Over the past several weeks, a number of people have noticed that the President’s campaign, as well as the President, seem to be sending some very unique messages using some very unique imagery. On 18 June, Media Matters caught the President tweeting out this alleged Antifa symbol:
This is not an Antifa symbol. It is the symbol the NAZIs made political prisoners wear. Here’s the symbology classification system as explained by the US Holocaust Museum Encyclopedia Holocaust:
Here’s the new America First T-Shirt being offered for sale by the President’s campaign store:
Here’s a better screen grab of the logo:
And this is the partieadler, or (NAZI) party eagle and its description from the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) website:
The Nazi Eagle is a symbol developed originally by the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920s (also becoming a symbol of the German government after the Nazis took power), based loosely on traditional German coats of arms. Following World War II, the symbol was appropriated by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists worldwide, with many variations. The symbol originally featured an eagle clutching a swastika, but many variations replace the swastika with some other hate symbol, such as SS bolts or a Celtic Cross. Occasionally, extremists will leave the circle blank where the swastika normally would appear; this seems to be more common in countries where the swastika is prohibited.
It should be noted that eagles are a common symbol among nations worldwide, including the United States, and not every image of an eagle is derivative of the Nazi eagle. It is not uncommon, for example, for some Americans to mistake the Blue Eagle logo of the Roosevelt-era National Recovery Administration for a Nazi-derived symbol.
Here’s the National Recover Administration’s crest so you can see for yourself that it looks nothing like the parteiadler or the logo on the America First T-shirts.
But it isn’t just the imagery. The Trump Make America Great Committee purchased 88 Facebook ads that used the NAZI symbols for political prisoners in the screen grab at the top of the post. 88 is the code that neo-NAZIs and white supremacists use for Heil Hitler. Recently the President, in defending monuments and statues to Confederate military leaders and personnel, tweeted out this 14 word tweet, which included two words with capitalized “H”s right next to each other:
This is a battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Country! #MAGA2020
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2020
The 14 words is the most popular white supremacist slogan and statement. From the ADL:
“14 Words” is a reference to the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The slogan was coined by David Lane, a member of the white supremacist terrorist group known as The Order (Lane died in prison in 2007). The term reflects the primary white supremacist worldview in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: that unless immediate action is taken, the white race is doomed to extinction by an alleged “rising tide of color” purportedly controlled and manipulated by Jews.
Because of its widespread popularity, white supremacists reference this slogan constantly, in its full form as well as in abbreviated versions such as “14 Words”, “Fourteen Words,” or simply the number “14.”
A sober person would say that this is just a coincidence. That argument would have more validity if the President and his campaign and his administration did not have a history of using this type of symbolism. One of the President’s 2016 campaign ads, in July of 2016, was a picture of Secretary Clinton’s face and a Star of David (six pointed star/Jewish star) imposed over piles of cash. Which he tweeted! Another of his campaign’s final ads during the 2016 election included the faces of then Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Holocaust survivor, billionaire, philanthropist George Soros as exemplars of corruption.
The use of this imagery is not an accident. Without having to actually go looking for them, including the T-shirt the President’s campaign just made available for purchase, I was able to come up with a number of examples using clearly anti-Semitic imagery and language. But it goes beyond these campaign ads, merchandise, and tweets by the President. For instance, the initial number of children that HHS was reporting had been lost in the system after being separated at the border was 1,488. This amount of coincidence takes a lot of work!
The dog whistle is clearly passé. Why whisper when you can scream!
Obligatory!
Open thread!
Patricia Kayden
TaMara (HFG)
When I saw that shirt earlier today I was dumbfounded.. I mean, not hiding it any longer.
Honestly, I don’t understand this strategy. Do they think there are enough white supremacists/neo-nazis to swing the election?
I mean…JFK if that’s the case, the country is toast and we probably should just let them burn it to the ground.
Patricia Kayden
Why does Trump feel the need to whistle to his base anyways? They’re going to crawl over glass to vote for him no matter what. It’s weird that he’s never thought about trying to expand his base by reaching out to the non-Deplorables. 🤷🏾♀️
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Fuck these people.
Fuck everything.
We are so fucked.
(((Colette)))
cain
It sickens me that our flag is used in conjunction with Nazi symbolism. Even now, I’m comfortable seeing our flag because now I feel it is only flown by racist white right winger. I don’t know any brown or black people who fly the flag.
different-church-lady
I see that the WaPo had the poor judgement to give Parscale valuable OpEd space to pedal his propaganda. Steamed about that, but I can’t boycott what I don’t buy.
different-church-lady
@Patricia Kayden:
It gives him pleasure.
cain
@Patricia Kayden:
It energizes them and gives Trump the attention he craves.
Even it’s even more amazing watchign evangelical churches follow right along.
Clearly, even evangelicals are also right in on this shit because I see no repudiation at all.
different-church-lady
@cain: It gives them pleasure too.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
The most maddening thing about this is their gutlessness. They hint at this shit—well, more than hint, but they gocgo for the more obscure references, and they change those just enough to leave room for plausible deniability. It would be refreshing in a way if they just fully committed themselves to what they so clearly want to do.
On a related note, what the fuck is Stephen Miller doing fucking around with nazis? Is there some weird group of Jewish nazis? What the fuck is going on with that?
Eric U.
That June 30 tweet also contains 88 characters. Okay, maybe 87
Patricia Kayden
CaseyL
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Yeah, I don’t get that either. The only thing I can come up with is that Miller believes himself to be one of the Elite, who is immune to the forces he aids and abets. That… doesn’t generally work out well for collaborators.
I also can’t understand the blatancy of non-caring we see among the GOP as well as the Trump campaign. I can’t help worrying that they have a plan to “win” the election no matter what.
mrmoshpotato
@Patricia Kayden:
Not sure how he’d do that after 5+ years of being white supremacist Nazi trash.
“Haha, the way I’ve acted since June 2015 was all fake! Come join my campaign!”
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
The snippets of the Trump rallies I’ve seen always put me in mind of Jim Jones. I wonder what flavor of Kool-Aid he’ll force his followers to drink?
I think Trump gets a bigger charge from the adulation than from any thoughts about widening his base.
different-church-lady
@Patricia Kayden: The other thing is that Trump utterly believes his base outnumbers the non-deplorables. He still thinks his popular vote loss was because of vote fraud. The dude honestly believes this is a winning strategy for him.
mrmoshpotato
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
No, we aren’t. We pound this shit into the ground with our ballots. And again in 2022, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32…
Brachiator
Oh, come on! Any conservative pundit would tell you, just because a white supremacist president is reworking past symbols associated with white supremacist ideology into his campaign material, this does not mean that he is a white supremacist.
