A notorious Nazi symbol recently made waves in the esports (electronic sports) community when a team used it as their logo in a tournament. AnimeVesta, a team based in Mongolia, used the Sturmabteilung (SA) logo to represent them, a symbol also used by Hitler’s Brownshirts, a paramilitary wing of the Nazi party, prior to his ascendance to power in Germany. The symbol is still used by many neo-Nazis in lieu of a swastika to signal their ideology. The tournament, called the MESA Invitational 2024, was held from December 10-15, 2024, with a prize pool of $100,000. Tournament participants were playing Dota 2, a 5 vs. 5 format online multiplayer game developed by Valve Corporation, which also developed the video game storefront Steam (where Dota 2 is hosted), which regularly platforms extremist content. Reddit users were quick to recognize and ridicule the symbol’s use, questioning whether tournament organizers “check new/unknown teams for this kind of stuff,” calling it a “nasty phenomenon.” The social media posts created a backlash against MESA, leading to AnimeVesta removing their logo. However, this enforcement came too late, as the symbol had already reached thousands watching gameplay, including archives of the tournament on YouTube. The video-hosting platform has historically allowed videos with hateful content and imagery to proliferate transnationally and in different languages, including several instances of extremist content related to gaming. Previous investigations by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) revealed extremist groups such as the Patriot Youth, which identifies closely with the white nationalist Patriot Front movement, sharing hateful content in the online multiplayer video game Roblox, Austrian Identitarian game studio Kvltgames, and content showcasing far-right conspiracist Alex Jones’ hateful video game NWO Wars all platformed, and in some cases, monetized, by YouTube.
via globalextremism: Nazi Symbol Prominently Displayed At Esports Tournament