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**Forever Spinning Vinyl** · 03-01-2021, 11:40 AM

(03-01-2021, 10:57 AM)hollodero Wrote: Oh, that rise I can absolutely believe. I don't know the numbers, but that would make a lot of sense.

Well, I am not asking of you to take anything from an Austrian, but I will add this. It's absolutely true that being blind to Nazism can become a form of support of Nazism, and I experienced that in my country for sure. We have Nazis and people who aid them by denying the issue. What I also experienced though is that being overly alert to everything that could be construed as Nazism also helps Nazism. It creates examples of exaggeration people can point to to call every legit warning an exaggeration in the same light. That is why I am advocating caution, for seeing Nazi symbols everywhere can lead to a reaction similar to the classical "the boy who cried wolf" scenario.

There are demonstrably awful things happening at CPAC, things that do not need any interpretation and no lesson in the symbols of a fringe group. I find it wiser to focus on that instead of fueling speculations that reasanably can be seen as unreasonable. For sure I do not know 100% that this was incidential or if anyone indeed had pandering to Nazis through a Nazi symbol in mind here, I just deem it highly unlikely. While you see it as a virtual certainty.

I see it as a continuing issue with Trump and his new version of the GOP. The Republican party has been called the white peoples party for decades. My thoughts on this didn't start on Friday night but they sure did escalate the last 5 years.

He's a race baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.
They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Good people on both sides.
Stand back and stand by.
plus
Vice President Joe Biden has said Trump has "fanned the flames" of white supremacy, and Sen. Kamala Harris of California said Trump "empowers white supremacists" and "condones their behavior."

For others, though, that doesn't go far enough. Count Beto O'Rourke, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of Indiana, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and entrepreneur Andrew Yang among those who have said the president is, in fact, a "white supremacist."

**hollodero** · 03-01-2021, 01:52 PM

(03-01-2021, 11:40 AM)Forever Spinning Vinyl Wrote: I see it as a continuing issue with Trump and his new version of the GOP. The Republican party has been called the white peoples party for decades. My thoughts on this didn't start on Friday night but they sure did escalate the last 5 years.

He's a race baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.

Oh I widely agree with that, and there are indeed plenty of good legit examples to underline that view.

My remarks were strictly regarded at that CPAC podium issue.

**Forever Spinning Vinyl** · 03-01-2021, 02:03 PM

(03-01-2021, 01:52 PM)hollodero Wrote: Oh I widely agree with that, and there are indeed plenty of good legit examples to underline that view.

My remarks were strictly regarded at that CPAC podium issue.

Oh, I know. I'm just giving some of my examples as to why I'm not giving them the benefit of it being just a coincidence. Four or five years ago, maybe. Now, I'd be shocked if it was unintentional. It seemed like all of his daily decisions were based on one criteria . . . "This will make my opponents/enemies pissed."

**Dill** · 03-01-2021, 02:51 PM

(02-27-2021, 02:59 PM)hollodero Wrote: I really do not think this podium has anything to do with a nordic rune. Not to be offensive, but imho this is kind of a "Biden said the n-word" issue.

LOL so you AGREE--Biden DID say the N-word!

How can you defend him after that!!

**Dill** · 03-01-2021, 03:59 PM

(02-27-2021, 07:37 AM)Forever Spinning Vinyl Wrote: They're not even trying to hide it anymore. I still say, if you want Antifa to go away, Republicans should stop being Fascists. Should someone explain to them that Fascism is 0-1 with military bases of the victors still in their countries 76 years later with no signs of leaving?

This seems a bit like that dust up we had a couple years back about the "hand game" signal used by cadets at a football game.

We don't have enough information to know for sure if the stage intentionally mimicked a rune. I doubt Trump knows much about runes. I am sure some in his entourage/staff know a great deal. 60/40 in favor. And a win for Trump if the MSM discuss this. Real Nazis will see more "secret" support from Trump and non-Nazi supporters will see this as more "fake news" and the MSM attacking anything they can.

