...
I like extending the benefit of the doubt, just in general. But the repetition really stands out to me. If it were just three symbols, I don't know the meanings, and I would have assumed they just grabbed some random Unicode symbols. But then they doubled one of them, and they doubled the only one you would double if you were a literal Nazi.
It's like if they had used the initials "NAZ" somewhere, I might think huh, that could be something or it could be nothing, I hope the Internet isn't getting outraged over nothing. But follow it with an "I" and okay—that's undeniably something.
I think my initial point was that I completely understand how a single person could make this mistake. But GoG isn't a single person or even a small team, they're a company with a marketing...
I think my initial point was that I completely understand how a single person could make this mistake. But GoG isn't a single person or even a small team, they're a company with a marketing department. There is at least one person who's literal job is to be aware of and look for exactly this kind of thing and correct it before it ever escapes to the public. And if there isn't, that's in and of itself a significant mistake.
Not you GOG, you were supposed to be the good guy. What could they possibly hope to gain from using those symbols, apparently knowingly? this was never gonna go unnoticed... I know there is a rise...
Not you GOG, you were supposed to be the good guy.
What could they possibly hope to gain from using those symbols, apparently knowingly? this was never gonna go unnoticed...
I know there is a rise in far right rhetoric in public discourse, but last I checked nazism is very much still near universally disavowed.
Maybe there really is no such thing as bad publicity...
"It can't be that bad, right?" And then I read the article and saw the email. How could anybody think to pair "Slavic adventure" and two Armanen siegrunes together? What makes this use of...
"It can't be that bad, right?"
And then I read the article and saw the email. How could anybody think to pair "Slavic adventure" and two Armanen siegrunes together?
What makes this use of Schutzstaffel iconography even more offensive is that the Nazis persecuted slavic people whilst they were in power, and a lot of them ended up in concentration camps during World War 2.
There were/are people who push the idea of "Slavic runes" that reveal hidden history as various sorts of propaganda, some neopagan, some pro-Russian (or pro-soviet), some antisemitic, and some...
There were/are people who push the idea of "Slavic runes" that reveal hidden history as various sorts of propaganda, some neopagan, some pro-Russian (or pro-soviet), some antisemitic, and some Aryan in direction. (And some folks believe in it however ahistorical it seems to be.)
See the reddit apology where whomever at GoG says the runes are important to his Polish culture and that they shouldn't have their long history ruined for the actions of the Nazis. While.... only using Nazi symbols.
The rise of Neo-nazism in Slavic countries is an interesting exploration in the evolution of white European identity over the years. Famously Hitler would not have considered Slavs to be anything...
The rise of Neo-nazism in Slavic countries is an interesting exploration in the evolution of white European identity over the years. Famously Hitler would not have considered Slavs to be anything close to his Aryans, and he explicitly wanted to work the Slavs to death before taking their land as living space.
But increasing globalization as well as migration from the Middle East and Africa, as well as Europe generally taking a backseat in global politics after WW2, led to a growing pan-white European identity that has led slavic groups to re-identify themselves racially in such a way that they can adopt Neo-nazi ideology without seeing a contradiction
Nazis are so fucking weird. Slavic runes from an ethnicity they despised. They called themselves Aryans, which means Iranians. They also larped that the Roman Empire was actually created by...
Nazis are so fucking weird. Slavic runes from an ethnicity they despised. They called themselves Aryans, which means Iranians. They also larped that the Roman Empire was actually created by Germans, oissing off Mussolini. And they have a weird thing about Nordic gods?
If you're going to insist on the superiority of your culture, it's just so weird how much they take from others.
Well yeah but it wasn't the Roman Empire. And Pope Leo III putting a hat on someone doesn't make it such. I know they considered the HRE to be the first Reich and though that ancient Athens,...
Well yeah but it wasn't the Roman Empire. And Pope Leo III putting a hat on someone doesn't make it such.
I know they considered the HRE to be the first Reich and though that ancient Athens, Sparta and Rome were all Aryan built/led (ha no.) and I also know that Mussolini was on a real "Roman salute" kick (they invented it) with them being the "third Roman empire" or something, so I can see that being a point of friction.
(As far as I remember Mussolini thought the Aryan supremacy thing was weird and that fascism was a nationalist thing.)
It legitimately made Italian fascists angry, and was a point of contention. Like the Germans were trying to steal their revanchism. But Nazi ideology couldn't accept that the mighty Mediterranean...
It legitimately made Italian fascists angry, and was a point of contention. Like the Germans were trying to steal their revanchism.
But Nazi ideology couldn't accept that the mighty Mediterranean Romans were civilisationally superior (in their own definition of civilised) to the barbaric German tribes. At least, not without the empire secretly being led by Aryans somehow.
