French soldiers disciplined over Rhodesian flags linked to white supremacists

France's Ministry of the Armed Forces has launched disciplinary proceedings against several soldiers photographed holding flags linked to Rhodesia, a former white minority-ruled territory in southern Africa whose symbols have been embraced by white supremacists.


Issued on: 26/08/2026 - RFI

France's Ministry of the Armed Forces has launched disciplinary proceedings against several soldiers photographed displaying Rhodesian flags, which have become associated with white supremacist movements. AFP - LUDOVIC MARIN

Two separate groups of French soldiers – one in Nîmes in southern France and another in the United Arab Emirates – have been pictured displaying the same banner, with the images later shared in online groups glorifying the former British colony – which operated a white-minority ruled system similar to South African apartheid – investigative website Mediapart revealed.

One image posted on social media shows three soldiers holding a flag with three green and white stripes. At its centre is a coat of arms depicting a pick axe on a green background, flanked by antelopes and topped with a golden bird.

Another image shows four French soldiers in front of a tank holding the same banner.

The Ministry of the Armed Forces said the soldiers involved had been identified and disciplinary proceedings were under way. It said the two incidents were separate, with no connection between the soldiers involved or their activities.

“The ministry's position is unambiguous: French armed forces do not tolerate any manifestation of a racist, supremacist or extremist nature,” it said.

“Military personnel are subject to a particular requirement of exemplary conduct and neutrality, which also applies to their behaviour and posts on social media.”

Defying decolonisation

Rhodesia's prime minister, Ian Smith, unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November, 1965 in an effort to preserve political power for the white European minority – which made up just 5 percent of the population, fewer than 250,000 people.

Rhodesia's green and white flag was first raised on 11 November, 1968, three years after Smith's declaration, which was made without British agreement or international recognition.

“Rhodesia wanted to signal to the world what it regarded as a betrayal: the fact that the United Kingdom was accepting the decolonisation of Africa,” South African historian Saul Dubow, who teaches Commonwealth history at the University of Cambridge, said.

Rhodesian propaganda portrayed the territory as “threatened by Communism” and therefore forced to defend “civilised standards”.

In practice, this meant defending the social and political superiority of white people, Zimbabwean researcher Bruce Berry wrote in his thesis on Rhodesian identity and its symbols.

African nationalist movements resisted Smith's government, particularly Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union, known as ZAPU, and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union, or ZANU.

The conflict between Rhodesia's white minority government and African nationalist movements became known as the Bush War, or Second Chimurenga. It killed thousands of people, most of them African nationalists and civilians, and led to the militarisation of Rhodesian society.

As this civil war intensified in the country during the 1970s, Rhodesia became heavily dependent on neighbouring South Africa, then operating an apartheid regime, for its survival.

Negotiations and a ceasefire followed, and Rhodesia became the independent and renamed state of Zimbabwe on 18 April, 1980 – with ZANU leader Mugabe as prime minister.

Military mythology

With the white population having rallied behind its soldiers and the country's founding myths, those narratives survived beyond the ceasefire and the birth of the new country, feeding nostalgia for a “heroic” past – one in which the suffering of the black population was concealed.

“There is an enormous body of literature written by people who took part in the Bush War. They celebrate their victory and talk about black people in very insulting terms,” Dubow explained.

Many white Rhodesians, he said, became convinced that they had not lost the war, but had instead been abandoned by their leaders and cheated by politics.

“It is the myth of the small white minority that resisted the black majority for 15 years,” said Hugh W Macmillan, a professor from the region.

That fascination with Rhodesia's military past has also surfaced among soldiers elsewhere.

In 2018, Canada's military opened an investigation into some of its personnel accused of running a website selling equipment and memorabilia inspired by the "Fireforce" – a tactic developed by Rhodesian forces to surround and attack independence fighters in the bush.

Flags from apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia were among the items sold by the online shop.

Symbol of a 'lost cause'

In some white supremacist circles, Rhodesia provides a similar function to the southern Confederate States in the United States, with both seen as “lost causes” unjustly condemned by history.

In June 2015, white supremacist Dylann Roof opened fire in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine African American worshippers who had gathered for bible study.

