You know, for people claiming not to defend certain historic individuals... I'm seeing a lot of defending going on later in the same posts.
Either way though, this is a game where we can play Villains, as well as Heroes, allowing the playerbase to effective demonize or lionize anything that is available in the costume creator.
I can just as easily make a corrupt, evil warmonger soldier Villain in a very patriotic American costume, or the same character in the same costume as a heroic fighter defending the free world.
This means that anything in the game's costume creator is effectively subject to the whims of the players, regardless of what it may represent in real life. The Hammer and Sickle, for example, could be on the chest of 'Red Dread' the wicked, evil soviet villain, or it could be 'Captain Communist', someone's unapologetic avatar of 'actually Communism can be a good thing' lived out vicariously within the game.
You talk at length about how a symbol may be offensive to some people, but symbols are only given meaning by society's perceptions, informed by history and personal bias, and many symbols, as Mr. Berkeley points out, will have their suppourters as well as their detractors.
So if you want to view this conundrum as a community, there's only three viable options: Allow all symbols to be included, regardless of who they may offend. Remove any and all content that anybody claims is offensive, or only allow items to be included based on some kind of proportional voting system, where mob rule decides what content is allowed and what is deemed too offensive.
Or, people can keep on arguing about what they think and feel, and wave their little flags and shout at each-other until the thread is locked.