A note on the word "fascist." I am aware of no historian or sociologist who studies fascism who thinks Trump or even Trumpism is "fascist." For two reasons:

1) Trump apologists have not yet reached the point where they are peddling the ideal of death in service to the state, and the state as spiritual apotheosis of the nation. The GOP so far has not adopted an internal organization mimicking that of the U.S. state, complete with foreign policy and military arm. (Not to say there aren't some "real" fascists among the amalgam of groups supporting him, but they do not define policy and ideology, or control party propaganda.) Trump and supporters embrace of authoritarianism creates a family resemblance to fascism--but only on general points common to all illiberal politics.

2) A more accurate and useful term for Trump is "right-wing authoritarian populist." He checks all the boxes for that, and this keeps us open to new and as-yet-label-defying politics arising from his movement. His very American anti-state supporters fit the definition as well, supporting democracy for the right people, cheering their leader's contempt for rule of law, relishing his scapegoating of minorities and his cherishing conspiracies of control by degenerate elites. Trump stands for them when no one else will.

Even if the rune stage was intentional, I doubt the intention was to create a symbol which could at some point be taken up as a party symbol. But it could very well be playful enticement of people looking for hidden signs, QAnon style. Proof enough for them signals are really there if you look for them.

**Dill** · 03-01-2021, 04:24 PM

(02-27-2021, 03:23 PM)GMDino Wrote: And, I just read, the other event going on this weekend (AFPAC) apparently has the real racists attending it instead.

Then they go to CPAC and say that, gosh darn it, they just don't LIKE all that White Supremist talk!

Here's some more on the Second Annual America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC).

https://angrywhitemen.org/2021/02/27/rep-paul-gosar-gives-speech-at-white-nationalist-america-first-conference/

Scary stuff. Seems like the Trump base is getting smaller, fraction by fraction, but the remainder is becoming more fanatic and delusional.

Gosar continued his speech by stating that we are facing a “climate crisis,” but not one that’s “about the moon and the oceans.” “We have a climate crisis of intolerance,” he said. “A climate crisis of communists who suppress free speech, suppress our votes, suppress our citizens in favor of aliens, and undermine our republic.”

**TheUberHuber** · 03-01-2021, 06:51 PM

(03-01-2021, 03:59 PM)Dill Wrote: This seems a bit like that dust up we had a couple years back about the "hand game" signal used by cadets at a football game.

We don't have enough information to know for sure if the stage intentionally mimicked a rune. I doubt Trump knows much about runes. I am sure some in his entourage/staff know a great deal. 60/40 in favor. And a win for Trump if the MSM discuss this. Real Nazis will see more "secret" support from Trump and non-Nazi supporters will see this as more "fake news" and the MSM attacking anything they can.

A note on the word "fascist." I am aware of no historian or sociologist who studies fascism who thinks Trump or even Trumpism is "fascist." For two reasons:

1) Trump apologists have not yet reached the point where they are peddling the ideal of death in service to the state, and the state as spiritual apotheosis of the nation. The GOP so far has not adopted an internal organization mimicking that of the U.S. state, complete with foreign policy and military arm. (Not to say there aren't some "real" fascists among the amalgam of groups supporting him, but they do not define policy and ideology, or control party propaganda.) Trump and supporters embrace of authoritarianism creates a family resemblance to fascism--but only on general points common to all illiberal politics.

2) A more accurate and useful term for Trump is "right-wing authoritarian populist." He checks all the boxes for that, and this keeps us open to new and as-yet-label-defying politics arising from his movement. His very American anti-state supporters fit the definition as well, supporting democracy for the right people, cheering their leader's contempt for rule of law, relishing his scapegoating of minorities and his cherishing conspiracies of control by degenerate elites. Trump stands for them when no one else will.

Even if the rune stage was intentional, I doubt the intention was to create a symbol which could at some point be taken up as a party symbol. But it could very well be playful enticement of people looking for hidden signs, QAnon style. Proof enough for them signals are really there if you look for them.

Lol

https://youtu.be/Ghw-mQB4sQc

fredtoast · 03-01-2021, 08:03 PM

Anyone who does not think this stage shape was an intentional symbol does not realize how extreme the people are at CPAC.

CPAC is not just a group of republicans. This is the extreme right part of the Republicans. This is like the Q-anon crowd and te religious fundamentalist.