It’s obviously a coincidence. Or something.
He thinks that he can convert them, or that they will passively accept his appeal to white nativist ideology.
Trump is crude and unimaginative for the most part. He keeps going back to the same bag of tricks and reaches out to the same dumb batch of devoted followers.
Ken
Strawberry COVID.
debbie
@CaseyL:
There were plenty of German Jews in the 1930s who saw themselves as Germans and figured they’d be left alone. They weren’t collaborators; they were … mistaken.
Frankensteinbeck
The simplest explanation consistent with all facts is that Trump is a Nazi. Not just a white supremacist, a ‘Heil Hitler’ Nazi. He wants to be the new Hitler, of course. He’s probably not smart enough for most of this code, but is delighted when his ‘very fine people’ add it to his statements. The detail that might throw people off is that Jews are Trump’s model minority. He has parroted most of the major bigotries against them, even before he was president, but he likes greed.
Adam L Silverman
@CaseyL:
They do. The question is whether they will be successful.
Chetan Murthy
@debbie: This is right. And there were lots of “Aryan Germans” who wrote to the Nazi leadership, asking for their favorite Jew (or Jews) to be spared. None were. I -do- remember there were a few cases where Jews protected by -very- high-ranking Nazis were spared, but we’re talking a few, a very very few.
Mike in NC
Maddow’s showing great stuff about Fat Bastard not ever reading his briefs.
brantl
The 14 words and the 1488 detainees? The 2 capital H’s? You’re really reaching, there. The rest of it? Sure, as soon as he came out with “there are many fine people on both sides”, you knew he was a white supremacist. No doubt, from anybody with half a brain. Don’t ruin your argument with stretchy crap.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@brantl:
Are you for real?
cain
@Frankensteinbeck:
He would have gotten to a certain point and then been assassinated by “liberals” and a new chancellor will take over and declare martial law and suspend the constitution and then some epic shit will start.
Chetan Murthy
@brantl: It’s not stretchy crap, my friend. Sadly, 1488 and HH -do- have great symbolic power amongst white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Seriously. Look it up.
Anya
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
There are always individuals who sell out their people but a better question, WTF is Israel doing fucking around with nazis? And why would the whole Israeli political class align themselves with Trump, his racism and fascism?
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah. Jared has a plan to secure peace in the Middle East, too. How did that work out? The joke was ‘These people aren’t masterminds. They’re not Lex Luther. They’re shitlords.’ Except they’re shitlords who think they’re Lex Luther.
Eolirin
He’s not. That’s how that neo-nazis signal. It’s extremely common.
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
Trump has been white supremacist Nazi trash all his life.
Mike J
You left out the $88 baseball.
Chetan Murthy
@Amir Khalid: I forget where I read it, but the fucker kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside for years. Only a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer would do that. Esp. when he’s somebody who basically doesn’t read -shit-.
It’s a form of signaling, just as is my collection of literature. And having it in his bedroom, tells me that this is signaling to himself. He’s telling himself who he is. And the message is: “I’m a Nazi”.
Eolirin
@Anya: Likud is in bed with the Russians. Putin is a white supremacist booster, if not one himself.
brantl
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yep, how many sentences can you come up with that are perfectly innocent and come to 14 words. I can come up with a shitload. How would you coordinate a bunch of people to only (and exactly) come up with 1,488 detainees without over- or under-shooting? If you put 2 of his “chosen helpers” together to wind a watch, at least one is guaranteed to get it WRONG. As for the stupidity in his grammar, what to capitalize and what not to capitalize? They are attributing to “hidden agenda” what most probably comes down to illiteracy.
mdblanche
@TaMara (HFG): @Patricia Kayden: I actually think the Trump campaign does need to reach out to keep the Illinois Nazis engaged. They really aren’t pleased with his response to the BLM protests. For all the wrong reasons, of course. Mobs of those people are tearing down monuments to their beloved Confederates, conquistadors, and slavers and yet Trump still doesn’t send out the tanks. Nor is he doing anything about the Jews who are using the blacks as muscle against them. Some outreach may be needed to keep this core constituency from staying home in November.
But that’s what dog-whistling is supposed to be. The term has lost a lot of its original meaning with overuse, but when done with finesse the references are obscure enough to wink to the deplorables that you’re on their side while not alienating the people who would recoil from you embracing them in a way that everyone could understand. Of course, like everything else about him, Trump’s dog-whistling is without finesse. To put it mildly.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
As evidenced by Trump’s disorganized campaign and the pandemic raging across red America, I’m not sure how. I mean, the GOP has to understand the precarious position they’re in.
brantl
@Chetan Murthy: He’s not that smart. Or well read.
lumpkin
Ok, trump isn’t clever enough to do this shit. It’s being done by someone else who is getting a perverse thrill out of it and perhaps signaling to extremist groups that they have support in the administration. It’s certainly not a viable campaign strategy. The people it appeals to already support him and it can only alienate normal people.
The scary thing about it is there are people around him that are this extreme who can easily manipulate trump and because of the overall chaos in the administration could conceivably have access to a lot of power that they should not be allowed and that they are not accountable for. Or they could just talk trump into some really heinous actions.
Another term could very well lead to some horrific actions by the government and trump-allied militants that will make everything we’ve seen so far pale in comparison.
Chetan Murthy
@brantl: wait: you do know that that 14-word sentence was widely-known and used amongst white supremacists in America LONG BEFORE Shitler came to the stage, right? Ditto the number 88. Dude, this has been going on a lot longer than you think.
NotMax
@Ken
Nope. Orange.
//
@Mike in NC
Phrasing!
:)
Frankensteinbeck
@Anya:
Trump hates who Israeli hardliners hate. He believes Muslims are inherently evil and there can be no peace with them. He hates black people. He hates queers and believes women should stay in their place. These are all major cultural friction points in Israel the same as the US, and they particularly made Netenyahu hate Obama.
Chetan Murthy
@brantl: Indeed he isn’t. But his hirelings are very well-connected with the American white supremacist and Nazi movements. And this stuff isn’t about being “well-read”. This is how they signal to each other. Just like the “ok” symbol. These are gang signs, not high literature.
Eolirin
@brantl: There was no coordination on the detainee count. A single person put out the 1488 number. It was not based on data, because they deliberately did not keep track of what they were doing, so there would be no data to base the value on in the first place.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@brantl:
He’s not, but the people who write his tweets probably are. Remember, the man has Steven Miller on staff
The fact of the matter is that there’s too many coincidences, especially given his history and who he has working for him.