Roof had written a racist manifesto published on a website called The Last Rhodesian. In a photograph that became notorious, he wore the former orange, white and blue South African flag on his jacket lapel, with the green and white Rhodesian flag immediately below it.

As Berry wrote in his thesis: “These flags – Rhodesian and South African – are popular in white supremacist circles because they allow people to signal their beliefs to others who share the same ideas, without exposing themselves as openly as they would by wearing or displaying a swastika."

This article has been adapted from the original version in French by Liza Fabbian

 

Hindu students ask schools to discern the swastika from the Nazi Hakenkreuz

(RNS) — ‘I think it’s very important that young people are told that the swastika has a very positive meaning, but it has been taken and used as a racist symbol,’ said Baijayanti Roy of Goethe University Frankfurt. ‘The swastika does not have any negative connotations, whereas the Hakenkreuz stands for evil.’

Mira Trivedi, right, presents a lesson about swastika history to kids. Photo courtesy of Mira Trivedi)

Trisha Mukherjee

August 10, 2026 

(RNS) — Mira Trivedi, 15, grew up surrounded by the swastika. Her family hung it around their home for holidays. A priest drew it on her newborn cousin’s forehead. Her family members wore jewelry with the symbol.

To Trivedi, who is Hindu, the swastika always signaled its auspicious Sanskrit meaning: well-being, good fortune and peace.

So when her eighth grade social studies teacher said the swastika was a hate symbol representing Hitler’s genocidal antisemitism, Trivedi went up after class to explain that the Nazi symbol was not the swastika but the Hakenkreuz, a German word meaning “hooked cross.” The swastika, which is usually slightly different in appearance, is a devotional symbol in South Asian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, she said. 

Trivedi hoped for a lightbulb moment after her spiel, but the teacher said only higher ups could implement changes about what’s taught about the symbol. “That’s what started my whole journey,” Trivedi said.

She presented her case to the vice principal, principal and board of education at her central New Jersey school in May 2025. “I was sweating through the entire meeting, I was so nervous,” she said. But the effort paid off, and she convinced the school board to educate 35 teachers about the difference between the symbols. 

In recent months, a small but growing contingent of Hindu students across the country like Trivedi have successfully pushed for curriculum changes and education about the difference.

The conflation between the swastika and the Hakenkreuz emerged in the 1930s, but the presence of the swastika in Germany dates back to the late 1800s, said Baijayanti Roy, a lecturer and researcher on interactions between India and Nazi Germany at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. During this era, Germany’s Theosophists and Buddhists, who revered Indian philosophy, used the symbol to represent appreciation.

But at the turn of the 20th century, the racist and antisemitic völkisch movement co-opted the swastika to signal Aryan German heritage, Roy said. The proposed design for the fledgling Nazi party’s flag arrived in front of Hitler bearing a mirrored version of the swastika. Hitler approved the design, with one exception: Due to his hatred of Indians, whom he perceived as bastardized Aryans, he replaced the swastika with the “Hakenkreuz” by changing the tilt and removing the four dots and flourishes that typically, but not always, adorn the swastika.

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Thus was born a new symbol, stripped of dharmic roots, to represent the Third Reich.

From then on, the Nazis referred to the symbol only as the Hakenkreuz. While some leaders of the Indian independence movement like Subhas Chandra Bose sought tactical military alliances with Hitler, Hitler maintained his animosity toward South Asians as he set into motion the murder of 6 million Jews.

When American media mistakenly described the swastika as a Nazi symbol in the 1930s, the misconception pervaded the American psyche.

“I think it’s very important that young people are told that the swastika has a very positive meaning, but it has been taken and used as a racist symbol,” Roy said. “The swastika does not have any negative connotations, whereas the Hakenkreuz stands for evil.”

 (Photo by Nidhi Srivastava/Flickr/Creative Commons)

But as immigration and globalization increased — and as concerns about antisemitism have ebbed and flowed — the obfuscation has led to fear and confusion about the swastika as a hate symbol.

Members of the nonprofit Coalition of Hindus of North America have sought help from its leaders, as some have panicked after being reported as neo-Nazis by well-intentioned neighbors and coworkers, said Pushpita Prasad, CoHNA’s chief communications officer. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, workers who glimpsed swastikas in their Hindu colleagues’ homes via Zoom would sometimes report them to human resources. Neighbors, seeing swastikas drawn for Hindu festivals, sometimes called the police. The ensuing investigations were usually dropped once the context became clear. But especially for immigrants with visas, “it was a very shaky, unpleasant experience,” Prasad said.