(which just means Iranian, god the Nazis were weird)
Yeah you have to do a lot of weird shit to pull off the fascism because it's such an obviously bad idea you have to distract everyone with theatre. I just think it's funny that Mussolini is like...
Yeah you have to do a lot of weird shit to pull off the fascism because it's such an obviously bad idea you have to distract everyone with theatre.
I just think it's funny that Mussolini is like "that's bad science and dumb" until he had to suck up to Germany later.
Sure, but I'm talking about Nazis proposing that blonde Aryans ruled the actual classical Roman Empire from Rome in the era of Augustus. Nothing to do with the HRE. They did refer to the HRE as...
Sure, but I'm talking about Nazis proposing that blonde Aryans ruled the actual classical Roman Empire from Rome in the era of Augustus. Nothing to do with the HRE. They did refer to the HRE as the First Reich, but it's not what I'm referencing.
There are those sprinkles they can latch onto right. Like the (Abbasid, Sassanid? I can never keep them apart) caliphate during the 8th century AD wrote about the fair haired women of...
There are those sprinkles they can latch onto right. Like the (Abbasid, Sassanid? I can never keep them apart) caliphate during the 8th century AD wrote about the fair haired women of Constantinople. Those little breadcrumbs can sort of be traced back and if you're already into that ideology, you can easily use it to trick yourself into saying "SEE, the Mediterranean/Anatolian/Levantine/Egyptian/African Romans were totally blonde and blue eyed".
8th century? The Umayyads or the Abbasids, probably, depending on when specifically. I think the Romans are a strange group for the far right and Nazis to latch on to, because while yes they were...
8th century? The Umayyads or the Abbasids, probably, depending on when specifically.
I think the Romans are a strange group for the far right and Nazis to latch on to, because while yes they were authoritarian, imperial, etc etc, they were also extremely ethnically diverse. Like, Romans did not give a shit if your grandpa was a Pecheneg, a Gaul, a Punic, etc. They were absolutely cultural supremacists, but if you spoke the right language, wore the right clothes, has the right values, you were Roman.
But I agree, if you already have an ideology in place, you just try to look for things that support it. That's true of anyone, I suppose.
Yeah tbh that strikes me as very likely if he's actually a Polish citizen and not Polish-American. Hard to say with how it was written and I didn't look him up
Yeah tbh that strikes me as very likely if he's actually a Polish citizen and not Polish-American. Hard to say with how it was written and I didn't look him up
I was one of them. I thought it was... weird but I justified it thinking that maybe they were just runes. And in fact they were talking about a game that maybe have runes in the lore.
I was one of them. I thought it was... weird but I justified it thinking that maybe they were just runes. And in fact they were talking about a game that maybe have runes in the lore.
The devs stated on Reddit that they explicitly removed runes with Nazi associations, even though it was extra work to do so. GoG could have used one of the runes that the game uses, but instead...
The devs stated on Reddit that they explicitly removed runes with Nazi associations, even though it was extra work to do so. GoG could have used one of the runes that the game uses, but instead they sent what they did. There is no good reason for them to have picked the runes that they did, and their response shows they knew what those two lightning bolts represented.
From the article:
This article does a good job at pointing out how egregious this is, as GOG's response on Twitter (CW: Replies have actual Nazis in them) absolutely doesn't fully address this. I can't imagine any method of displaying these symbols in this order would look like anything else. An earlier response on Reddit makes things look even worse to me:
Emphasis mine. They saw the problem before distribution, and chose to let it fly anyways, taking only the steps necessary to avoid literally breaking German law.
First, it does display very differently for me on Tildes than on reddit.
Second, I found this response very illuminating:
Mine renders the same in browser, in three cheers and on reddit, but I think it's the device being used that would have the different fonts?
I think you're likely right. I'm using a Pixel 9 with Android 16 and can see the difference in Three Cheers
I can also see the difference (Three Cheers, iOS26, iPhone 16)
Yeah choosing to deliberately send it after reviewing it AND preventing it from going to German subscribers means they absolutely cannot pretend that they didn't know what they were sending. They 100% knew and decided they had no problem with it
GOG is Polish, headquartered in Warsaw...there's no fucking way they don't know what those mean. (The symbolism may also be illegal in Poland, like Germany, but I'm not sure.) Considering people with the latter double lightning bolt on their uniforms razed the city to the ground.
Oh I didn't realize it's a Polish company. I thought I saw that the "ss" runes are illegal there still but I don't read polish and I cant confirm if that is current law.
Yeah, CDProjekt got started selling localized discs of English language games in Poland, then eventually started GOG and CDProjekt RED (the Witcher and Cyberpunk game studio). I think GOG was spun off into a standalone company last year though.