Adam L Silverman
I think this is what they call a metaphor.
Adam L Silverman
@brantl: There’s a repeated pattern. There were other examples I didn’t include. In answering why he tweeted a Mussolini quote, he replied repeatedly to Chuck Todd that he has 14 million followers on social media. When asked a question by a different reporter, he kept repeated that he’d raised $88 million in campaign donation in 2018. When he ordered the flag to half mast last year, he ordered it through 8/8. And those are just three that I can recall off the top of my head.
Anya
@Frankensteinbeck: But it’s a dumb strategy. Israel’s best interest is support from all Americans not just one party that doesn’t even have the support of majority of Americans. By aligning themselves with the most hated leader in American history, they lose Americans.
Adam L Silverman
@Frankensteinbeck: McConnell has a plan. He is not a shitlord and he doesn’t think he’s Lex Luthor.
mdblanche
Bleach.
Eolirin
@Anya: It’s in Netanyahu’s financial interests, so what’s best for Israel isn’t really relevant.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: I must have missed that one. Got a link.
Jay
Adam L Silverman
@Chetan Murthy: It was part of his divorce proceedings. Apparently it was in one of the statements Ivana made.
Mai naem mobile
I am surprised the shirt wasn’t for $88.88. Also, I never thought I would be following AJ Delgado,Jennifer Rubin and Rick Wilson on Twitter.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
As far as we know. hasn’t gotten around to signing an executive order changing the name of the place from Camp David to Wolf’s Lair.
Yet.
//
Eolirin
@Adam L Silverman: Given McConnell is yet again telling democrats to think twice about getting rid of the filibuster, I’m not sure how confident he’s actually feeling right now.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Who the hell is Tommy Tuberville? Looks him up….
Oh, some college football coach.
He might beat Doug Jones with name recognition alone. Honestly, I think Jones could be toast with either Tuberville or Sessions
MisterForkbeard
@Adam L Silverman: I think trump is absolutely going these things on purpose, as you state.
But Brantl is also right that it sound bizarre and may not help your overall argument. It does sound like reaching when we try to explain it to people who are neutral. It’s like how “school choice” was a racistdog whistle, but it sounded pretty innocuous to most people, and explaining it made you look kind of crazy.
Amir Khalid
@brantl:
This is a 14-word sentence I have come up with that is totally innocent. As it happens, I am not a Nazi (old school or neo) sending a message to fellow Nazis. But my innocent sentence doesn’t negate the fact that actual Nazis do signal to their fellows with 14-word sentences and 88-letter phrases. Your argument is disingenuous.
Mary G
@brantl: You need to read more. The 14 words and 88 (short for Heil Hitler because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet) are common as dirt in the right wing cesspools of the internet.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
Weird way to say his daughter is 5
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t think McConnell has a plan. Not in any overarching sense that he is confident will work. He is no genius, and his big successes have all revolved around being such an extreme asshole that he breaks norms nobody else dared to. He’s very good at obstruction and getting donor money. He has been beaten in most showdowns where he can’t win by just saying ‘no’. No, I see no reason to think McConnell has a scheme he thinks will win the election for Trump. He’s just going to keep on encouraging dark money and voter suppression with no innovations. That game plan has failed consistently the last three years.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They understand it. They also, and by they I mean the actual smart and effective ones like McConnell and Barr, have a plan. Letting the USPS go broke is one part of the plan. Not approving any money for election security is another. Not passing a law authorizing mail in voting because of the pandemic. Not renewing the legislation that runs out in a week or so that prevents foreclosures and evictions is another. Those are just the legislative fixes that McConnell has killed or prevented. Then there’s what Barr is going to use the DOJ to do. And that’s not counting the lawsuits that Marc Elias is having to fight all over the countries to get state and Federal courts to sign off on various forms on voter suppression. And lets not forget the 1/2 the states where Republicans control the governors mansion and the state legislatures. Or the four key Democratic states – WI, MI, PA, and NC – where you have Democratic governors, but Republican majority or supermajority legislatures that will go out of their way to suppress the vote. And this is just the stuff that is legal, despite being odious. Violence is coming.
Jay
@Eolirin:
yeah, the origional child Concentration Camp kid count was 5,461, so they said 1488 for the “base”.
Bunch of fucken deplorables.
Adam L Silverman
@lumpkin: Scavino, his Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Digital Communications is, for all intents and purposes, the ambassador to the alt-right, the 4 and 8 channels, the QAnon nuts at /k/, the Gabbers, the Parlerers, etc. It is he that finds the really vile stuff that the President tweets out.
Chetan Murthy
@MisterForkbeard:
That *is* why they speak in these codes, right? So they can claim deniability, DARVO etc, right?
Eolirin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Holding Alabama against a candidate that wasn’t a pedophile rapist was always going to take a miracle. Any generic R wins back that seat. Unless the pandemic and Trump depress turnout to a huge degree, I don’t see a way Jones holds it.
Cameron
So….the Donald-Bibi romance is over? USA isn’t going to support West Bank annexation? Trump is a dumb-ass racist, but he seems to be pretty easily led by whoever can grab the ring in his nose.
Adam L Silverman
@Anya: That is not how Bibi sees it. Bibi grew up in the US, I know someone who went to high school with him. She says he hasn’t changed one bit since then. He believes that Israel should be a partisan issue and he has made it one.
Delk
Ugh. I went to high school 10 blocks from Rockwell Hall during the whole Skokie thing. Couple of my classmates were in that shit.
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: Business Insider was the first one that came up for me about the $88 Trump baseball. I’ve seen tweets about it too, today.
ETA: It’s from the Trump Organization, not a campaign arm. Uday and Qusay must need money.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Possibly. However, people are fucking pissed and starting to become aware of the injustices present in American society. Trump is a major representation of that. It will backfire horribly against them
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
18 months is a year and a half.
early speaking, full sentences.
JWR
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
Rhetorical question, I presume.
Morzer
@debbie: Trump Brand Corona Orange
Adam L Silverman
I got nothing…
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: I just found it too.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
Do you happen to have an idea which collection of Hitler’s speeches it might be? I don’t think any respectable post-WW2 publisher would have put out such a thing, but maybe there’s something like that circulating in neo-Nazi circles.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It may backfire horribly against them.