It’s an example of what scholars have called a context collapse, said Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project, part of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a Washington, D.C., group dedicated to preventing and combating hate. “You have people who are existing in two different normative communities and the two sets of norms collide,” she said. 

Many Hindu students across the United States have witnessed and experienced that context collapse. Trivedi said her Hindu neighbors store away devotional objects bearing the swastika whenever guests of non-dharmic faiths visit to avoid painful misunderstandings.

Saisha Vyas, 15, grew up seeing her family draw swastikas on new cars, denoting good fortune. But when her uncle had to take his car back to the dealership, she said the workers called the police on him.

And Priya Bakshi, 17, often longed to wear a sentimental swastika-inscribed necklace to school, but it was banned in her Maryland county. “It’s infringing on our First Amendment rights,” she told RNS. “We cannot express our religion.”  

Vyas and Bakshi, who are both Hindu high schoolers in Maryland’s Howard County Public School System, decided to campaign in their school district for a distinction between the swastika and the Hakenkreuz, emphasizing the intention with which they’re displayed.

After months of preparing educational material, they convinced the school board in February to ban the Nazi Hakenkreuz instead of the swastika, changing the rules for nearly 50,000 students in the district.

All three students RNS spoke with said they are sensitive toward the violence and fear that many of their peers, especially Jewish students, associate with the swastika. “There have been cases where the Hakenkreuz has been drawn to bully students in my school,” Bakshi said. “I don’t want to be mixed in with the bullies. That’s why I was very, very conscious about how I talked about it.”

Still, they faced challenges. Trivedi became known among her classmates for her campaign. “One kid decided to draw the symbol on my notebook when I stepped away from my desk for a moment, and right underneath that symbol, ‘Nazi’ was written,” she recounted.

But moments of support have vastly outnumbered the antagonism, the three students said. Bakshi said her Jewish friends have been particularly receptive, and she and Vyas met with Jewish groups. “I think they realized that we are trying to help their community as well,” she said, suggesting that the misconception gives the Nazis ongoing power over a symbol and religious practice they despised. “When people come together with genuine empathy, I think it really does help bring everybody in the circle closer together.”

The fundamental question at the heart of the campaign harkens back to the landmark 2003 Supreme Court case Virginia v. Black, which considered whether states could ban cross burning. The case determined that its legality depended on whether the act was done in order to intimidate, Benesch explained. This same distinction can be made about whether a Hakenkreuz is scratched in a school bathroom or a highway overpass, versus a swastika depicted on a Hindu student’s bracelet or in a devotional painting in one’s home.

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RELATED: Hindu group sues Chicago suburb to build temple, citing 1967 legal barrier

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“None of this stuff is easy,” Benesch said of context clashes. “Even though the collision can often be unpleasant at the time for both parties, in the long run, it can be a very salutary form of public education.”

The students’ successful campaigns over the past two years were built on a smattering of past examples. In 2021, after the Oregon Department of Education heard feedback from Hindu students as well as Native American students who used the whirling log to signify well-being and protection, the statewide policy was edited to refer to the Nazi symbol as the Hakenkreuz.

CoHNA has also campaigned for similar policy updates in Virginia, New York, California, Canada and other regions, Prasad said.

The students hope to formalize the distinction at the state level, and they believe that their recent victories can herald a wider student movement to distinguish the two symbols. Several classmates have signed on to their campaigns. And across the country, their peers have held discussions in Hindu student groups, written essays on the subject and initiated their own dialogues with teachers. 

“I want them to see what we’re doing and feel like they can do the same,” Vyas said. “I can also speak up at my school. I can also speak up in my county. I can make an impact for my own culture.”

It’s Time to Use the Strait of Hormuz to Demilitarize the Persian Gulf

Nicky Reid

 July 31, 2026

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Image by Ivan Rohovchenko.