I don't know Polish either, but I've been interested in The Witcher since the second game, so I'm aware of that anyway.
This particular use of these symbols stands in a legally gray area in the Polish Penal Code (article 256). The symbols themselves are not illegal per se and the applicability of the penal code varies depending on their intended use (i.e. the legality of the symbol is context-dependent). IMO unless there was any internal evidence (e.g. on Teams/Slack) explicitly showing an intent to use those symbols for the purpose of spreading, rallying support for, or encouraging acts of violence due to nazi (or communist, or otherwise totalitarian) ideology, they may as well be able to argue against it as an "artistic choice", which is explicitly allowed by par. 3.
Ah gotcha, thanks for the info!
Gotcha, I did not know the lore. Tbh @TaylorSwiftsPickles has it right
Uff, honestly I have no idea that double Siegrune is a Nazi rune.
Also,
Using two in a row has no plausible reference to anything other than the SS, even if you ignore the presence of other runes that are well-known Nazi symbols. It very much is a situation where the only more recognizably Nazi reference they could have included would have been a proper swastika/Hakenkreuz. The fact that they held this back from Germany is evidence that they were aware of this, too.
Devil's advocate: if you had shown me that subject line without further context, I would not have been able to tell you it was problematic. Even after reading the article, I can see the association of the last 2 symbols with the SS but the first two mean literally nothing to me.
Given the rest of the conversation about how they specifically didn't sent it to German recipients though, this is pretty inexcusable.
I keep broadly abreast of hate symbols for work related reasons. I'd have clocked that line, but not everyone does.
However that sort of proves this was intentional, or at minimum directly sourced from Nazi sources. Slavic runes aren't really a thing and this is about a Slavic game. So why use runes? (Well the Polish person says they're his culture.)
And then out of all the Futhark you could use you coincidentally use just the Nazi ones? You specifically use two of one "important to your culture" in a row? You're Polish and didn't think two in a row was a problem? Even though that's also illegal in Poland? Even if you give grace to the "sun" someone put those specific runes in there on purpose. Unless you look up a Nazi source to put your "Slavic" runes in your email header, I find accident hard to buy.
The reddit response is also damning IMO. The game makers knew better and said as much; GoG knew better and sent it anyway for no reason other than "we shouldn't let modern usage override the meaning of these runes that I used without actual meaning".
Even a passing familiarity with either Norse runes or hate symbols would result in knowing about the Nazi uses of at least some of these. There are more obscure runes used by neo-Nazis who aim for more plausible deniability, but this isn't even that. The only thing these runes have in common is their use as Nazi hate symbols and they have no association with Slavic folklore, what the game in question is ostensibly about. So while I can understand a given individual not recognizing what those weird symbols in their email are, there's really no excuse for GOG not catching it.
Even if they hadn't already demonstrated their full awareness of the problem by holding this email back from German subscribers to avoid breaking the law, letting this email go through by accident would still demonstrate a despicably negligent screening process, since these are unicode characters that are easy to copy-paste into your search engine of choice and doing so would reveal their use as hate symbols very quickly.
I also don't know if I would have automatically made the assumption without knowing the context. I've seen the double-sig, but it's been a while, and I definitely can't remember seeing the first two. So I showed it to my mom, and she recognized the double-sig from tattoos coming up in true crime shows. (And seriously, having that one twice has no plausible excuse.)
Though uh... The first two runes remind me of the article "Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?" So I wonder if we can somehow get some traction on that to either mock the symbols when used by neo-nazis, or get AI companies to hastily rebrand.
Does the fact they're lesser known but still currently used by nazi symbols not make it worse in other ways?
As in, why do we still have nazis still keeping this nonsense active? That's certainly bad.
This was exactly my thoughts. There's a lot of runes available and they chose three in a row that are used by nazis. To me it makes it rather unlikely. And to know all three and to choose to use them doesn't paint the best picture of the person doing so.
I like extending the benefit of the doubt, just in general. But the repetition really stands out to me. If it were just three symbols, I don't know the meanings, and I would have assumed they just grabbed some random Unicode symbols. But then they doubled one of them, and they doubled the only one you would double if you were a literal Nazi.
It's like if they had used the initials "NAZ" somewhere, I might think huh, that could be something or it could be nothing, I hope the Internet isn't getting outraged over nothing. But follow it with an "I" and okay—that's undeniably something.
I think my initial point was that I completely understand how a single person could make this mistake. But GoG isn't a single person or even a small team, they're a company with a marketing department. There is at least one person who's literal job is to be aware of and look for exactly this kind of thing and correct it before it ever escapes to the public. And if there isn't, that's in and of itself a significant mistake.
Not you GOG, you were supposed to be the good guy.
What could they possibly hope to gain from using those symbols, apparently knowingly? this was never gonna go unnoticed...
