Following fierce backlash, the U.S. Coast Guard has reversed course on enacting a new harassment policy designating swastikas and nooses as “potentially divisive.”

The change came hours after questions emerged from a Washington Post report on Nov. 20 about the policy, completed under Adm. Kevin Lunday, acting commandant of the branch, that reclassified and downgraded the symbols.

The updated memo outlining the new policy now prohibits the displays of swastikas, nooses and “any symbols or flags co-opted or adopted by hate-based groups as representations of supremacy, racial or religious intolerance, antisemitism or any other improper bias.”

It classifies such symbols as “divisive or hate symbols.”

“These are quintessential symbols of hate, not merely ‘divisive symbols,’ nor abstract

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