The Middle East has a serious fucking problem and any semi-sentient anti-imperialist with two brain cells to rub together can tell you that the problem isn’t Iran. It’s America and its dead-eyed flunkey Israel, or is it Israel and its dead-eyed flunkey America? The exact semantics of the Zionist con-job have become a tad bit murky in the Epstein era, but regardless, the source of the violence and chaos that has long plagued the Middle East is without a doubt a Western contagion with a distinctly Wall Street heritage.

This carnage isn’t exactly new, but it has taken on a severely sinister turn in recent years as the IDF has finally emerged from the metaphorical phonebooth, shredding their snappy business suite, and proudly revealing the swastika on their chest before feverishly slaughtering what’s left of their longtime captives in the Gaza Strip along with their more inconvenient Arab neighbors at a downright blitzkrieg pace.

In fact, not only has this final solution been a long time coming, it would have been downright impossible without decades of intercontinental planning and preemptive acts of mass slaughter. Auschwitz wasn’t built in a day, and our current stage of the Nakba was only made possible by America’s so-called War on Terror which systematically eliminated every state or non-state actor rogue enough to resist a full-blown Zionist holocaust in the Levant.

Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar Assad; all butchers who have been replaced by equally barbaric incompetents dependent on the Atlantic juggernaut that brought them to power in still simmering forever wars. None of this is a coincidence. It is all part of a very concerted and well-documented plot that Benjamin Netanyahu has been intimately involved with from the beginning.

In 1986, Bibi was still a lowly Permanent Representative to the UN when he edited a political science study called “Terrorism: How the West Can Win” in which American neocon powerbrokers like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan made the argument that the still largely secular Palestinian resistance movement represented a global threat to “western democracy” which they labeled “militant Islam.” A threat that could only be addressed by Western militaries targeting these militants’ state sponsors across the region. Uncoincidentally, Likud began financing a then small-time Muslim Brotherhood offshoot in the Gaza Strip known as Hamas around this time as well.

A decade later, in 1996, another American neocon powerbroker named Richard Perle put together a policy paper for then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which came to be known as the Clean Break Report. This document followed the same logic as the previous one but was far more explicit in its intentions, advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq with his already destroyed stash of WMDs as an excuse along with the destabilization of Syria and Lebanon through financing and facilitating debilitating sectarian proxy wars with those dastardly militant Islamists to be used as convenient errand boys.

Those two Bibi-helmed documents pretty accurately laid out the last 25 years of American Israeli chaos in the Middle East like a stacked tarot deck. The only thing they didn’t predict was Iran rallying the region’s long disenfranchised Shia tribesmen into a high-functioning Axis of Resistance in every warzone touched by Bibi’s quasi-atavistic vision of an American Zion.

Thus, Iran has become the big-bad to Wall Street’s big-bad, with the Islamic Republic successfully painted as the Antichrist in the AIPAC production of the Book of Imperial Revelations and the Donald cast as the grabby leading man tasked with eliminating this threat while the IRGC and their allies in Hezbollah and Ansar Allah appear to be the last line of defense standing between Palestine and utter oblivion.

But are they?

The picture may look grim, but it is also not totally devoid of hope. Even with much of their leadership and infrastructure decapitated over the last several months, the skeleton crew that remains of the Islamic Republic continues to maintain a slight upper hand over their colossal foes simply by using the Strait of Hormuz to create a heavy economic price for an oil-dependent globalized economy actively colluding with American imperialism and Israeli genocide.

This is the only reason why Donald Trump pretends to play ceasefire on-and-off like a psychotic game of red-light-green-light. That rapist and his cuckolds in Tel Aviv are attempting to feign diplomacy just long enough to keep the world economy from imploding, at least until after the midterms, but those already desperate acts have been badly botched by an unexpected third party in the Persian Gulf named Oman.

This frequently overlooked sultanate on the south-eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula has long played a very quiet role as a kind of Arabian Switzerland in the region, using its status as the oldest independent state in the Arab world, complete with its own sect of Islam to serve as a rare bridge of diplomacy in the Middle East.

The Sultanate has played a major role in brokering a variety of often unthinkable ceasefires in a very hostile neighborhood, including between Ansar Allah and Saudi Arabia as well as between Saudi Arabia and Iran. They were also instrumental in facilitating the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal that Donald Trump famously ravaged to shreds like a rabid honey badger during his first term.