Eolirin
@Adam L Silverman: Most of those are very risky plays with a huge potential to backfire. Their base heavily relies on the postal service for things like medicine and will be affected by issues around eviction and rent too, never mind the knock on effects to the broader economy. And if the voter suppression is too blatant it can boost turn out, like it did in that Wisconsin Supreme Court seat.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
I read a tweet by the guy saying his daughter is 5 years old. He also said his daughter is 18 mos old. I think you’re being punked
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: God, I hate that we lost to these people. And I’m not writing Doug Jones off yet either. I have close friends who moved to Mississippi for work a few years ago and they say there are a lot of Democrats, especially college educated whites, coming out of the woodwork. They did change the flag today.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: Apparently it was given to him as a gift.
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/e515a2cd-a51b-4f83-8d61-6ebb9a104e0a
John Walter is his cousin who did the family genealogy.
Mary G
@Mary G: Tweet about the baseball.
It comes in different colors! All ugly as sin.
Jinchi
Because the number is the one you want to report. It doesn’t matter if it’s accurate.
Note the reports below. These are two different reports, concerning two different populations, with oddly identical numbers of people abused by the immigration system.
Kent
The problem is that he doesn’t have anything to offer non-deplorables. There are no 2nd term policy proposals on his campaign web site. His Tulsa Reichsparteitag was a 2-hour scream about brown people with not one single policy proposal for his second term. And when asked on Fox the softball question about his plans for a second term he had nothing.
All he has is white supremacy and hate. Build the wall and stand up for Confederate statutes doesn’t really win over the POC.
TaMara (HFG)
@Adam L Silverman: You and I are going to balance out – you’re cautiously pessimistic and I’m cautiously optimistic. I don’t think the strategy is going to work. But of course, will stay on guard until every last vote is counted.
Jinchi
I thought the tweet was clearly intended to be a joke. I could believe a 9 year old parroting a parent’s words that precisely, but not a 5 year old and certainly not an 18 month old.
Marcion
@MisterForkbeard: Yeah tbh this whole business of connecting word counts with Capitol letters gives me weird QAnon esque vibes. Which I never expected to get from this place. I’ve lurked since the W days because this place is, I thought, totally against that kind of energy.
I’m not saying that Trump and his team aren’t trying to pander to White Nationalists, but down the road of this numerology shit lies madness. PLEASE don’t let us be like QAnon.
Adam L Silverman
@Marcion: Qyou will like it or else!//
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Marcion:
It’s not. There’s too many coincidences for it to be nothing.
dimmsdale
@Adam L Silverman: Wondering if you know at this point (or can say) what form the violence will take. I have little doubt Russia will be stoking divisions, fanning flames of violence, and hoping to foment same; wondering if local cops (if requested by boards of elections to protect the vote) can even be trusted to protect polling places…or instead side with AR-toting militia goons?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jinchi:
I think so too, though honestly it reeks of Shapiro’s and Crowder’s brand of “humor”
dww44
@TaMara (HFG): Thanks for this. On this note I will toddle off to bed with optimistic thoughts about November.
James E Powell
@Amir Khalid:
My New Order is available on amazon. They’ve got an edition of Volume II with Trump on the cover.
Chetan Murthy
@Marcion:
https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/1488
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/references-dylann-roof-manifesto-explained-1488/
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2015/racist-skinhead-glossary
OK, I’m tired of copying links.
Mallard Filmore
@Adam L Silverman:
The ‘Rona virus is not done with us yet. Plenty of time for the body count to climb over 300,000 by the election. And plenty of time for the economy to burrow into the ground.
I would be a lot more worried if McConnell was pushing for more government bailouts to hide the job losses, mortgage defaults, and evictions that are just around the corner.
Mary G
Amir Khalid
@James E Powell:
Ye gods.
Omnes Omnibus
I wore 14 as a rugby player. Another bit of my younger days ruined. Fuckers.
Eolirin
@Marcion: Neo-nazis commonly use variations on 14, 88 and HH to signal to each other, and have for a long time. That they do this isn’t a matter of debate, it’s simply true. If there wasn’t the broader pattern of these things coming up again and again one 14 word sentence with two capital H words next to each other might not mean much. But there is. They work those elements into what they do constantly. And any neo nazi looking at that is going to get it.
Kent
One plausible explanation. Some right -wing Steven Miller acolyte in DHS drafts all of these news releases and uses 1488 as a placeholder number as some clever inside joke. But the people actually running things are so incompetent or don’t give enough of a shit to come up with actual real numbers so they just sort of accidentally leave the number 1488 in to everyone’s amusement. Remember they are hiring actual southern frat boys to high level jobs if they show the proper Trump loyalty.
lumpkin
My initial reaction, like Brantl’s was that looking for 14’s and 88’s etc. is turning coincidence into something sinister and we really want to avoid falling into a Q-like trap where we start seeing things that aren’t there.
But as I wrote above I definitely see this as something that someone could be slipping into these communications and images either for their own malicious amusement or as a wink-wink to fellow travelers.
And considering that everything about this crowd turns out to be worse than you thought it could be and then even worse than that, well I’m pretty convinced that the symbolism here is deliberate and not coincidence.
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman: You’ve always tried to sound, if not reassuring, at least measured. Lately, you’ve been running around with your hair on fire. Coming from you, I take this very seriously. Do you have any insight on how any of their sabotage/treachery/Putinesque maneuvering can be overcome? Or is “there will be violence” your prediction of what it will take?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You all do realize part of the Final Solution was to force the Germans to stick to the Nazis to the bitter end because Germans could expect no mercy from the victorious Allies? Same things here, make Trumpism so toxic that the Red Hats can’t walk away.
Other thing to note, for all the money Trump campaign has that really is a quite an uninspired logo as piece of design too. Looks like Stephen Miller pulled something out of his highschool Nazis Fan fiction sketchpad and decided to cash in for his share of the Trump 2020 money blizzard than something done by a professional graphic designer.
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: I am very concerned that we’re going to see the GOP, now that it is out from under the Federal court order, hire both off duty cops to work as poll watchers in uniform, like they did in NJ, which got them under the now lifted court order. And they will also recruit the militia and cosplay patriot (cosplatriot) crowd, who will turn out in tactical gear and open carrying. These folks will be around for early voting and on election day. They’ll be armed. The cops will be in uniform. The others looking like they’re working a contract gig in Fallujah, but didn’t quite no what to buy. And they’ll be deployed in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago, etc. They’ll be both intimating violence by being threatening and disruptive and actually violent with anyone who challenges them.
