Adolf Hitler

Nov. 21 (UPI) — The U.S. Coast Guard has reversed course on swastikas and nooses, saying they are “hate symbols” after reportedly issuing guidance calling them “potentially divisive.”

The agency late Thursday said the guidance “doubles down on its current policies prohibiting the display, distribution or use of hate symbols by Coast Guard personnel.”

“This is not an updated policy but a new policy to combat any misinformation and double down that the U.S. Coast Guard forbids these symbols,” the Coast Guard, which is part of Homeland Security, said in a news release.

The new guidance came after media outlets, led by The Washington Post, earlier Thursday reported that the Coast Guard had written a less firm policy earlier this month.

Since 2023, Coast Guard policy said displaying the symbols “constitutes a potential hate incident.”

“The Coast Guard does not tolerate the display of divisive or hate symbols and flags, including those identified with oppression or hatred,” the Coast Guard wrote about the policy on Thursday night.

“These symbols reflect hateful and prohibited conduct that undermines unit cohesion. A symbol or flag is prohibited as a reflection of hate if its display adversely affects good order and discipline, unit cohesion, command climate, morale, or mission effectiveness.”

Listed were “a noose, a swastika, and any symbols or flags co-opted or adopted by hate-based groups as representations of supremacy, racial or religious intolerance, anti-semitism or any other improper bias.”

The policy applies to all personnel and they “shall be removed from all Coast Guard workplaces, facilities and assets,” the agency said.

Also, all displays or depictions of Confederate battle flags continue to be prohibited.

In the earlier reported policy, commanders could take steps to remove them from public view and that the rule did not apply to private spaces outside public view, including family housing.

“At a time when anti-Semitism is rising in the United States and around the world, relaxing policies aimed at fighting hate crimes not only sends the wrong message to the men and women of our Coast Guard, but it puts their safety at risk,” Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada said Thursday.

She said the change “rolls back important protections against bigotry and could allow for horrifically hateful symbols, like swastikas and nooses, to be inexplicably permitted to be displayed.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the change “disgusting” and said “it’s more encouragement from the Republicans of extremism.”

Adm. Kevin Lunday, acting commandant of the Coast Guard, called it “categorically false” to claim prohibitions were rolled back.

“These symbols have been and remain prohibited in the Coast Guard per policy,” Lunday said in a statement, adding that “any display, use or promotion of such symbols, as always, will be thoroughly investigated and severely punished.”

DHS denied there was a revision.

“The 2025 policy is not changing — USCG issued a lawful order that doubles down on our current policies prohibiting the display, distribution or use of hate symbols by Coast Guard personnel,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said to CNN.

Nooses are a symbol of hatred of black people, with thousands lynched between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the civil rights movement.

Swastikas represent Adolf Hitler‘s Nazi Germany, which killed millions of people during the Holocaust.

About 1,900 died while serving in the Coast Guard during World War II against Germany.

“The swastika is the ultimate symbol of virulent hate and bigotry, and even a consideration by the Coast Guard to no longer classify it as such would be equivalent to dismissing the Ku Klux Klan‘s burning crosses and hoods as merely ‘potentially divisive,'” Menachem Rosensaft, a law professor at Cornell University and a Jewish community leader, said in a statement to Military Times.

Other armed services are part of the Department of Defense.

In 2020, a Pentagon report found that extremist views were not widespread in the military, though there was the ability of people with military experience to carry out “high-impact events.”

Two months ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a review of all the hazing, bullying and harassment definitions across the military. He said they were “overly broad” and were “jeopardizing combat readiness, mission accomplishment and trust in the organization.”

During his confirmation hearing in January, Hegseth said a focus on extremism has “created a climate inside our ranks that feels political when it hasn’t ever been political.”

Nov. 17 (UPI) — Another board member of the conservative Heritage Foundation resigned after the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, posted video defending Tucker Carlson‘s interview with anti-Semitic commentator Nick Fuentes.

Board member Robert P. George wrote Monday on Facebook that “I have resigned from the board of the Heritage Foundation. I could not remain without a full retraction of the video released by Kevin Roberts, speaking for and in the name of Heritage, on October 30th.”

In the video, Roberts refused to distance himself from the two-hour interview, which was posted two weeks ago on YouTube, and has 6.2 million views. Counting other platforms, including X, it has been seen by more than 20 million.

George, who had been a Heritage trustee since 2019, said: “Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse.”

Fuentes, 27, has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, claiming the Holocaust was “exaggerated.” He has also said “organized Jewry” is leading to white culture’s disappearance, and that white people are “justified” in being racist, and said “a lot of women want to be raped.”

A spokesman for the Heritage Foundation confirmed the resignation in a statement to Politico, thanked him for his service and calling him a “good man.”

George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, also called Roberts a “good man.”

“He made what he acknowledged was a serious mistake,” George said. “Being human myself, I have plenty of experience in making mistakes. What divided us was a difference of opinion about what was required to rectify the mistake.”

The Foundation defended Roberts in a statement through a spokesperson.

“Under the leadership of Dr. Roberts, Heritage remains resolute in building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish,” the spokesperson said. “We are strong, growing, and more determined than ever to fight for our Republic.”

Roberts, in the Oct. 30 video, blasted the “venomous coalition” that has faulted Fuentes and Carlson, with the latter described as a “close friend.”

“The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now,” Roberts said.

“Their attempt to cancel [Carlson] will fail,” he added. “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either.”

One day later, Roberts also posted on X, elaborating on his remarks.

“Our task is to confront and challenge those poisonous ideas at every turn to prevent them from taking America to a very dark place,” Roberts wrote. “Join us — not to cancel — but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation, and be confident as I am that our best ideas at the heart of western civilization will prevail.

“For those, especially young men, who are enticed by Fuentes and his acolytes online — there is a better way.”

Some staff members at a two-hour meeting on Wednesday called for Roberts’ resignation, with one attendee saying he had caused “enormous damage” to the foundation, according to the video obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

At least five members of the foundation’s anti-Semitism task force also have resigned, CBS News reported.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that dates to the mid-1970s and came to larger prominence for its influence on the Reagan administration, helped to spearhead Project 2025, which has been used as a guide for President Donald Trump‘s second term in the White House.

Trump, who hosted Fuentes and rapper Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago home in 2024, on Sunday told reporters that you can’t tell Carlson “who to interview.”

Carlson hosts platforms on his platform. The Tucker Carlson Network. He has worked for CNN, PS, MSNBC (now called MSNOW) and Fox News, the latter of which he was fired from in April 2023.

George said he wished the Foundation “the very best.”

“My hope for Heritage is that it will be unbending and unflinching in its fidelity to its founding vision, upholding the moral principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the civic principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States,” he wrote.

“I pray that Heritage’s research and advocacy will be guided by the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is ‘created equal’ and ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.'”

Fuentes and Vice President JD Vance have been at odds since Fuentes asked his audience “Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”,

In 2024 on CBS’s Face the Nation, Vance called him a “total loser” and said there is “no room” for him in the Make America Great Again movement.