However, what makes Oman downright deadly to the Yankee-Zionist menace is the simple fact that its notoriously neutral monarchy shares territorial waters with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, with the two nations’ 12-mile nautical territorial limits quite literally overlapping in the narrow waterway.

Now, Oman has long advocated for these waters to remain toll-free and open to international passage, but the havoc that a pair of white psychopaths like Bibi and Donald have brought to their once calm waters appears to have them second-guessing this policy.

During the early chapters of the war, there were a rash of largely unconfirmed reports, both of Oman and Iran collaborating on a deal to facilitate a toll system in their shared waters that would provide the Islamic Republic with the kind of revenue they desperately need to rebuild, as well as rumors of the Trump Administration attempting to bully Oman into cutting ties with Iran altogether.

These reports appeared to be confirmed in late May when Donald Trump literally threatened to “blow up” Oman if the notoriously peaceful nation didn’t “behave”, followed shortly by equally bellicose threats from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to enact “aggressive sanctions” against the Sultanate on Twitter.

It is my strongly held belief as a semi-sentient anti-imperialist that it is not simply a toll that clearly terrifies these powerful men; it is the weaponization of bioregionalism against global conquest that could easily upend the entire fabric of the Atlantic model of neoliberal capitalism that underpins military-industrial psycho-states like Israel and the US.

If Oman and Iran can close the Strait, they can finally return the governance of the Persian Gulf back to the nations of the goddamn Persian Gulf. And after the last 25 years of Bibi’s imperial War on Terror, they would be insane not to also attempt to demilitarize the region entirely, by which I mean block all traffic in and out of this waterway to any nation that shares its shores with foreign soldiers.

This isn’t to say such brinksmanship would come without great risk, but, historically speaking, great risk in the name of regional populism has also invited great reward.

It was a bold move like this that brought Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Egypt to the brink of nuclear oblivion when that maverick strongman nationalized the Suez Canal back in 1956. But this gambit also precipitated the collapse of British imperial influence in the region when the Crown tried and failed on multiple occasions to remove Nasser from power.

The US ultimately had to wait for the much-beloved Colonel to drop dead before they could pay off his successor and regain control over that pivotal waterway, once again securing Israel’s ability to kill more civilians with ever-increasing impunity.

We stand waist deep in similarly shifting waters amidst the shallows of an American Century that has long overstayed its welcome anywhere but in a nation as diabolically cruel as Israel. In this tide, just a few unorthodox leaders on the right shores could easily play a deciding factor in the fate of millions. Houthis and Sultans and borders defined by Allah above the lesser gods of Westphalian dementia could be all it takes to redraw the map.

Here’s one heretic hoping for a few small miracles.

Nicky Reid is an agoraphobic anarcho-genderqueer gonzo blogger from Central Pennsylvania and assistant editor for Attack the System. You can find her online at Exile in Happy Valley.

Fashion against fascism: When trademarks deter neo-Nazis

Sarah Hucal

DW

06/07/2026 - 

In Germany, where Nazi symbols are banned, activists are using trademark law to fight far-right merchandise.

A campaign uses creative means to fight racist codes, even turning them into anti-racism merch

Image: Jung von Matt

In recent years, far-right merchandise has become an important source of income for some right-wing extremist groups and individuals in Germany. Online stores sell clothing, accessories and other products that use symbols members of the far-right scene recognize.

Because many openly Nazi symbols are illegal in Germany, sellers have increasingly relied on coded language to get around the law. Hitlerhas become HTLR, while Hakenkreuz (swastika) is abbreviated to HKNKRZ.

But the campaign "Recht Gegen Rechts" (Rights Against the Right) has found a clever way to combat this legal workaround. They take control of Nazi-related symbols, coded extremist phrases and the names of far-right businesses by registering them as trademarks at the European trademark office.

The campaign was launched in 2021 by German creative agency Jung von Matt, together with Hamburg-based nonprofit Laut Gegen Nazis (Noise against Nazis).

If extremist retailers continue to sell products bearing the newly protected names or phrases without permission, they could face legal action for infringement — including paying compensation for each item sold.
How registered trademarks stopped far-right merchandise

"These online shops are not in the darknet; they're existing there online. You have just to find the right URLs," explained Simon Knittel of Jung von Matt.