The lawsuit that the GOP and the President’s campaign have filed in Pennsylvania not only challenges the expansion of mail in voting, including claiming that the drop off boxes at municipal buildings aren’t secure (they are), but also the PA law that states that poll watchers have to be Pennsylvania citizens.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated DeSantis’s and the Republican majority in the Florida legislatures poll tax on felons who have served their time. That appeal won’t be settled before the election, so that potential windfall of votes that the Democrats were counting on, is now off the table.
I fully expect some nutty supporter of the President is going to do something as stupid as trying to intercept a postal truck to investigate if there are illegal ballots.
And this is even before so much chaos is created with all the lawsuits and the drive to defund the postal service and whatever Barr is going to do with his concerns over voting by mail that the President will claim, no matter the results, that he won based on real ballots cast in person at the polls by real Americans. And therefore the governors who support him must send their National Guard Soldiers to protect him and keep him from being removed from the White House. And the appeals to his most extreme supporters to come and do the same thing.
These are the scenarios that are possible. What I don’t know yet, what I’m not sure anyone can know, is how probable they are. You’ve got a lot of very stressed members of police and law enforcement unions that know that if Biden is elected and the Democrats take the Senate, then they are going to be brought to heel through Federal legislation. And a lot of those unions and their members are very supportive of the President. Based on how we know they behave, do you really want members of the Philadelphia PD working as poll watchers while off duty, but in uniform? How about the Milwaukee PD? Minneapolis PD?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman: While one is does imagine if Trump reads something, Hilter would be his favorite topic, one is shocked to learn that Trump has actually read even one book in his life, much less one on speech making.
Not to mention of course Trump got it horribly wrong, Hilter speeches were always short and to the point, that was part of Hilter’s effectiveness as speaker, not the rambling hours long word salad Trump does.
dimmsdale
@Adam L Silverman: oh good. I think MY hair just caught on fire. But thanks.
Mary G
I’m loving these outside groups’ videos:
At the end, they play the clip of Jared saying the government’s coronavirus response has been a total success and by July, the economy would be “rocking.”
Adam L Silverman
@CaseyL: I try not to freak anyone out. I think there are a number of things that can be done. I’ve even recommended them to a very senior contact working with a couple of the groups trying to ensure that the election goes off without a hitch. Of course I also wrote out four very scary scenarios that worry me, which got his attention. I’m not sure he’s slept since.
Here are the recommendations I made.
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman: JFC. A second Civil War, then. Just fucking fabulous.
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: I didn’t even give you everything I’ve written out on this over the past month. That was basically just the stuff from yesterday!
See my comment at 112 with the recommendations I made to someone senior and well placed on how to start working this issue ASAP.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Hold on there Adam, this Trump, Trump don’t pay people. As you just noted with Trump’s Neo-Nazi logo they just copy and pasted some clip art they found on the interest. You are thinking way to much like a rational person. If Trump and his minions were this organized the Virus would be contained and Trump would sailing to reelecton. You need to get your stupid on to predict what the GOP and Trump are going to do.
The “random militia types” shooting up postal trucks sounds about right, it takes no personal effort or money out of the Trump people to get that going.
Adam L Silverman
@CaseyL: We never actually had a civil war. We had a rebellion in support of a breakaway region.
danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
Honestly, how about none of the above?
Why I’m so stressed right now – okay, major contributing factor – if Trump tells his Cultists to go into the streets with rifles they’ll do it, and he won’t have a fucking clue as to what he is starting. And yes, they will shoot if he says the election was rigged.
Anya
@Adam L Silverman: The universe is telling them something
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman: What can we ordinary citizens do?
My state has a well-established VBM system, with drop-boxes in case the USPS is compromised. If I can vote early, should I volunteer to go be a watcher/escort/videographer at one of the contested cities?
ETA: I don’t have training in non-violent resistance. Should I look into getting that ASAP? Or will “non-violent” not be a viable option?
Chetan Murthy
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Adam made a reference to the GrOPers having “form” in hiring off-duty cops to intimidate voters, and he mentioned a consent decree that recently expired. That wasn’t offhand. He was referring to a consent decree for the GrOPers based on their engaging in precisely this sort of intimidation in the 80s. Which expired sometime in the last couple of years, I think. They have form in doing this.
And sure, Shitler doesn’t pay his bills. But Yertle does. He knows better.
Adam L Silverman
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The national and state Republican parties do pay people.
Adam L Silverman
@Anya: To make s’mores?
NotMax
@danielx
Okay, doomer.
Anya
@Adam L Silverman: you would think he’s smarter than that. A lot of Americans are becoming politically aware and will forever associate Israel with Trump. It’s a losing game. Israel can’t afford to be alienated from future generations of Americans.
I think Netanyahu is as racist as Trump. This is partly why he was so oppositional to President Obama.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy:
I think this is where Adam is referring to that consent decree from the 1980s ratfucking the GrOPers pulled. Link from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: @danielx: @CaseyL: I hope I’m wrong. And I very well may be. And I will be thrilled to be. But some of what I’ve been seeing over the past several weeks and months has me concerned. It sets off alarm bells I’ve learned to pay attention to in my professional work when looking at socio-cultural and socio-political and socio-economic and socio-religious dynamics in other states and societies.
Other than staying informed, making sure everyone you know is staying informed, double checking your voter registration, making sure everyone you know is double checking their’s, making sure you vote, making sure everyone you know votes, there isn’t much else you can do. If you’re comfortable volunteering to help at the polls, as in you think you’re willing to do it and do it during a pandemic, and it is still possible to do so, then by all means do so.
My real concern is not what you all, the other commenters, the lurkers who sometimes comment and the readers who never comment, are going to do. My real concerns are what are the Democratic elected officials, Democratic Party officials, the outside organizations that support the Democratic Party or good government or specific civil rights and civil liberties issues going to do. And what will the news media do and how will they cover this stuff. It is all well and good to have election observers who are lawyers back up by even more volunteers ready to go. And to have Marc Elias and his team all ready to go. But all of those response are designed for working within the existing systems. While these good folks are doing the Deity’s work in dealing with the systemic issues and potential legal ones, what is the strategy for dealing with the extra-systemic and illegal problems? That’s what I’m concerned about.
Adam L Silverman
@Anya: Netanyahu is even more racist.
JWR
@Mary G:
You know, I’ve always wondered if Jared’s “666” building, which was shown in the video, was chosen deliberately. But I really don’t know if they’re that into Numerology to care.
Adam L Silverman
And with my comment at 126, I’m going to bed. I didn’t mean to alarm or scare or freak anyone out. I have concerns based. I’ve been keeping them to myself because I don’t know how to even give them a probability. Everyone just keeping doing what you’re doing. I’m likely wrong.