I know there is a rise in far right rhetoric in public discourse, but last I checked nazism is very much still near universally disavowed.
Maybe there really is no such thing as bad publicity...
"It can't be that bad, right?"
And then I read the article and saw the email. How could anybody think to pair "Slavic adventure" and two Armanen siegrunes together?
What makes this use of Schutzstaffel iconography even more offensive is that the Nazis persecuted slavic people whilst they were in power, and a lot of them ended up in concentration camps during World War 2.
There were/are people who push the idea of "Slavic runes" that reveal hidden history as various sorts of propaganda, some neopagan, some pro-Russian (or pro-soviet), some antisemitic, and some Aryan in direction. (And some folks believe in it however ahistorical it seems to be.)
See the reddit apology where whomever at GoG says the runes are important to his Polish culture and that they shouldn't have their long history ruined for the actions of the Nazis. While.... only using Nazi symbols.
The rise of Neo-nazism in Slavic countries is an interesting exploration in the evolution of white European identity over the years. Famously Hitler would not have considered Slavs to be anything close to his Aryans, and he explicitly wanted to work the Slavs to death before taking their land as living space.
But increasing globalization as well as migration from the Middle East and Africa, as well as Europe generally taking a backseat in global politics after WW2, led to a growing pan-white European identity that has led slavic groups to re-identify themselves racially in such a way that they can adopt Neo-nazi ideology without seeing a contradiction
Nazis are so fucking weird. Slavic runes from an ethnicity they despised. They called themselves Aryans, which means Iranians. They also larped that the Roman Empire was actually created by Germans, oissing off Mussolini. And they have a weird thing about Nordic gods?
If you're going to insist on the superiority of your culture, it's just so weird how much they take from others.
Wasn't the Holy Roman Empire a thing during the Middle Ages which covered pretty much all of Central Europe from Germany to Sardinia?
Well yeah but it wasn't the Roman Empire. And Pope Leo III putting a hat on someone doesn't make it such.
I know they considered the HRE to be the first Reich and though that ancient Athens, Sparta and Rome were all Aryan built/led (ha no.) and I also know that Mussolini was on a real "Roman salute" kick (they invented it) with them being the "third Roman empire" or something, so I can see that being a point of friction.
(As far as I remember Mussolini thought the Aryan supremacy thing was weird and that fascism was a nationalist thing.)
It legitimately made Italian fascists angry, and was a point of contention. Like the Germans were trying to steal their revanchism.
But Nazi ideology couldn't accept that the mighty Mediterranean Romans were civilisationally superior (in their own definition of civilised) to the barbaric German tribes. At least, not without the empire secretly being led by Aryans somehow.
(which just means Iranian, god the Nazis were weird)
Yeah you have to do a lot of weird shit to pull off the fascism because it's such an obviously bad idea you have to distract everyone with theatre.
I just think it's funny that Mussolini is like "that's bad science and dumb" until he had to suck up to Germany later.
Sure, but I'm talking about Nazis proposing that blonde Aryans ruled the actual classical Roman Empire from Rome in the era of Augustus. Nothing to do with the HRE. They did refer to the HRE as the First Reich, but it's not what I'm referencing.
There are those sprinkles they can latch onto right. Like the (Abbasid, Sassanid? I can never keep them apart) caliphate during the 8th century AD wrote about the fair haired women of Constantinople. Those little breadcrumbs can sort of be traced back and if you're already into that ideology, you can easily use it to trick yourself into saying "SEE, the Mediterranean/Anatolian/Levantine/Egyptian/African Romans were totally blonde and blue eyed".
8th century? The Umayyads or the Abbasids, probably, depending on when specifically.
I think the Romans are a strange group for the far right and Nazis to latch on to, because while yes they were authoritarian, imperial, etc etc, they were also extremely ethnically diverse. Like, Romans did not give a shit if your grandpa was a Pecheneg, a Gaul, a Punic, etc. They were absolutely cultural supremacists, but if you spoke the right language, wore the right clothes, has the right values, you were Roman.
But I agree, if you already have an ideology in place, you just try to look for things that support it. That's true of anyone, I suppose.
Least subtle Konfederacja voter
Yeah tbh that strikes me as very likely if he's actually a Polish citizen and not Polish-American. Hard to say with how it was written and I didn't look him up
I was one of them. I thought it was... weird but I justified it thinking that maybe they were just runes. And in fact they were talking about a game that maybe have runes in the lore.
The devs stated on Reddit that they explicitly removed runes with Nazi associations, even though it was extra work to do so. GoG could have used one of the runes that the game uses, but instead they sent what they did. There is no good reason for them to have picked the runes that they did, and their response shows they knew what those two lightning bolts represented.