Erik Rutins
Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline
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Copying my reply here and locking this thread. Noxious, feel free to e-mail me at erikr@matrixgames.com if you have genuine concerns about other posters breaking the forum rules.
Let me add in here as a personal anecdote that two of my Uncles (now deceased) were _drafted_ into the Waffen SS as young men in occupied Latvia in the latter part of WWII. They were not Nazis and were quite disillusioned about any promised "liberation" of Latvia. But first of all they had no choice once they were conscripted and they (and all of Latvia) were caught between a rock and a hard place as the Soviet Union (which had already annexed Latvia once in 1940 and committed quite a few atrocities in the process) was on the way back for another round too. So they left their families and they fought for one evil to keep what seemed to them at the time a greater evil away from their country. It definitely shortened both their lives in physical and spiritual ways and also nearly got them sent back to the Soviet Union (where they would have been sent to Siberia or executed) in the post-war period when the initial perception was that anyone who'd been in the SS was a fanatical Nazi volunteer despite the foreign units and the use of conscription to fill out some of those. It was a minor miracle that both of them survived the war and managed to be reunited with the rest of the family (at least those that had escaped Latvia as refugees) afterwards.
I would not personally have a handle of "SS Hauptsturmfuhrer" but I understand why some wargamers, who are not Nazi sympathizers, do admire some elements of the Waffen SS from a strictly military standpoint. I don't personally admire them, but I do recognize that they were in many respects an elite military formation in their time and that they are in the realm of acceptable discussion for a military history or wargaming forum.
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Hi guys, first of all if the moderation is imperfect (and it is) I absolutely take the blame for that. I'm human and moreover I'm a very busy human. Moderating this forum is probably the very last on my list of responsibilities, though I try to read it often to get input and feedback from our customers. The end result is that coverage and moderation is indeed spotty.
To those of you who read every thread and post, it may seem that sometimes obvious problems are overlooked and others inexplicably addressed quickly. I've read from time to time folks thinking that we have some deliberate agenda in ignoring one transgression and locking down another. I assure you that's simply the normal functioning of a very busy and human moderator. I'm sure I also have some biases, but I try hard to simply enforce the rules to keep this place friendly for gamers of all ages who wish to exchange views on gaming (and pretty much everything other than politics or religion) in a civil way.
As a wargamer, I enjoy having a community at our site that shares my interests and I don't enjoy locking threads or banning people, but I felt that BoredStiff took a thread that while a bit controversial had a chance at an interesting discussion and turned it to politics, quite deliberately. He did not let up on that either.
Regarding Nazi/SS stuff Noxious mentioned, though I'm not sure what exactly he's specifically referencing in this case, of course we don't support Nazis or the SS. However, you can't really discuss WWII without including them and wargamers have long had an interest in the Waffen-SS (the military arm rather than those who ran the concentration camps) as an elite military formation that achieved some significant victories against the odds during WWII. From what I've seen, any kind of admiration among posters on these forums for the SS has been strictly in the context of analysis of military accomplishments, which wargamers are wont to do with any army and any conflict.
Might there be neo-Nazis among the thousands of people with a login to these forums? Sure, but as long as they don't start creating threads about their politics, and keep their discussion to wargaming, how would we know? If they cross into politics, they'll get warned, locked, etc. like anyone else. Unlike a forum on say Tennis, there can be a real reason and context to discussion of WWII German military formations, outside of politics.
Regards,
- Erik
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RE: Family guy so offensive compared to Nazi and SS ins... - 
In other words, the Soviet Union counter-attack ("why are they resisting in the first place, these untermenschen") is evil. They can't understand this resistance, and when they meet the Soviet NEMESIS they yell "assassin". 
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