- In November 2025, a claim circulated online that the U.S. Coast Guard would no longer classify swastikas and nooses as hate symbols starting in December 2025.
- The claim appeared to come from a report in The Washington Post that cited a Coast Guard policy update published Nov. 14, 2025. According to this update, the Coast Guard would classify symbols like swastikas or nooses as “potentially divisive.”
- The Coast Guard had previously treated “hate incidents” — intentional acts of intolerance toward people or property based on bias against protected characteristics that intimidated others or incited similar conduct — differently from harassment and called symbols like swastikas and nooses “hate symbols” in its policy.
- Following public outcry after The Washington Post published its report, Adm. Kevin Lunday, the acting commandant of the Coast Guard, issued a policy update that classified swastikas, nooses and Confederate flags as “divisive or hate symbols and flags.” That policy said outright that such symbols “shall be removed from all Coast Guard workplaces, facilities, and assets.”
In November 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that, according to a new policy, the U.S. Coast Guard would no longer classify swastikas and nooses as hate symbols starting in December 2025.
One X user posted, “BREAKING: US Coast Guard no longer considers swastikas or nooses as hate symbols”
BREAKING: US Coast Guard no longer considers swastikas or nooses as hate symbols pic.twitter.com/tIqifJixvK
— TizzyEnt (@TizzyEnt) November 20, 2025
The claim also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived), Reddit (archived) and TikTok (archived). Snopes readers also wrote in asking whether the claim was true.
Many social media users who shared the claim cited an article in The Washington Post. That article, headlined “U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols,” reported that the Coast Guard “downgraded” symbols such as swastikas and nooses from hate symbols to instead describe them as “potentially divisive.”
The Coast Guard announced a policy update Nov. 14, 2025, that classified swastikas, nooses and other symbols and flags “widely identified with oppression or hatred” as “potentially divisive.” The Coast Guard’s previous policy from 2023 classified such symbols as “hate symbols.”
Adm. Kevin Lunday, the acting commandant of the Coast Guard wrote on X (archived) on Nov. 20 that claims the Coast Guard would “no longer classify swastikas, nooses or other extremist imagery as prohibited symbols” were “categorically false.” The Department of Homeland Security, under which the Coast Guard operates, shared a post from The Washington Post about its report, writing (archived), “Y’all are just making things up now.”
That same day, Lunday released an updated policy that expressly prohibited “divisive or hate symbols and flags” and specifically named swastikas and nooses as such. We asked the Coast Guard when the Nov. 20 policy update would come into effect and await a reply. The Washington Post published a report Nov. 21 that referred to the Nov. 14 policy update as “now defunct.”
Hate symbols called ‘potentially divisive’ in new policy
The Coast Guard did release a policy update on harassing behavior on Nov. 14, 2025, due to come into effect on Dec. 15, 2025, whose Section 7d (See Page 2) removed the classification “hate incident” from the service’s policy. In Chapter 11, Section B1 (Page 11-1), the policy reclassified “hate incidents” as harassment and symbols like swastikas or nooses as “potentially divisive.”
According to a 2023 Coast Guard Harassment policy, Section 20(a) (Page 19), the term “hate incident” covered an “intentional act (conduct or speech) of intolerance” against people or property that was motivated by bias against protected characteristics such as race, color, religion, sex or age. Hate incidents, the Coast Guard wrote, were incidents that had the effect of “intimidating others or inciting others to similar conduct,” regardless of whether that was the perpetrator’s intent.
The policy’s Section 20b(2) listed “a noose, a swastika, supremacist symbols, Confederate symbols or flags, and anti-Semitic symbols” as part of a “non-exhaustive” list of symbols that could cause a hate incident. Section 20e(2) read: “Convening authorities will investigate the display of any hate symbol or divisive symbol as a potential hate incident.”
The Nov. 14 policy update did not include the term “hate symbol,” suggesting the Coast Guard no longer used that terminology.
Though that update appeared to soften the language around hate incidents and symbols, Lunday appeared more decisive in his Nov. 20 policy update update.
In that text, Lunday reintroduced the term “hate symbol,” writing, “The Coast Guard does not tolerate the display of divisive or hate symbols and flags, including those identified with oppression or hatred.”
The update named “a noose, a swastika, and any symbols or flags co-opted or adopted by hate-based groups as representations of supremacy, racial or religious intolerance, anti-semitism, or any other improper bias,” as potential hate symbols.
Lunday also wrote, “The display of any divisive or hate symbol is prohibited and shall be removed from all Coast Guard workplaces, facilities, and assets.”
This phrasing differed from the Nov. 14 policy, Chapter 11, Section C1 (Page 11-1), which read:
Commanders, commanding officers, officers-in-charge, and supervisors shall inquire into public displays of other potentially divisive symbols or flags and, in consultation with their servicing legal office, may order or direct the removal of those determined to adversely affect good order and discipline, unit cohesion, command climate, morale, or mission effectiveness.
Department of Defense policy
According to the Coast Guard, the Nov. 14 policy update aimed “to help resolve reports more quickly and effectively at the lowest appropriate level.” The Coast Guard also said the revision was “consistent with Presidential and Department of War directives.”
The Coast Guard operates under the DHS but can be transferred to the Department of Defense during wartime. In April 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum that asked military departments to review programs that allowed staff to report discrimination and harassment. Hegseth reportedly said being able to report such behaviors was a good thing, but that some people “weaponize” the programs or use them “in bad faith to retaliate against superiors or peers.”
Hegseth’s memo asked departments to “provide plans to streamline the investigation process, timely address problematic behaviors and mitigate undue mission impacts.”
