I know, and this also makes me sick to hear. I don't support the ideologies behind such symbols but by denying people's right to use them(albeit in private when playing a game and the like at the very least) it goes against everything I was brought up to believe in.

That'd be like banning(I guess in this case black people like Chapelle) from doing slavery parodies because of the US slavery periods because it was a stain on our past.

It is a very controversial topic among the legal community. Even several judges of the supreme court have openly called those laws unconstitutional. I'm not going to convince you or argue about it here. Books have been written about it, but let me assure you, while there are some really absurd cases sometimes, those law do more good than harm.
You're own liberty only ranges as far as the right of your fellow man. If it is highly insulting (blackface) it should be illegal.

The Holocaust and slavery are vastly different in scope. And we do make funny movies about Hitler (well, those Jews do ;-P ). Those laws are generally very "focused" in use. They normally only slap them on the bad guys(nor strictly constitutional by itself, but I wont shed a tear)

Edit: Did some edits, sorry.

Those laws could be rewritten to allow the symbols/etc in certain instances where hate/etc is not the main factor in their usage(like in games like Wolf3d/etc) . Blanket laws such as this are just unnecessary and insane imo.
Yes I agree, as long as doing so doesn't infringe on everyone';s rights to accomplish such.

Also they are different in scope but still stains on our respective countries. This is the point i;m trying to make here.

Here you go (I don't think this film has seen an english release)

More than just that there was the issue of shooting dogs and blood. There was an SNES version that was legally distributed in Germany. I'd like to pick up a copy at some point.

IIRC, they swapped rats for dogs, sweat for blood and Staatmeister for Hitler. As well as removing the Horst Wessel Lied and all the swastikas.

It is kind of silly IMHO considering that you're trying to take down the Nazi regime, but I don't make the rules.

I get that your country pokes fun of Hitler. This still doesn't make up for the fact that it lays down the law (just a bit) too harshly in other areas.

(I am not saying neo-nzais shouldn't be punished or those wielding such Nazi symbols and ideals for hate but mainly the game examples I dislike the idea of being censored in such a way.)

You should have seen the changes they made to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Those were weird.
As I said, it is very controversial. And videogames aren't the most popular topic to begin with in Germany, so, well, we have to live with it.

I can't help but think that it's the byproduct of the notorious German bureaucracy in action.

That actually might make it worth a play through. Probably with cheating to get past that stupid stealth sequence.

Actually the ban on Nazi symbols was enacted by the Allieds immediately after winning WW2.

The German government was never in a position to lift that ban. In the years after the war, lifting that ban would have created a lot of suspicion in the countries that suffered under Nazi Germany. Later, lifting the ban would be a fatally wrong sign for the extremist neo-nazi fringe groups that do still exist in Germany.

This leads to the slightly funny situation that Americans (and others) criticize or even ridicule the Germans for a ban on Nazi symbols that was enacted by their own governments.

*yawn*

Virginia City Bans Confederate Flags From Poles
http://newsone.com/nation/associatedpress3/virginia-city-bans-confederate-flags-from-poles/

Why can't they amend the law then to make exceptions? Not drop or cancel out the law perse.

Also: ITT the more you know moment, thanks to our pal Psyringe. :)

It's not about glorification but trivialization. National socialism was (and is) a very real and complex phenomenon. Wolfenstein 3D takes the perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities in history and turns them into comic book villains. By using Nazism in trivial contexts such as video games there is a real risk of desensitizing people and turning history into a farce. I'm not generally in favor of censorship, but I can understand that the German government doesn't want to appear lenient on Nazism. They are not sweeping anything under the rug, on the contrary. National socialism is very present in German consciousness and constantly debated ad nauseam. However, using a caricature of national socalism for entertainment is widely viewed as unacceptable.

Playing Wolf3d is seen as trivializing the holocaust? C'mon............

very thought-provoking post. +1

Well, which kind of amendment would you propose specifically? As far as I can see, any amendment that _partially_ lifts the ban would entail the same problems - with regard to foreign affairs as well as domestically - as lifting the whole ban.

As others noted already, it's a complicated subject. The current situation is a historically grown juridical mess which, despite being a mess, still works rather well in most cases - whereas any attempt of "cleaning it up" incurs substantial risks for very little actual gain.

I can see where you're coming from though. And I'm not convinced that banning symbols of an undesirable ideology is a good way of dealing with it. But I can also see how it ended up being this way and why it'd be risky to change it now.