If you say "It is crazy to think this was an intentional symbol" then you are exactly right.

**NATI BENGALS** · 03-01-2021, 09:24 PM

I would give credit where credit is due. I can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt.

After January 6th and the attempted destruction of our democracy by Trump himself trying to overturn our election and steal power I don’t know how anyone other than his supporters would make excuses for this.. His most fervent base is white supremacist. They made this stage for him to give his first speech since he went crying off on his sad little Air Force 1 departure.

They could have chosen many stage designs that were not symbols used by nazis and white supremacists. They didn’t. Hence it was intentional.

**Dill** · 03-01-2021, 09:27 PM

(03-01-2021, 06:51 PM)TheUberHuber Wrote: Lol
https://youtu.be/Ghw-mQB4sQc

Snyder argues that Trump falls short of fascism on several counts. But he does forge a useful link between Trumpism and fascism via the phenomenon of "post Truth." And so speaks of Trump's "pre-fascism."

Snyder's essay from The Atlantic is a good starting point for discussions about Trumpism and whether it is fascism. The danger of uncoupling Trumpism from fascism is that doing so may allow people to feel relieved--"Oh, NOT facism? Not that bad then." But it is that bad. The current big lie of voter fraud is "structurally fascist" he argues, and could become the genuine article in four years, should it gain a determined and violent following.

The American Abyss: A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html

Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.

Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth. These last four years, scholars have discussed the legitimacy and value of invoking fascism in reference to Trumpian propaganda. One comfortable position has been to label any such effort as a direct comparison and then to treat such comparisons as taboo. More productively, the philosopher Jason Stanley has treated fascism as a phenomenon, as a series of patterns that can be observed not only in interwar Europe but beyond it.

My own view is that greater knowledge of the past, fascist or otherwise, allows us to notice and conceptualize elements of the present that we might otherwise disregard and to think more broadly about future possibilities. It was clear to me in October that Trump’s behavior presaged a coup, and I said so in print; this is not because the present repeats the past, but because the past enlightens the present.

Like historical fascist leaders, Trump has presented himself as the single source of truth. His use of the term “fake news” echoed the Nazi smear Lügenpresse (“lying press”); like the Nazis, he referred to reporters as “enemies of the people.” Like Adolf Hitler, he came to power at a moment when the conventional press had taken a beating; the financial crisis of 2008 did to American newspapers what the Great Depression did to German ones. The Nazis thought that they could use radio to replace the old pluralism of the newspaper; Trump tried to do the same with Twitter.

Thanks to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. For the most part these were small lies, and their main effect was cumulative. To believe in all of them was to accept the authority of a single man, because to believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else. Once such personal authority was established, the president could treat everyone else as the liars; he even had the power to turn someone from a trusted adviser into a dishonest scoundrel with a single tweet. Yet so long as he was unable to enforce some truly big lie, some fantasy that created an alternative reality where people could live and die, his pre-fascism fell short of the thing itself.

**Dill** · 03-01-2021, 09:32 PM

(03-01-2021, 08:03 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Anyone who does not think this stage shape was an intentional symbol does not realize how extreme the people are at CPAC.

CPAC is not just a group of republicans. This is the extreme right part of the Republicans. This is like the Q-anon crowd and te religious fundamentalist.

If you say "It is crazy to think this was an intentional symbol" then you are exactly right.

They are extreme, sure, but most of them are not extreme NAZIs looking for symbolic links to their Aryan heritage.

I agree it is a little more likely than not the shape was intentional, but I don't think it links Trump and the majority of CPAC attendees directly to National Socialism.

**Dill** · 03-01-2021, 09:41 PM

(03-01-2021, 09:42 AM)Forever Spinning Vinyl Wrote: National Socialist Movement flag up until 2016

National Socialist Movement flag since 2016

I just might be the first person in history to ever associate the modern republican party with White Nationalism according to some in this thread. This is not someone looking back into Nazi history and sneaking it in . . . this is from a recent re-branding by White Nationalists

The composition/arrangement of the previous American NAZI flag is not aesthetically pleasing. Looks like a lot of symbols and symbolic colors jammed in there by a committee.

The new version with the geldon rune ties all the elements together better, I think.

