Bradley K. Sherman
2024-05-22 09:42:36 UTC
|
| The Right's Fascism Problem
| ...
| Regardless of how or why the video made its way onto
| Trump's social media feed, the incident highlights a
| broader problem for the GOP: Right-leaning corners of the
| internet are absolutely inundated with fascist or
| fascist-adjacent content, and that content is increasingly
| making its way -- either intentionally or accidentally --
| into more mainstream conservative discourse.
|
| After all, this isn't the first time that the porous
| digital boundary between the online far-right and the MAGA
| movement has created real-world political problems for
| Trump. In July 2015, during Trump's first bid for the White
| House, his campaign's official Twitter account posted --
| and then quickly deleted -- an image featuring Nazi
| soldiers reenactors, superimposed between the stripes of an
| American flag.
| ...
| The problem is not unique to Trump. Last year, Ron
| DeSantis's presidential campaign fired a staffer who
| reposted a video featuring the Nazi sonnenrad symbol on an
| official campaign social media account. In a now-familiar
| refrain, a DeSantis campaign spokesperson wrote the
| incident off as a mistake by a young staffer.
|
| The credibility of these explanations has been drawn into
| question by Trump's own invocations of fascist language --
| including his recent comments calling immigrants "vermin"
| who "poison the blood" of America -- as well as his
| repeated overtures to white nationalist figures like Nick
| Fuentes.
| ...
<https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2024/05/21/the-rights-fascism-problem-00159265>
--bks
| The Right's Fascism Problem
| ...
| Regardless of how or why the video made its way onto
| Trump's social media feed, the incident highlights a
| broader problem for the GOP: Right-leaning corners of the
| internet are absolutely inundated with fascist or
| fascist-adjacent content, and that content is increasingly
| making its way -- either intentionally or accidentally --
| into more mainstream conservative discourse.
|
| After all, this isn't the first time that the porous
| digital boundary between the online far-right and the MAGA
| movement has created real-world political problems for
| Trump. In July 2015, during Trump's first bid for the White
| House, his campaign's official Twitter account posted --
| and then quickly deleted -- an image featuring Nazi
| soldiers reenactors, superimposed between the stripes of an
| American flag.
| ...
| The problem is not unique to Trump. Last year, Ron
| DeSantis's presidential campaign fired a staffer who
| reposted a video featuring the Nazi sonnenrad symbol on an
| official campaign social media account. In a now-familiar
| refrain, a DeSantis campaign spokesperson wrote the
| incident off as a mistake by a young staffer.
|
| The credibility of these explanations has been drawn into
| question by Trump's own invocations of fascist language --
| including his recent comments calling immigrants "vermin"
| who "poison the blood" of America -- as well as his
| repeated overtures to white nationalist figures like Nick
| Fuentes.
| ...
<https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2024/05/21/the-rights-fascism-problem-00159265>
--bks