The title’s a bit disingenuous, I know: this didn’t come out of nowhere. White supremacism is as American as Manifest Destiny and has been heavily intertwined with Nazism from its inception. That overlap with the Republican party, and their gradual slip into the extreme far-right, is evident.
But Seig Heils? Even the most dense among them must know that blatant Nazism hurts their legitimacy in the eyes of the public, even among MAGATs (as is evident right now if you peek at their echo chamber on Reddit). Surely they would have a much easier time pushing their rhetoric and establishing their agenda by keeping a purposeful distance from that sort of indefensible imagery and symbolism. How do they expect to keep cohesion in the military when you imply to the soldiers that they are Nazis now, seig heils and all.
Why Nazis?
Any theories as to where this is coming from? Follow the ketamine-fueled leader? A directive for operative Krasnov, from Putin himself, to implode the country? True Nazi beliefs among the Heritage Foundation, Proud Boys, etc? I just don’t understand how they thought this would fly. I don’t understand anything anymore lol.
There have always been Nazis in America, even during WW2. Listen to Rachel Maddow’s podcast “ultra” to hear about how close they came to a takeover of the US way back then. They never went away, they just went low profile for a while.
The fact that the salute is so offensive, they did it so blatantly, and their denial was so disingenuous is the point. It’s a demonstration of power. They can do a Nazi salute and their opponents can’t punish them. They can deny that they did a Nazi salute and their opponents can’t control the narrative. If they did something more subtle, then people might think that they weren’t facing any consequences because their opponents were giving them the benefit of the doubt. With the Nazi salute there is no doubt. The only explanation for why they aren’t facing any consequences is that their opponents are powerless.
I wish I could find it now, but there was a quote attributed to someone suffering under an oppressive regime which would blatantly lie, and yet it remained accepted: “The lie is the insult.”
Happy cake day!
They’ve been doing Zeig Heils for years.
I wish I could find the documentary, about a woman who dated some alt right weirdo and he started taking her to like Turning Point USA meetings and other groups meetings and she describes how the first time she did Zeig Heils, and they just did this shit like it was normal. She describes going to a book burning, thinking it was a joke, and then it was like an actual book burning.
It’s all nudge nudge wink wink. They’re doing Nazi salute because they are Nazis.
Makes me think of my younger days hanging out on 4chan, thinking I was having ironic, satirical laughs with my fellow anons until eventually realizing most of them actually believed what they were saying
Yeah, old 4chan was definitely something. You had some of the absolute funniest shitposting imaginable, right next to some shit that no amount of eye bleach and showers could cleanse you of. Like, it was fun every once in a while for shits and giggles, but it started messing with your psyche after even an hour. The casual racism alone was in no way ironic. And So. Much. CP; to the point where most of the images aren’t even worth a glance because there’s a good chance it’s underage revenge porn. I genuinely don’t know how that site is still up.
Nowadays it’s pretty damn tame, at least compared to how it used to be. And the wicked thing is, there are people who legit live on there, as in it’s damn near all they do with their lives, both then and now. I’ll go peek in every few months for a nostalgia trip, but I’m out after 10 min on average, it’s still toxic as hell.
Sorry to be pedantic, but it’s “Sieg Heil”.
Sieg means Victory, so it means “Hail victory”.
Curious to hear more about this documentary
What you’re seeing is the end of Truth.
Especially in the face of AI generated photos, we’re dealing with a future where the youth can easily be misled about what actually happened in the past, or even in the current moment. There is very much an upswing of young people questioning established narratives of the past, often under the guise of “well you weren’t there, how do you know for sure?”
Reality is perception, and they are busy managing reality to deny any perception of Nazi behavior.
It’s why Musk especially lies so fluidly and easily in the face of hard evidence.
It’s all perception management, and as long as they keep talking and keep repeating the same lies, a significant number of people will believe them.
Musk still claims it wasn’t a Nazi salute, and a significant number of people believe him. It’s kind of like Trump’s statement that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue and not lose any support. It’s all attack, never back down, never admit fault.
EDIT: It’s also Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” strategy at work, too. We’ve been in an Attention Economy for a long time now (at least since 2007 when the iPhone put a screen in everyone’s pocket), and they know people’s attention is limited, so they work to force themselves into people’s limited time and attention spans. If your message is the only one they have time to hear, they’ll probably be more likely to consider yours true. This, for example, is why Musk forced himself into everyone’s Twitter feeds, he’s force feeding himself the limited attention of millions.
Nazis didn’t come around all of a sudden, either. People have always, on the whole, been horrible. What changes is what is culturally acceptable to talk about.
I knew this was coming after 9/11/2001. That was my first brush with how absolutely vile, ignorant, and racist most US citizens could be.
I used to always say eventually they would bring the tools of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars home and use against their own citizens and god damn it, it sucks to be right.
Godamnit! At that time, we were visiting family stateside. It was like the window let in a chill, like a rug pulled out from under you, it was tangible that something in the very fabric of the USA had changed.
I remember telling my grandpa, who fled soviet Bulgaria in WWII, that if this goes on, they can make anyone their enemy. 9/11 turned the hate siphon on full blast, and I was certain they would turn on their own.
So happy he didn’t live to see what the Republicans became.
Just a lack of Nazi hunters.
They wrote a nazi manifesto, it got reported on widely, they barely denied it and they won anyway.
Nothing that is happening on their end is the slightest bit unexpected, so I’m just isolating myself from America and Americans as much as I can until I don’t get a choice. When I see this things by accident I do feel an remarkable urge to grab anybody who expresses disappointment or surprise and shake them by the lapels until they pass out.
we’re in the end stages of a campaign by assholes to overthrow our deomocracy.
It’s been getting waged for decades. they’ve been doing this shit for years, behind closed doors and they now feel comfortable with being nazis in public.
It wasn’t sudden, this shit’s been muddying the waters for a decade and the precursors were seeping in for another decade or more before that.
People become less hospitable in economic downturns, remember the original Nazis exploited that in the Versailles hit Weimar.
Non-American here. My brother and dad STILL cling the the narrative of “He’s autistic, he was excited.” and nothing will disusde them from that.
Same with my partner’s American family. They dont believe a word about what’s happening. And if we can’t turn the domestic terrorists in our homes back to reality what chance do we stand turning back the country.
They want people to feel like rebels with a cause.
This is a good symbol to make a lot of people your enemies. Your ingroup can now rally against “the establishment”.
It couldn’t work before, because it made too many enemies for your small ingroup, but we’ve reached a tipping point where it is feasible to keep a thing going for a while.
if you think the right wing being filled with nazi is a new phenomenon, I’ve got a bridge to sell you
They were always Nazis. The more mainstream-seeming “alt-right” guys were just suit Nazis. They feel more comfortable coming out in the open now, even if it’s still a bit draped in “doing it for lulz” deniability. I’m skeptical that they’re fully aware that it’ll hurt their legitimacy. They’re dug in like ticks in their echo chamber, are constantly goading each into being more openly extreme, and celebrate the push back there.
Yeah, nobody told the “Genocide Joe” “From The River To The Sea” folks this when they were marching throwing up Nazis salutes and waiving around Hamas and Hezbollah banners, for months, every night on the News, of an Election year. Young Democrats didn’t vote, and we lost the whole world.
Or weren’t those the blatant displays of antisemitic Nazism that you were talking about? I get confused.
Opposition to Israeli genocide was not a problem. Consistently blaming Israeli genocide on the Democrats was an astounding self-own actively encouraged by both Israel and US fascists and it does put at least some of the blame on the dereliction of duty of the US left.