***jason*** · 03-01-2021, 10:31 PM

(03-01-2021, 09:41 PM)Dill Wrote: The composition/arrangement of the previous American NAZI flag is not aesthetically pleasing. Looks like a lot of symbols and symbolic colors jammed in there by a committee.

The new version with the geldon rune ties all the elements together better, I think.

Yeah... It's the flag that's unpleasant.

***TheLeonardLeap*** · 03-02-2021, 12:35 AM

(02-27-2021, 11:36 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: January 6th.

(03-01-2021, 09:24 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: January 6th

You can just say "the capitol riots".

I have seen this being floated around here and there, but no matter how many times you repeat it trying to make it a thing that'll get connected to each other, it's never going to be September 11th. Stop it.

***jason*** · 03-02-2021, 12:50 AM

(03-02-2021, 12:35 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: You can just say "the capitol riots".

I have seen this being floated around here and there, but no matter how many times you repeat it trying to make it a thing that'll get connected to each other, it's never going to be September 11th. Stop it.

I think it should be called America's Angriest Aunts and Uncles Day.

**NATI BENGALS** · 03-02-2021, 01:35 AM

(03-02-2021, 12:35 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: You can just say "the capitol riots".

I have seen this being floated around here and there, but no matter how many times you repeat it trying to make it a thing that'll get connected to each other, it's never going to be September 11th. Stop it.

Nothing you say will change the fact when examining American history January 6th will be tied to the capital riots. Not sure what to tell you about that. It is what it is. I’m not trying to make it a thing. It already is a thing.

Never forget 1/6
^and that’s just to be an ass

**Sociopathicsteelerfan** · 03-02-2021, 01:36 AM

(03-02-2021, 12:35 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: You can just say "the capitol riots".

I have seen this being floated around here and there, but no matter how many times you repeat it trying to make it a thing that'll get connected to each other, it's never going to be September 11th. Stop it.

(03-02-2021, 12:50 AM)jason Wrote: I think it should be called America's Angriest Aunts and Uncles Day.

You guys are both wrong. Remember the day that left wing terrorists set of a bomb in the Capitol on 03/01/1971?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/28/when-the-left-attacked-the-capitol-471270

It was known as 3-1 from that day forward. It's also where the band 311 got their name. Whatever

**NATI BENGALS** · 03-02-2021, 01:47 AM

(03-02-2021, 01:36 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: You guys are both wrong. Remember the day that left wing terrorists set of a bomb in the Capitol on 03/01/1971?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/28/when-the-left-attacked-the-capitol-471270

It was known as 3-1 from that day forward. It's also where the band 311 got their name.

I always forget which president it was that organized the rally and beckoned the bombers to DC directly preceding the bombing? You know the one where he gave a speech to rile up the crowd with lies, told them to fight or they would lose their country, and that he was going in to bomb with them? Who was that?

**Sociopathicsteelerfan** · 03-02-2021, 01:52 AM

(03-02-2021, 01:47 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: I always forget which president it was that organized the rally and beckoned the bombers to DC directly preceding the bombing? You know the one where he gave a speech to rile up the crowd with lies, told them to fight or they would lose their country, and that he was going in to bomb with them? Who was that?

You're right, it's not important that left wing terrorists set off a bomb in the Capitol. We still mark the day.

***Benton*** · 03-02-2021, 02:42 AM

(03-02-2021, 01:36 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: You guys are both wrong. Remember the day that left wing terrorists set of a bomb in the Capitol on 03/01/1971?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/28/when-the-left-attacked-the-capitol-471270

It was known as 3-1 from that day forward. It's also where the band 311 got their name.

(03-02-2021, 01:52 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: You're right, it's not important that left wing terrorists set off a bomb in the Capitol. We still mark the day.

While I understand the point, anyone involved would be what, 70-80 now?

It's A- hard to compare something happening in the last few years to something 50 years ago; and B- hard to compare considering the perpetrators are now old enough to be Republicans*.

*That's a joke. Not all Republicans are over 70. Most are mentally under 6 **

** That, also, is a joke. What age do fairy tales stop becoming believable? ***

*** Aw, %$#@ it.

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