Chetan Murthy
I recently saw this image of George Wallace, and thought to myself: “gee, the white power symbol, gosh what a coincidence”.
NotMax
@JWR
Hasn’t been his property since summer 2018. In fact his company recently vacated the building altogether.
Chetan Murthy
@JWR: Uh, I don’t think it’s numerology. It’s memes and codes. Like Pepe the Frog. They invent symbols that, in discourse, identify themselves to each other. It’s just like throwing gang signs. No greater significance than that. I mean, you have Jim Hoft (stupidest man on the Internet (c) Wonkette) and Lucian Wintrich throwing the white power symbol in the White House Briefing Room, on camera. That’s not a coincidence. And doing there, at that location, isn’t by accident: its saying “white power has arrived, brothers!”
They could have picked other symbols, that didn’t involve numbers. The numbers themselves aren’t important: it’s what they -stand- -for- that’s important. The 14-word phrase. The name of their last great dictator.
patroclus
@Adam L Silverman: Well, I live in Chi-town and I just don’t see it here. We are 90% or so Democratic, the city cops are overwhelmingly Democrats, the Cook County suburb police are Democrats, the Cook County Sheriff is a Democrat, the Mayor is a Dem, the Cook County President and virtually all of the Board are Democrats, the City Council is 100% Democrat. And it’s been this way more or less since the 1930’s and has become more so recently. Even the collar counties have been trending Democrat lately. And the state is solid blue. Why would they even try here? It wouldn’t work. Trump himself hasn’t been here since the riot in 2016, which he and his minions decidedly lost and his event was cancelled. Maybe elsewhere, but not here.
NotMax
Small coding fix.
@JWR
Hasn’t been his property since summer 2018. In fact his company recently vacated the building altogether.
JWR
@NotMax:
Okay, but I’m still convinced he’s the devil incarnate. ;)
ETA on the small coding fix. Thx.
Chetan Murthy
@patroclus:
Is this really true? Are you saying the Chicago cops didn’t riot during the George Floyd protests? I don’t remember, so I can’t say for sure. And …. there’s been many, many incidents including that off-books torture jail, that make me question just how “under control” the Chicago cops are. Part of Adam’s worry (I think) is that cops aren’t actually under the control of their notional civilian bosses, and they’re oftentimes far more right-wing than the areas they serve.
My words: the po-po in too many Blue areas are a built-in Freikorps, brownshirts, what have you, ready to take action to destroy democracy. They tried to show us what they would and could do, during the George Floyd police riots: thankfully, they were stymied for the most part. But I really do wonder if they’re going to again at the election. Just as there are a lotta gun owners who might come out to “defend their country” if Shitler raised the Rat Signal (*grin*) you can easily imagine the same with these cops.
I mean, it ain’t like they’re actually about Protect and Serve. More like a boot stomping on a brown neck, forever.
JWR
Oh goodie! Just heard on NBC news that a NY judge has okayed the release of Trump’s Niece’s book.
akryan
goes back to his presidential challenge coin. compare them to Obama’s, Bush’s, and Clinton’s. They are just the normal seal. There had to be a conscious decision to change that up. I smell Stephen Miller
patroclus
@Chetan Murthy: Yes, it’s accurate. For 2-3 nights, the looters rioted. For weeks, the protesters have been peacefully protesting (and they’re still going). The looters looted the Loop on night #1, but the cops shut the Loop down thereafter (the geography is such that they can just raise the bridges on the river and no one can get in). The looters then spread out into the City the next nights (mostly in River North and several South and West side hot spots). The major “scandal” was that several cops (and supervisors) took over Bobby Rush’s district office and slept and drank the night away (on camera). The biggest confrontation was in Cicero; not Chicago. The major criticism of the cops was that they ignored River North and the other looted areas of the city and let it happen.
The cops certainly killed LaQuan McDonald a few years ago and the perps were convicted (although the sentence was lighter than expected). There have also been rogue cops who have been prosecuted over the years. But by and large, they have been reformed since 1968 when they did in fact riot. The NATO summit experience gave them a lot of training.
They certainly aren’t perfect. Like with all police, there is certainly much to complain about. But they’re not going to launch a poll-intimidation effort in favor of Trump, whom most of them despise. I talk with many of them regularly because they frequent the place where I work. (one of them is a RWNJ but the rest all make fun of him). Take my word for it – they’re Democrats and they re aware that virtually the entire city is too. Maybe somewhere else Adam’s scenario will take place. Not here.
JWR
OT again, but here’s the latest on Mary Trump’s book:
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@mrmoshpotato:
Thanks. I needed that.
Chetan Murthy
@patroclus:
That’s good to know. Very good to know. I don’t trust SF cops, and Oakland seems awful. BART cops, ditto. And then there’s the po-po down in LA, both city and county. Thank goodness CA will have universal vote-by-mail this fall. I’ll bet there’ll be voter intimidation in all the Blue cities in Red States, though.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy:
Some of it is, but the point of a code is to be seen. If you bury it too deeply, nobody can see it.
Trump retweeted a guy yelling white power. We don’t need to do math on how long the video was. The message is clear enough. And if we start claiming to see things that aren’t actually there, then we really aren’t any better than QAnon. Just keep pointing to the stuff that anyone can see.
JWR
Yeah, it’s great they were indicted, but FSM, I so hate this timeline.
And I just watched the replay of Colbert going off on Billy Barr’s secret police force in Lafayette Park, ending with a truly impassioned plea to his fellow white people. (Hehheh, “c’mon, our only spice is potato”.)
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: Martin, I agree with you about paranoid conspiracy theories. But the stuff around 1488 is …. not QAnon-level. It’s well-documented (I posted a bunch of links above, to the ADL, articles, etc). It’s about as obscure as the white-power handsigns, or Pepe the Frog. Which is to say, not obscure at all. Just plausibly deniable.
Martin
@JWR: They need to get review copies out now with a July embargo and start shipping to distributors as soon as they start printing. That’s what kept the courts from stopping Bolton – the horse was already out of the barn.
JWR
On 5th Avenue, no less!
