Rogue Realm

GOG's absolutely ass response to one of their employees putting a black sun and SS doppelrune next to each other in the subject line of a GOG newsletter

my reply:

I want to open saying I have been a long-time champion of Good Old Games, from its earliest days a very vocal proselytizer of your platform over Steam to anyone who would listen.

Now on to the response: Charitably, most of your company would never use any Nazi symbolism after all that your grandparents' generation suffered...but even at the most charitable, one employee at GOG did in fact have the intention to use a black sun next to a doppelrune, which have only ever had Nazi connotations and did not pair together in any context prior to Nazism including in Polish heritage.

The doppelrune were created, as another user has pointed out, in 1929 by Walter Heck, who was a Sturmhauptführer in the Sturmabteilung when he invented it by doubling the Siegrune invented by Guido von List, a forerunner of the occult type of Nazis who died in 1919 but had virtually identical to Nazi beliefs including antisemitism and virulently racist pan-German nationalism and was at the far-right edge of Austrian and German politics of his time, which is why he was such an influence to Nazi occultist types (including Walter Heck). The black sun "rune" is the Schwarze Sonne type of Sonnenrad that Heinrich Himmler had designed for the Nazi Thule occultist hub castle and major SS focal point of Wewelsburg when he expanded the castle after purchasing it, designed explicitly as a Nazi occult symbol. It was used after the war by "former" SS scum Wilhelm Landig as a replacement for the Nazi swastika to try and evade German laws around Nazi symbols, but was later deemed a Nazi symbol (rightly so, given Landig's purpose in deploying it was to evade the legal ban and act as a Nazi swastika) and has since been used by neo-Nazis around the world in the manner which Landig intended.

To pair the Schwarze Sonne with the doppelrune of the Siegrune has no Polish heritage. It ONLY has Nazi heritage, these things are inventions of Nazis and their immediate forerunners, not ancient Polish or even ancient Germanic symbology. They are thoroughly modern and thoroughly fascist, and whoever did this at your company may be playing innocent under questioning but those of us who are antifascists can very plainly see the wolf under that sheep's clothing even if you cannot. There is ZERO reason aside from an edgy joke, at best, and privately held fascist ideology being telegraphed in a way they thought would be too stealthy for any but in-the-know fascists to pick up on (and they were wrong, antifascists also know this and spotted it immediately) more than likely, to pair those symbols right next to each other.

Anything less than a firing of this person is completely insufficient. Even at the very best case scenario, you have an edgy joke that someone lied to your faces about being an innocent mistake of Polish heritage to try and fool you into thinking this pairing of exclusively Nazi symbols right next to each other that have no precedent prior to Nazism was in fact something other than that to save their skin and their job, all while pissing all over their own ancestors and your ancestors from behind the teeth they were lying through.

I also find it deeply offensive and extremely bad form to say, in the comment I am replying to, "Bad mistake only, no one knows why." when one person very much knows why.

The appropriate PR move in a situation like this, in future, would be to ask the person and then report their answer even if it is "I don't know why I did that" or "I chose them at random to appear more Slavic" because then you can say, verbatim, what was said to your loyal customers for them to respond to. And believe me, if either of those were this person's answer, they are absolutely lying to you to save their skin. The only people who pair the Schwarze Sonne and the doppelrune of the Siegrune, whether in 2026 or 1946, are cryptofascists in the wake of Nazism's defeat trying to dogwhistle (and quite without subtlety, at a very loud volume) to other fascists or extremely edgy memers who think it's funny to emulate Nazis ironically, which is a thing anyone doing on a job should be fired for regardless of whether they protest they are not fascists or not. Even if they're not, that is so deeply unprofessional and disgusting and disrespectful to the memories of all of your ancestors that you invoked in the comment I'm replying to that an immediate firing is the only way to respond to that if you actually care as much about your ancestors' suffering as this comment claims.

This interaction popped in my head the other day and I HAD to draw it.

Featuring funny fishing shirts! Kris' shirt I found on the internet while looking for funny shirt designs, and Noelle's a clasic "women want me fish fear me" shirt (it's not too clear because of the fishing rod tho)