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.

  • Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com
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    14 minutes ago

    It has always been there, but until Trump’s first term the Nazis were at least cautious about things. They were afraid to openly and publicly spout their BS, unless they were in large groups. Because they knew that if they held up swastika signs on the street corner, that they’d very quickly get punched in the mouth.

    But Trump changed that. Depending on how old you are, you may remember the “he tells it like it is/he’s not afraid to say what’s really on his mind” types of support for Trump during his first term. What a lot of those people were really saying is “he makes me feel empowered to say what’s is on my mind.” And what was on their mind was white supremacy and nazism. When the highest office in the land is tacitly (and sometimes directly) supporting white supremacists, they feel emboldened. And when they feel emboldened, they escalate.

    What used to be whispered racist jokes escalated into passive racism. What used to be passive racism escalated into active racism. What used to be active racism escalated into openly hostile racism. And what used to be openly hostile racism escalated into nazism.

    And the issue is that Trump/Musk have given Nazis a forum to meet other Nazis. Before, being a Nazi was a fairly lonely hobby. Finding other Nazis carried a lot of risk, because it meant potentially exposing yourself and getting your life ruined. But with Musk buying Xitter, Trump building Truth Social, etc… Yeah, suddenly the Nazis felt empowered to actually start talking to each other. The same way flat earthers used to just be your crazy uncle who smoked too much in his garage. But now that crazy uncle is part of a Flat Earth Society that regularly does large “experiments” to try and prove the earth is flat. By finding a forum to connect with other like-minded individuals, people feel emboldened as their views feel more normalized.

  • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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    6 hours ago

    It’s always been there. Trump just told them it’s ok to be nazi in public? He’ll protect them. Because he is a damn nazi.

  • Match!!@pawb.social
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    7 hours ago

    an important historical note is that the Nazis drew a lot of their ideology and argumentation from the American eugenics movement, which has been a major undercurrent in America since the early 1900s and never went away

  • شاهد على إبادة@lemm.ee
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    6 hours ago

    It begins by realizing that economics is also politics. The US ran out of indigenous peoples and lands to exploit, so it is turning inwards.

    There are many books one could recommend. But an easy one to understand is: Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror, this book was published in 2012. Whatever an empire perfects to crush other people, always sooner or later is used internally.

  • eronth@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    It’s been fairly blatant for a while now. The seig heil is coming out now that they feel they’ve won. The goal is for the US to fall this time.

  • bstix@feddit.dk
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    7 hours ago

    They’re looking for yes-men, who will be loyal to them in even the worst possible situations. Heiling is just a test to weed out anyone else.

    Also, the heiling gesture came a little too natural to them.

    • peetabix@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      So according to Putin, Nazis in Ukraine is not ok and must be stopped. Nazis in the US government is ok and while we’re at it let’s meet them and make a deal.

      Fuck Nazis and fuck Putin.

      • daddy32@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Oh my, you had me just now realize: As long as US aid is coming into the Ukraine, putin is finally right: he is, technically, fighting against nazis - US.

  • FreakinSteve@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    It came from LIBERALS who demanded that we protect the free speech of Nazis while they were building their death camps.

  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip
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    10 hours ago

    it’s a combo of trolling and attention seeking. “there’s no such thing as bad press” and all that.

    we should point it out, condemn it, but not engage in arguments with them about what is and isn’t a sig heil.

    and when they pop up in other places trying to talk about other stuff, just bring up the fact that they threw a Nazi salute from time to time.

    the most important thing is to focus on their evil policies and actions. but we can’t forget their performative evil.

    • FreakinSteve@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Small nit: they didnt just “throw a Nazi salute”; they openly and loudly declared they were Nazis, and they have done so many times in their conventions

  • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works
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    6 hours ago

    Someone that bought his place at the white house did it and didn’t get shot by a flamethrower, so all the Nazis hiding literally just below the surface feel ok to talk a little louder now.

    Honestly, with sufficient evidence it should be legal to kill them in public and receive any inheritance from their wills. I don’t typically enjoy personally hunting people down typically, but these aren’t people.

    One comment blatantly in favor of it Goodies any human rights in my opinion. It’s the only way. They may say it too (vermin, poisoning the blood, etc) but they’ve only ever been right about themselves.

    I would give a pedo human rights before them. And that’s saying something.

    They’re just rabid animals, and I defy anyone to give a reason they deserve a single second of life at all, for any reason, in any context. Maybe with the one exception of using them to find gatherings of others. But that’s it.

  • arotrios@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    It’'s because the overall intent is not to unify the country under one government. It’s to keep the America fighting with itself so that it can’t interfere in Russian, Saudi and Chinese ambitions for an autocratic oligarchy. It’s in their best interests if America descends into the worst version of fascism that the world can dream up, and Trump’s GOP is entirely on their payroll.

    Any potential positive government action by the GOP for the American people runs contrary to those goals, so they’ve turned to the tactics of fear and intimidation to maintain their hold on the population. Each public nazi salute is intentional, designed to strike fear and controversy into the hearts of the citizenry and publicly tarnish America’s image on the world stage.

    Look at how Trump ran on inflation, but the only actions he’s taken have been to attack people’s livelihood or erode trust in federal and state institutions. He’s literally dismantling the federal government from the inside, but all anyone wants to talk about is the nazi salutes.

    This is an intentional distraction.

    This sort of thing doesn’t work in a strong democracy with an un-compromised media, but our democracy has been hollowed out by the cancer of Citizen’s United, rendering the power of a citizen’s vote near worthless, and by the likely election fraud performed by Musk. So they’re gloating and glorifying the symbol as a sign that no one can stop them.

    See, the people in charge right now don’t care if the US collapses. They WANT it to. America has been the symbol of democratic freedom for the entire world. With the US abandoning that fight, there’s no real geopolitical power strong enough to take its place.

    Which is exactly what Russia, China, and the Saudis want.