See, we've seen this before. Fascist imagery just showing up at random starts to show a pattern that doesn't really feel all that random at all, but more like a test-balloon. The atmosphere in Florida is a bit cozy for the Nazi-lovers, and the GOP in Florida seems kind of okay with their existence (and assistance).
It's how I feel about the history curriculum in Florida whitewashing slavery. If it can be called ignorance, it's ignorance of a very deliberate kind (a kind Ron DeSantis himself is very much in step with.) Radicalization is a choice. (I don't even know where to begin with the idea of the Chiclet-heads of Prager U having anything to do with school curriculums.)
It's not just DeSantis, it's the party. It's just not usually as ham-fisted as the above, and of course, it was posted by a fan. (My gut says "Plausible deniability" after the Pride month ad.) But whatever it is DeSantis seems to be doing, it looks like telegraphing to the white supremacists and Christian nationalists to get onboard with him. And that test-balloons like these are flying is a four-alarm fire.
UPDATE: And it was apparently right to wonder- the person (now fired) who made the video was...an aide with the campaign.
UPDATE: This piece by Tim Miller describes just who this Nate Hochman is--a Generation Z edge-lord who considered Nick Fuentes "based" and was going to be putting the words literally in DeSantis' very large (I think his jaw unhinges like a boa constrictor!) mouth. But here's the part that sort of reveals what the game is:
He went on to discuss the merits and demerits of one of America’s most vile humans, saying the fact that he has said “super edgy things means that there’s a pretty strong ceiling to what you can actually accomplish in politics.”
“Edgy” is definitely one way to describe Holocaust denial!
When the Dispatch asked him about his Fuentes remarks, Hochman acknowledged that he said some “really stupid things, which I don’t actually believe”—but did not apologize.
"Edgy" is like "ironic" or "just kidding" or "sorry, not sorry". Walk-backs and obfuscation are tactics. In the meanwhile, while we're just shitposting on the good old socials and all, just making our memes, some of the message gets through, and some more people are just a little radicalized. It's incremental and excremental.
It's why I'm not putting all my hope on the youth--some of them are already on a pretty shitty path and after all, there were Boomers who were radical liberals and "didn't trust anyone over thirty" and my generation X had its share of folks who were about to "sell out" and some but not all millennials count as "woke". Grown people are supposed to demonstrate leadership and set examples. Just like we've got a lot of Gen Z young folks who are fed up with the system that put them through shooter drills and told them to expect less bodily autonomy than previous generations, we've also got some racist incels who legit think Elliot Rogers had a point. And that current is what deeply concerns me, because the pose of irony and the dismissal of actual empathy as "virtue-signaling" and "shitlibs" and being "snowflakes" is all a way of keeping the baby Nazis from wandering off and trying to be human.
But to bring it back to Meatball Ron--back when he was a teacher, in addition to getting history wrong, he was fraternizing with the kids and trying to be cool. That's him also in this campaign--extremely online and led by callow youth instead of being capable of "leadership" until forced to fire an alt-right dickhead in the midst of also firing 1/3 of his campaign staff. (Which is still not leadership.)
What I'm saying is--I really don't wonder. The GOP invited the alt-right in and that's what they are going to be.
3 comments:
I get the feeling that the younger American people will not stand for the fascism and ongoing racism coming from the usual suspects (at least that's my hope). The younger folks are already revolting over the the last Supreme Court's decision on abortion and are angry to the point of not cooperating with any authority they see as running their lives. I'm thinking that hope truly springs eternally. I have no idea how this ends, but I put my faith in our younger citizens...
I also put my faith in the younger voters, but that said, there are a shit-ton of them that are hot for hitler and the nazi ideology. it's going to be a long battle, which I believe we will win, but not in my lifetime, unfortunately. if public education is destroyed, all bets are off, since a stupid populace plays directly into right wing hands.
Fascism creeps, it sneaks in the back door, one small step only slightly more egregious than the one before at a time. It is by small steps of incremental meanness and viciousness that we lose our humanity. The Nazis embodied the ascension of utter demonic inhumanity, but they didn’t get that way overnight. They got that way by day after day, attacking and demonizing and urging the elimination of those they deemed their enemies.
There's an old Doris Day song that suits the situation, the future's not ours to see. It had been my hope to leave a better world to our grandchildren, now I'm not so sure we'll be leaving them a world. I don't see 'democracy' in our future. If we make it, if our grandchildren survive, if we somehow in the next hundred years figure out how to get off this ball of mud and out of her increasingly toxic atmosphere, it will be in controlled environments. Moon bases, Mars Bitches! Caves of Steel, Oceania, both above or below the waves, Heinlein's habitats twixt here and there. Environments sealed against an inhospitable if not deadly outside environment. Contained. Controlled. Under authority. Someone, or something, is in charge. There will be no “democracy” in our futures.
And we will have been turned out of the garden ...
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