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This letter has been sent out to ewm, hexentanz, lolly, moonbeam13 and spyed on the 29.04.2006. Please note that we removed our names, nothing else has been changed. We do not intend to publish all future communication.


Dear deviantArt administration,

We, “moeliw” and “photo-moe”, decided to found an antifascist campaign on deviantArt. The amount of submissions of (extreme-)right-winged propaganda, fascist and racist content and comments has been increasing recently, even holocaust-denial has been taking place. The published material includes NS-symbols but also comments and whole journals about reasons why the holocaust could not have happened as it is stated and commonly approved or why we should hate Jews. Links to other websites which particularly consist of racist propaganda have been posted within submissions and in comments and journals respectively. We believe that deviantArt, being the easily accessible website it is, is not the right place to exchange material like this, especially since many younger people are accessing it. DeviantArt should be a place to exchange art and not such political opinions.
Many of the submissions we object against violate different laws all over the world but mostly in Europe, denial of the holocaust can be sentenced with a prison sentence in many different countries and up to 20 years in Austria, many NS-symbols are prohibited in France, Hungary and Germany and can be sentenced with a fine or even a prison sentence.
We furthermore believe that they violate the deviantArt terms of service, as being stated in FAQ #12 “Am I allowed to submit art that is pornographic, hateful or demeaning?”, “[...] Content which is blatantly racist or bigoted in nature is also strictly prohibited. [...]”, the etiquette policy, first part (b) “Protect the members of the community to the best of our abilities, concerning rips, discrimination, and prejudice.”, and respectively the community rules “deviantArt does not tolerate remarks that are in any form of bigotry. These include but are not limited to; a. Racist Slurs b. Anti-Semitic or other derogatory remarks about philosophies and religions.” According to these rules, the deviations we are informed about and we mention should have been removed and the publishers should have been punished.
Our aims are therefore:


1. To ban all right-winged, racist and fascist ideology and all holocaust-denial from deviantArt

2. To restrict the use of NS-symbols such as the SS-sign and the swastika, also the use of photos of NS-soldiers, SS-troops, Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler etc. These symbols and images should remain usable for art, however, they should not be used in a glorifying context or as propaganda nor should a submitted artwork consist of nothing but such a symbol.

3. To stop deviantArt being a meeting point and for right-winged people


DeviantArt has a very strict policy on sexually explicit material which is accomplished very well, resulting in many removals, warnings and even bans of certain deviants. Our aim is to get a similarly strict system concerning (extreme-)right-winged, fascist and racist propaganda, including political content such as the denial of the holocaust.

We founded the group intending to inform other members of the community of the current situation, it’s aim is to act as an information centre regarding the named issues and as an online-petition for the deviantArt administration, a watch representing a signature. Today, only 5 days after the group has been founded, we received our 50. watch; we have over 500 page views and affiliate with 7 clubs already. This clearly indicates that there is a need to address these issues within the community; the group has evolved rapidly, getting advertisement only via journals and comments, often between other members.
We seek the dialogue with the deviantArt administration since we believe that that is the only way out; involving third parties is not our aim, as we believe that this situation can only be solved by getting in touch with the administration and acting as ambassadors for the concerned members of the community, helping to improve deviantArt.
We do not intent to form lynch-mobs or to create more hate and indifferences on deviantArt, we ask members, especially the group’s members, not to insult right-winged members of deviantArt but, if they feel the need to, contact these members publicly, and, most importantly, to watch the group in order to leave their “signature” and to make the group more known.

Please get in touch with us, we are looking forward to hearing from you,

Yours,

moeliw
and
photo-moe