PS. I’m still catching up on today’s threads, so apologies for any duplicate links/stories.
patroclus
@Chetan Murthy: The thing about Chicago is that we’ve already been through the turmoil that many smaller cities are going through now. We’ve had high-profile police murders; high-profile police beatings, the torture-jail you’ve mentioned – a few decades ago, we were probably where many cities are today. But now, we have an African-American Mayor, an African-American police chief, an African-American State’s Attorney, Obama is from here, and murderous cops are prosecuted. Maybe they’re let off lightly, but the cases aren’t just swept under the rug like before. Arguably, Rahm was run out of the Mayor’s office for not taking the McDonald case seriously enough. Like I said, the Chicago cops are certainly not perfect, but they learned how to exercise restraint in the NATO thing. Arguably, letting the property damage happen was the smart thing to do rather than starting raging battles (after all, it’s just “things” that can be replaced/repaired.)
Should you trust them? Well….the jury is still out on that one. But they don’t seem as scary now as they did a few decades ago. And they might be just a little ahead of the arc of the moral universe/justice than other places at present.
WereBear
Because there is no more nationalism with these dictators. There is only money and power.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Being that it’s already July, it would be released that early.
LaenCleardale
The 1488 stuff has been around for decades. I learned about this shit in the 90s hanging with punk kids. It’s not some off the wall, reaching, conspiracy stuff. It’s bog standard Neo-nazi and white supremacist signaling.
JWR
@Martin: Yep. S&S says they’ve already shipped 75,000 copies to booksellers, with more to come. But I enjoyed reading this:
DJT say neigh! ;)
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: wouldn’t be released early
dopey-o
The key to gaming out trump’s shenanigans around november is simple: what would putin do? trump admires putin’s tactics, and trump takes putin’s advice. i would like to hear Fiona Hill’s predictions.
in my darkest moments, i wonder that putin wouldn’t pay bounties for shootings that exacerbate civil unrest in america. if 10% of blue-trending suburban voters can be frightened into pulling the law ‘n order lever in november, all is lost.
is this an extreme fear? yes. is it impossible? i fear not. it’s not so different from the false-flag chechen terror attacks that brought putin into power. putin has a lot to lose from a Biden administration, and he won’t sit this one out.
Basilisc
This page is still up on the DHS website.
– title has 14 words, starting “We must secure …
– scaremongering about refugees
– second to last line says “On average, out of 88 cases …” There’s no reason to cite a statistic “out of 88” (as opposed to out of 10, out of 100 etc) unless you’re trying to send a message
Originally posted more than two years ago, and the numbers are undoubtedly out of date- but it’s still there.
Tom Ames
Official DHS page title, up since Feb 2018:
“We Must Secure The Border And Build The Wall To Make America Safe Again”
Contrast with the fourteen words. Coincidence?
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2018/02/15/we-must-secure-border-and-build-wall-make-america-safe-again
oldster
Super-pedantic Spitzfindigkeit:
“Parteiadler” should have ‘e’ before ‘i’.
You got it right the second time you wrote it in, but the first has the letters reversed.
(The German for “party” as in political party is “Partei”, not “Partie”.)
brantl
@Chetan Murthy: I just don’t think that you can draw that much inference from a sentence that happens to have 14 words, that aren’t THOSE 14 words. I’m sure Mother Theresa had 14 word sentences, too. Does that make you sure she was a Nazi? If not, you might want to rethink whether the rationale that he used a 14 word sentence with 2 capital H’s in it, makes you look like kind of a crackpot (irrespective of whether you actually are one, or not, it will still, to the uninitiated, make you seem like one).
David Evans
@oldster: I used to pride myself on having a good memory for spellings. But then I thought: for most of my life what I read was books and newspapers, which are usually well proof-read, so I saw only the correct spellings. I wonder what growing up surrounded by tweets and memes does to the brain.
Chetan Murthy
@brantl: Once is chance, twice is coincidence, thrice is …..
How many times have these goat-fucking child-molesters ((c) Erick Fucking Erickson) use 14, 88, and 1488 in their communications? A whole helluva lot. And most of the time, it’s purposeful, not accidental.
Also, I had a correspondence with a guy who would choose his wods so that every line had the same length, *without* using double spaces here-and-there to accomplish the trick. Just by choosing his words. I didn’t notice until he brought it to my attention, his writing was so natural. So I started doing it, and yeah, it wasn’t that hard. Your argument is that this particular 14-word tweet is accidental. You surely don’t deny that the 14-word title of that DHS page isn’t accidental, do you? Or the $88 baseball? Or the various 1488 counts here-and-there? Enough times, and it’s no longer coincidence ….
ETA: Surely you can see that the reason they use 14 and 88, is IN ORDER TO NOT SAY THE ACTUAL WORDS, right? So instead of the phrase “H*** H*****”, they utter the number “88”. Surely you see this, yes? And similarly for the number “14”, instead of the phrase, yes? I mean, the surprising thing is when we see them being completely blatant, as with those jokers in the Villages screaming “White Power”. -That- is the anomaly, not when they hide their intentions in innocuous garb.
I mean c’mon man, haven’t you read Lee Atwater’s deathbed confession? This is how they roll.
JPL
This if from the Mueller Report buzzfeed
brantl
@Chetan Murthy: You can believe that, you may get me to believe that, but it isn’t sellable to enough of the US, to be worth the trying.
Chetan Murthy
@brantl: OK. So I read your comments as arguing against the correctness of the thesis that these are gangsigns/memes/signals. And that was as far as I was going. I mean sure, it’ll be hard to convince most Americans of this. As Mel Brooks wrote in Blazing Saddles “people of the land; the common clay of the New West; you know, morons”.
To commingle questions of truth and correctness with questions of marketability, is an error. It’s like mixing up the diagnosis with the treatment. Then again, too many patients refuse to accept their diagnosis, *merely* because they don’t like the treatment regimen.
prostratedragon
@MisterForkbeard:
This is the real gaslighting. The gaslighter surreptitiously does things to incite the suspicions of the victim, but in ways that the gaslighter can easily disavow and, typically, blame the victim for. Thus she’s both undermined in her own eyes, and denied a basis on which to persuade others of the situation.
Hard to sustain with a mass public though –too many eventual witnesses, as for example Hilary Clinton and the “vast right-wing conspiracy” gaining credibility.
J R in WV
@brantl:
There’s a reason that you are now in the. PIE Safe, you’re a terrible cross between a Troll and a Sealion!
Now you are talking about Mother Teresa… Wut?
We know the Trump Org is full of actual, real fascists easily identified by their behavior and beliefs. Some are interested in picking up examples of that kind of behavior.
You, on the other hand appear to be an apologist for actual Nazis. Good Luck with that! Now into the Pie Safe!
Gvg
All language and written words are based on social agreements. That is, a bunch of people have come to an agreement that certain sounds mean a specific thing or action or idea and then also that certain shaped lines also mean certain sounds.
