Well that’s a headline I never thought I’ll write. Several posts and comments on the GOG subreddit have noticed a promotional e-mail that contains some… interesting symbols, which I can confirm with my own e-mail. As can be seen from the screenshot below, an e-mail containing a discount code for the game The End of the Sun (nothing out of the ordinary so far) contains 4 symbols that resemble Nazi iconography.
After nearly two decades working in IT companies, I can see how someone could discover this issue and notify someone else, but it was never properly escalated and addressed due to ineffective internal organization. I don’t mean to defend them, but I don’t see any reasonable explanation for why they would have done this intentionally.
They didn’t use the The Schutzstaffel Nazi symbol in the German mailers because they thought it would violate hate speech laws.
There was no reason to use 2 of those runes together.
That doesn’t contradict what I wrote, though. I can see how some manager who didn’t care enough or didn’t understand the implications would accept this half‑assed measure somebody suggested on slack.
I mean, they should be criticized and shamed for what’s happened, but I see no evidence of malicious intent.
Sadly, that’s the point of dog whistling, to have some doubt to whether it was actually innocent.
With how prevalent dog whistles are in neo-Nazism, it’s not surprising that people are sceptical. It’s a whole thing to send “subtle” Nazi symbology and then deny everything when called out.
It looks pretty intentional from where I’m standing. At best the shot caller was apathetic to it looking like actual Nazi iconography to some recipients.
After four decades of life on this planet, I can think of a million reasons why this was done intentionally. Maybe you just arent that smart?