Never ask when we have reached peak stupidity, because there is always something else.

Portland just concluded their annual Rose City Comic Con, which had its usual run of cosplayers (for the uninitiated, this is “costume play” – think Halloween on a highly intentional grown-up scale). But this particular Comic Con has now formally banned Nazis. Which also includes the traditional foes of Marvel’s Captain America – namely, Red Skull and Hydra.

Rose City Comic Con just happened – and drew around 30,000 fans – but the organizers are getting the jump on next year after they say they were inundated with cosplayers in Nazi and Nazi-reminiscent costumes, and it necessitated a change.

This year’s guidelines read:

“Hateful symbols aren’t welcome at Rose City Comic Con. Historical costumes can be great, but reminders of unspeakable atrocities are not appropriate.”

Next years guidelines were updated to reflect the problem.

Hateful symbols aren’t welcome at Rose City Comic Con. Historical costumes can be great, but reminders of unspeakable atrocities are not appropriate – this goes for Old School Hydra and Red Skull or any other Nazis from entertainment properties. Those figures, while comic-related, are still very much Nazis. As a result, they are 100% banned, always. This includes any sort of “ironic” or satirical costumes that re-appropriate Nazi paraphernalia or gear.

While Nazi costumes weren’t exactly in abundance at Rose City Comic Con, it wasn’t all Hydra and Red Skull issues, apparently.

(Rose City Comic Con founder Ron) Brister says he’s seen an uptick in Nazi cosplay costumes at conventions around the country this year, which might partly be because of the popularity of The Man In the High Castle, an Amazon show that explores what it would be like if the Nazis won World War II. He says the cosplay for the main character has blatant swastikas on it.

For the unaware, The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history fiction story by Philip K. Dick that Amazon turned into a series, in which the Axis powers won World War II and now control North America.

But if we’re going to ban Hydra and Red Skull, the Rose City Comic Con people are going to have to ban Captain America now, too, since he revealed himself to be a Hydra agent in the comics. And where does this end? Will stormtroopers be next? It’s already happened before!

I’d ask where this is all going to end, but I already know the answer.

If Rose City Comic Con founders, organizers, and attendees are too lacking in common sense to be able to discern dress-up from real life, then what is the point of having a Comic Con in the first place?