White supremists have decided that 14 and 88 and HH are their signals. They have been using the same codes for so long that everyone else knows too. Sure, some of the population will agree with you that this is stretching it to far, but these codes are so well known, that you will find many people who aren’t Natzis already know. It may seem out there to you, but a lot of people have already run ito some group of thugs using the symbols. Police know, school teachers have probably encountered it, I ran into it with neighbor kids 20 years ago…I can’t believe i’m seeing it around a President but I am and not just once. You have been lucky and sheltered not to already know these codes.
Then look at his actions. That proves it.
SFAW
@Chetan Murthy:
For what it’s worth: I don’t necessarily think the Murderer-/Traitor-in-Chief came up with any 14/88/1488 sentences on his own. I don’t think he’s capable of counting to 14 correctly. [OK, well maybe he is, but his “command” of the English language is such that any 14-word sentence he “wrote” would be gobbledegook.] That said, I’m sure Miller or someone similar (Uday/Qusay?) came up with it, and the Traitor signed off on it, and “approves the message.”
Uncle Cosmo
So did most of us, I’d guess. Except for our resident Knucklehead Of The Frozen North, who fell for it hook, line & Molson.
Another Scott
@Kent: Yup.
Last time around, he was ABC – Anyone But Clinton – for too many voters.
This time around, everyone knows who he is and what he stands for. He doesn’t need any policy proposals – he didn’t do anything “good” that he mumbled about before. Legislation will be driven by Congress, judges will be driven by the Federalist Society, etc., etc. He will get votes from people who are too afraid to face the reality of what he and his enablers are, or who like what they are.
His campaign is just a grift. One might as well have a campaign to have the Sun rise every morning.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Dunno.
https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1546
Donnie has obviously done a lot of cribbing from him…
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
To crank the pedantry up to 11: Partie is German for (among other things) “game” as in a contest (e.g., eine Schachpartie = “a game of chess” [between two players or sides]).
Uncle Cosmo
Um, that’s great…but Doug Jones is running for re-election as US Senator from Alabama. Next state west, but still…
Cheryl from Maryland
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Miller is a Kapo. Definition: a Nazi concentration camp prisoner who was given privileges in return for supervising prisoner work gangs: often a common criminal and frequently brutal to fellow inmates.
Soprano2
I heard this interesting interview on NPR this morning with a reformed Neo-Nazi. It’s worth a listen, and certainly belongs in this thread. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/02/886487184/reformed-nazi-discusses-president-trumps-controversial-shared-tweet
Chris Johnson
I’m pretty sure the whole QAnon thing is a mechanism for control out of Russia. It comes from the same places, like 4chan, that got well and truly captured, and it’s being run intelligently. There are many things that can be done to accomplish the purpose.
Talked to a friend last night whose husband is a trucker. She was upset, because he’d told her a story about how he’d been stopped at a roadblock by protesters, BLM types. But NOT simply BLM types: this was in the deep South and he said they were getting people out of their cars and making them ‘kiss our black feet’ (!)
Assuming he wasn’t simply lying, and I don’t know him well enough to know that, my immediate thought was ‘oh, like protesters who turn out to be cops smashing store windows’. Hell of a dangerous game even if you have cop confederates, but if that was happening it’s solely to make rightwing white people warlike: might as well be shooting people. Or, the guy could have been lying to his wife: could be one of a small number of people I’ve known as friends who have gone super-toxic. I can’t know.
The common thread here is this: in no way is this designed to GIVE Trump and his people actual, real power. They are being worked up by QAnon, by Nazi signalling (which already existed: 14/88 is well, well known) AT THE SAME TIME as the Left, as BLM etc. are being worked up in opposition.
There is no intended victor here. If you know what to look for, it’s all about establishing trusted vectors of control for the purpose of having us all kill each other and be gone. America, destroyed through orchestrated civil war.
The weak spot is that neither side is INTENDED to be the victor. It makes the process more upsetting, but it would actually be more dangerous to us (the non-hitler side) if the Nazis here were being delivered effective power. But the same people who are trying to prop them up and message to them, are also trying to radicalize BLM and destroy faith in things like the police. It’s not just one-sided and that makes things both worse and better. It causes more damage but it’s weakening the position of the Nazis, making them overreach.
The Moar You Know
@dopey-o: why do you think that three cops let people video another cop murder George Lloyd and didn’t even try to stop them filming or take their phones away?
I will go to my grave convinced that every actor in that save Lloyd was paid and paid very well, and that it was a deliberate attempt to start race riots in America. And that there will be more of it.
Medicine Man
I know it hardly makes a difference, but do you figure all this dog whistling comes from Trump himself or from the constellation of crypto-whatevers around him (Miller, etc.)?
J R in WV
@debbie:
All my money is on orange Kool-aid~!!~
dopey-o
in my lighter moments, i enjoy extending random observations into conspiracy theory territory. for instance, there are no UFOs; with cellphone cameras in every pocket, we would see a lot of saucer videos of unquestionable quality. curse you Steve Jobs, for trashing my fantasy of The Day The Earth Stood Still: Climate Crisis Edition.
but dirty cops deliberately letting incriminating videos circulate is a bridge too far for even me. the rate of cellphone penetration in society tells me these thugs are just stupid.
we can agree that stupid is preferable to evil. and we are living in a time where there’s only a fine line between stupid and evil.
Lofgren
On the one hand, parsing Trump’s Twitter capitalization and word counts is a hallmark of Q conspiracies, so this makes us sound as nutty as they are.
On the other hand, Trump knows that his most ardent supporters are already parsing his capitalization and counting his words, making this a perfect way to communicate with them under the radar…
brantl
@J R in WV: I am not apologizing for Nazis, what I am saying is tht the evidence for what people are stating as fact here: these 14 words that are different than THE 14 WORDS, are just the same, and that these numbers can’t possibly be coincidental, comes off as “conspiracy theory” and that people tend to be blind to how that looks, on their own side, but see it as blatant conspiracy theory on the other side. I am not saying you’re wrong, I am saying that a significant percentage of run-of-the-mill people are going to dismiss these arguments about the number, and a coincidental amount of different words, as a reason to discount you as conspiracy theorists. Your mileage may vary, via con dios. If you can’t take a little constructive criticism, then run off in a huff. Apparently you haven’t read very many of my comments, if you think that I am a Nazi apologist.
brantl
What I am saying is that when you stick with verifiable fact, and not what non-initiated people will take as conjecture, you can make a persuasive argument, that will actually persuade people, and not be construed as tin-foil hat land.
JR in WV has failed a reading comprehension test.