A swastika drawn on a wall at the U.S. Coast Guard’s primary recruit training center in New Jersey has been removed and the incident referred for investigation, the service said Monday, condemning the display of hate symbols.
“Following discovery of a hate symbol drawn on a bathroom wall in a building at Training Center Cape May, the Coast Guard immediately referred the matter to the Coast Guard Investigative Service for investigation, consistent with longstanding policy,” a Coast Guard spokesperson said in a statement. “This hate symbol was immediately removed.”
The Washington Post first reported that a Coast Guard instructor found the drawing Thursday evening on a men’s bathroom wall at the Cape May training center in southern New Jersey.
The swastika was adopted by Germany’s Nazi Party and became a symbol associated with white supremacist and far-right hate.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday traveled to the training center and addressed about 900 recruits and staff members following the incident, the service said.
“Anyone who adheres to or advances hate or extremist ideology — get out. Leave,” Lunday said in a statement released by the Coast Guard. “You don’t belong in the United States Coast Guard and we reject you.”
Civil rights advocates have said President Donald Trump’s political rise has fueled white supremacist and far-right rhetoric. Trump, a Republican, has said he condemns white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
The Washington Post reported in November that the Coast Guard had revised language in its workplace harassment manual to describe swastikas as “potentially divisive,” rather than explicitly labeling them as hate symbols.
At the time, Lunday said claims that the Coast Guard would no longer classify swastikas, nooses or other extremist imagery as prohibited symbols were “categorically false.”