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.

  • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    8 hours ago

    It’s mainly a mix of economic frusturation and a divide and conquer strategy by the rich in order to have the masses blame immigrants and people of other races/religions/genders/sexual orientations/etc. for all of their problems instead of blaming the elite class and capitalism. The lie of meritocracy being real also plays a big role here (“temporarilly embarrassed billionaires”).

    There is another angle, though, and that’s sexual frusturation. When a teenage male has issues getting laid and they look online for some kind of support, they find people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson who tells them that men who “get laid” are “alphas” or whatever and that women should be treated as subhuman or as slaves. These incels have likely never actually attempted to make friends with any women outside of a sexual or romantic context, because if they did, they would learn that women are the same as them, even when it comes to their struggles (even pertaining to dating/sexual frusturations).

    I think the latter reason (specifically Gamergate) sparked the fire that made the first truely possible on a scale that we haven’t seen in our lifetimes.

    There is also the additional piece of info that the majority of people won’t take action against what is happening in politics until it personally affects them, which is a very unfortunate reality.