Vologda resident fined for computer game poster with swastika

Vologzhanin brought to administrative responsibility under Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses.

On March 16, 2021, it became known that the Vologda City Court under Part 1 of Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (public demonstration of Nazi symbols) fined Yegor Kovrigin for one thousand rubles, who published in 2017 on his page on VKontakte a poster of the Wolfenstein computer game, which included a swastika.

According to the prosecutor's office, during the trial, Kovrigin noted that he published the poster because he was a fan of the game in which the protagonist fights against the Nazi regime, and does not defend or support it at all.

We tend to believe that Kovrigin was wrongfully brought to justice, since, in our opinion, only cases of using Nazi symbols for Nazi propaganda deserve punishment. In this case, the swastika on the poster only indicates an element of the plot of a computer game in which supporters of Nazi Germany are the main enemies of the protagonist.

Unfortunately, even added to Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses , the note allowing the use of Nazi symbols in cases in which " a negative attitude is formed " towards the ideology of Nazism and " there are no signs of propaganda or justification " of the Nazi ideology does not prevent all cases of illegal, from our point of view, application of this rule.

Sources

• Case card No. 5-1349/2021 // Vologda City Court. 2021. March 10.
• The court brought to administrative responsibility a lover of a computer game // Prosecutor's office of the city of Vologda. 2021. March 15.
• Vologda citizen fined for posting a poster of a game with a swastika on social networks // News.Vo. 2021. March 16.
• Vologda residents will pay for posting a poster of the game with a swastika // Komsomolskaya Pravda - Vologda. 2021. March 16.