I'm writing this post at the request of another user who liked my explanation of the situation. It seems a lot of people don't fully understand the problem with KEK being in Destiny 2. Quite frankly I don't blame anyone for not being in the loop on this one, it involves a long string of obscure events and anyone who's not paying close attention to current political events in America likely has no idea what's really going on here.
Most people who have heard of KEK know it from World of Warcracft. If an Alliance player was reading the chat and a Horde player typed in "LOL" it would instead come across as "KEK" to the Alliance player. [b]This is the origin of KEK but this is not what Bungie is referring to when they speak of "harmful imagery."[/b]
A while ago KEK was used as a meme within the Pepe the Frog is a racist symbol fiasco. Most notably as the main symbol within a very N4Zl*-esk looking flag. The memes themselves were merely jokes but at face value (to anyone not knowing better) they seemed to invoke racist ideology.
[b]More recently those same racist KEK memes have been appropriated by various actual hate groups.[/b] THIS is what Bungie is talking about when they refer to "harmful imagery." It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with KEK or the memes that use it, it's just the result of an unfortunate serious of recent events that have led to KEK being associated with modern hate groups.
Even if KEK is being taken wildly out of it's original context that doesn't change the fact that very real and very active modern hate groups have appropriated the term and the memes surrounding it for their own purposes. It would be irresponsible of Bungie to leave in their game something that (even unintentionally) invokes the ideologies of these groups. THIS is why Bungie made a big deal out of explaining that it was an unintentional inclusion. THIS is why Bungie is taking it out of the game**. [b]Bungie doesn't want to be associated with modern hate groups.[/b]
*Bungie's system automatically replaces the work N4Zl with [url=http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law]-godwinslaw!-[/url]. I understand why they do this, it's to help prevent disagreements from spiraling into mere name calling. However I believe in this context it's important for people to immediately understand what's being said as opposed to the term being censored, which is why I typed it weird to avoid the censor.
**To be clear Bungie is not removing any of the gear that has this image on it, they're just re-skinning the items to no longer include the image.
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I can go further with this. The Destiny Tricorne can now be associated assisted-suicide since the Speakers tells us to go kill ourselves.