Simon Knittel was among those who started the campaign in 2021 to raise awareness about neo-Nazi codes       Image: Jung von Matt

However, for those outside of the far-right scene, the stores aren't easy to find. The team had help from Joern Menge, the founder of Noise against Nazis (Laut Gegen Nazis), as well as Philip Schlaffer, a former neo-Nazi and online shop owner, who is now a speaker and activist against far-right extremism.

"Basically, you can find these shops if you know what keywords to enter. A lot of them are now based overseas," Schlaffer told DW. "It's become a global business where a lot of money is changing hands."

The team identified more than 35 online stores with over 1,000 articles in each shop and then determined which trademarks would be most effective. For Schlaffer, the campaign's approach is both creative and effective.

"Neo-Nazis shouldn't feel like they have a safe haven; they should be afraid that the ideas they have — the ones they're selling — might be taken away from them and that the products will need to be taken offline. That takes away their sense of security," he said.

Indeed, the team saw this in action after the first trademark was secured.

"When we published our initial press release announcing that we had registered a trademark, it only took about 30 minutes, and the trademark was taken down by all the online shops. We didn't have to do anything," explained Knittel. "They did it voluntarily because they knew that we really had something against them and didn't want to be on the losing side of a court case."

Each subsequent trademark was met with the same response: items were quickly taken offline.

"In the end, we had to wait just 10 minutes, not 30. That was the proof for us that we found something that really solves the problem," said Knittel.

Philip Schlaffer is a former neo-Nazi-turned activist who helped advise the campaign

Image: Philip Schlaffer

Germany's strict approach to Nazi symbols

Germany's approach to Nazi imagery reflects the country's history and its efforts to prevent the revival of National Socialism. Under Section 86a of the German Criminal Code, displaying or distributing symbols of unconstitutional organizations is generally prohibited. This includes symbols associated with the Nazi Party, such as the swastika, SS symbols and the Nazi salute, except in educational contexts or for research and historical documentation.

Violations can result in fines or even imprisonment. Germany has one of the strictest approaches to extremist symbolism anywhere in the world.

How Germany is targeting violent neo-Nazi networks  13:44

Turning racist codes into anti-fascist merch

Rights Against the Right has also taken the process a step further by turning the neo-Nazi slogans into snarky anti-Nazi merchandise.

The campaign secured the trademark and the web domain of Druck18, a major online seller of neo-Nazi merchandise run by far-right extremist Tommy Frenck.

The shop sold products featuring extremist and xenophobic messages, including items designed to appeal to Nazi nostalgia. Recht Gegen Rechts replaced it with their own online shop, which sells anti-Nazi and anti-racist merchandise.

In the new Druck 18 online shop, you can buy a sweatshirt with the words HKN KRZ, the shorthand for swastika in German, that features the words crossed off and the text: "Thank you trademark law: We've registered this Nazi code as a trademark so Nazis can't spread it."

The team had to find a way to use the new trademarks without contributing to neo-Nazi rhetoric

Image: Jung von Matt

New trademarks are legally required to be used commercially within five years, so the team had to get creative. "We had to find a way to make [these Nazi codes] commercially available without contributing to any Nazi scandal or anything like that. So, we turned them upside down and had them written on the shirts," said Knittel.

Challenges with registering trademarks

The campaign has secured six trademarks and is in the process of securing more.

"It's quite complicated — it takes up to six months to have one trademark registered and costs €1,600 ($1,823) — and you never know if you will actually get it registered," said Knittel. The campaign relies completely on donations to fund its operations. Jung von Matt works entirely pro bono.

Harassment in the form of hate mail, emails has been commonplace, and the campaign is currently looking for name donors, as each trademark needs to be registered under an individual's name.

Street art against far-right hatred in Verona  04:57

The campaign is also involved in a lawsuit with Tommy Frenck, the owner of the original Druck 18. He sought a court order to stop them from using the shop's name but lost in both the first instance and on appeal.

And some of the codes used by Neo-Nazis can't be protected by trademark law in the first place. "So, there are still codes out there that we can't protect against," explained Knittel. "But in the end, the goal was to create awareness that these codes exists," in both the public and political spheres.

And that is something Rights Against the Right has certainly done — one trademark at a time.

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier


Sarah Hucal Freelance Multimedia Journalist