Coast Guard enacts policy calling swastikas, nooses ‘potentially divisive’
Coast Guard enacts policy calling swastikas, nooses ‘potentially divisive’
A new workplace harassment manual that downgrades the definition of such symbols quietly went into effect this week.
December 16, 2025 at 7:50 p.m. ESTyesterday at 7:50 p.m. EST
Updated
By Tara Copp
and
Michelle Boorstein
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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 direct 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.”
The Post last month was first to report on the Coast Guard’s plan to revise its workplace harassment policy. The Trump administration called the article “false,” but within hours of its publication Nov. 20 the service’s acting commandant, Adm. Kevin Lunday, issued a memo forcefully denouncing symbols such as swastikas and nooses, and directing that both remain prohibited. Lunday said at the time that his directive would supersede any other policy language.
It’s unclear why the new policy was not revised to align with Lunday’s guidance before the new manual went into effect.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, did not respond to a request for comment before the publication of this report. Later Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the agency, Tricia McLaughlin, issued a statement attacking The Post and calling its reporting “pathetic” and “false.”
McLaughlin’s statement does not address why the language downgrading nooses and swastikas to “potentially divisive” symbols, rather than hate symbols, was allowed to remain in the new policy. She said Lunday’s Nov. 20 memo “was issued to further clarify the display of divisive and hate symbols and flags prohibited as a violation of Coast Guard policy and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”
A spokesperson for Lunday did not respond to a request for comment.
Lunday has been the Coast Guard’s acting commandant for several months. He was elevated to the role after the Trump administration ousted his predecessor, Adm. Linda Fagan, citing among other things her “excessive focus” on “non-mission-critical” diversity and inclusion initiatives.
At a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Democrats expressed frustration with the situation and questioned why Lunday — whose nomination to take over as the permanent commandant faces a Senate confirmation vote later this week — allowed the “potentially divisive” language to remain in the new policy manual.
Rep. Salud Carbajal (California), the top Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on the Coast Guard, said during the hearing that Lunday had told him “that he was going to fix the language, to make it clear the Coast Guard will not tolerate hate symbols. Instead he released the policy as it was originally written.”
“He had the authority to stop that policy from being printed,” Carbajal added.
Adm. Kevin Lunday testifies in November during his confirmation hearing to be the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
Coast Guard Rear Adm. David Barata said Lunday’s Nov. 20 directive “oversteps any of the policy” language — but he did not address why the wording wasn’t changed before the harassment policy manual took effect this week.
“We do not tolerate any hate symbols within the Coast Guard, our personnel work too hard,” Barata said. “To the extent that instructions have been misinterpreted, or is open to misinterpretation, the commandant looked to close that gap by issuing a lawful general order,” Barata said, referring to Lunday’s Nov. 20 memo.
“So get rid of the policy,” said Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Washington), the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s top Democrat.
“Granting hate symbols like swastikas and nooses even an ounce of respectability is absolutely an anathema. This edict besmirches the Coast Guard’s honor, and DHS should be ashamed. At a time when antisemitic and racist violence are at unconscionable levels, it is absolutely appalling that DHS is doubling down on such a hateful, destructive policy,” read a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi L. Noem from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), who sits on the Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees.
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.
“The fear is alive,” Rep. Hillary J. Scholten (D-Michigan) told the Coast Guard officials testifying. Not clarifying the language “allows additional confusion,” she said.
No Republicans on the subcommittee spoke out against the language.
Deborah Lipstadt, a historian who served as President Joe Biden’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, said the Coast Guard’s decision to approve the change was “terrifying.”
“What’s really disturbing is, at this moment, when there is a whitewashing of Nazis amongst some on the far right, and Churchill is painted as the devil incarnate when it comes to World War II, to take the swastika and call it ‘potentially divisive’ is hard to fathom,” Lipstadt said. “Most importantly, the swastika was the symbol hundreds of thousands of Americans fought and gave their lives to defeat. It is not ‘potentially divisive,’ it’s a hate symbol.”
Citing court documents, Lipstadt noted that Unite the Right marchers in Charlottesville, while planning the 2017 demonstration that left a woman dead and 19 others injured, had urged one another not to use swastikas “because it will paint us as Nazis.”
“When far-right protesters in Charlottesville were strategic enough to recognize the swastika would do them no good and now we have an arm of the U.S. military saying ‘It’s not so bad,’ that’s frightening,” Lipstadt said.
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that should only be used to unmistakably mark maga that are fortunate enough to live thru the next civil war ...
Engraved on foreheads just like Charlie Manson.
Or as they did in the movie Inglourious Basterds.
Churchill was no saint but he hated the Nazis and the Soviet Union. That makes ok in my book
Could n e 1 have predicted a decade ago, just how far we would fall...?
... into the bottomless pit of maga bullshit.
"potentially"???????????????