No Stupid Questions

Lots of discussion points here, but let me address two or three in particular:

blatant Nazism hurts their legitimacy in the eyes of the public

Nope. No, it really doesn't. Trump was never a legitimate contender from his opponents' perspective (due to dirty foreign money) and his true believers would stand buy him as he ate a live baby on TV.

Take a look at some approval polls that show he still has significant support from Americans. (Likewise with Musk, likewise with DOGE.)

Second point: It doesn't matter. He doesn't NEED legitimacy or approval any more. He's in power, Musk is at his right hand, and the two of them are acting with complete impunity. Seriously, they should both be hauled off in chains and tried for treason, not to mention hate crimes and hundreds of less-sexy crimes. But they're not, and so it just doesn't fucking matter.

Thirdly, where did it come from? We're discovering now that the Christian hard-right has been carefully staging this for HALF A CENTURY! Since not long after Roe v. Wade, they have been laying the groundwork for what Project 2025 is carrying out right now: A ruthless coup backed by religious extremists and foreign opponents. The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973. PNAC was founded in 1997. And there are more.

Fundamentally, Trump's first term was to see how much they could get away with. When they lost the 2020 election, the Nazis spent four years purging the party of unfaithful (i.e. people with either thoughts or morals, or maybe even both), then won last year, and were finally able to remove their veil: The government no longer needs the will of the people to execute their extremist plans.

There have always been Nazis in America, even during WW2. Listen to Rachel Maddow's podcast "ultra" to hear about how close they came to a takeover of the US way back then. They never went away, they just went low profile for a while.

Genuinely, 4chan (Elon uses 4chan terms a lot), then instagram, facebook, discord, and foreign influence campaigns. I barely use social media, seems harmful.

I know people who fall into these rabbit holes. Super sad.

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.

In the 1930’s the robber Barron legacy wall street families got together and hatched a plot. A fascist coup attempt to overthrow FDR and install a fascist wall street /Military industry controlled regime that was modeled after hitler’s Germany. Wall street mostly unanimously supported the third reich. They funneled money to him, as well as equipment, put him in the cover of tine magazine as 1938 person of the year and held a rally for him at Madison square garden. The usa didn't want anything to do with the great war till it became evident that Germany was likely to lose so they allowed pearl harbor to happen to give the US carte Blanche via public support to enter the global theater then we pillaged their military secrets and gave asylum to many war criminals we deemed useful like werner von braun and many others (project paperclip) But anyway Prescott bush was one of these new money wall street people who spearheaded this coup attempt. They propositioned one of the most highly decorated generals in us history- smedly butler, author of the short autobiographical/ social critique war is a racket, to head this coup and take the white house by storm with several thousand military veterans. Butler played along until the last minute when he blew the whistle and testified to congress and the house un-American activities committee/ HUAC who deemed his testimony credible but were very likely paid off and did nothing to hold those responsible accountable. Now fast forward 90 or so years to today and the main architect of this coup’s son and grandson were both sitting presidents (one was cia director and very likely involved in the JFK assassination and was in Dallas on November 22, 1963) and all branches if the us government are now obviously controlled by the intersection of wall street and industrial military power whom also simultaneously control the press and use it to disseminate propaganda that the general public are easily swayed by in major part due to nixon and Reagan cutting education standards at the recommendation of their mutual advisor roger a freeman who said an educated proletariat was a major threat to their movement. Those two administrations were some of the most damaging to the American proletariat and did so much to dismantle the progress that the civil rights and labor rights movement did in conjunction with the new deal policies of fdr that allowed the middle class yo thrive for 3 decades until hyper inflation reared its ugly head and gave way to the modern age of austerity in America our government and their mouthpiece puppets are lying about. They intentionally devalued the us dollar while adequately adjusting corporate executive pay to compensate for this reduction in value to eradicate the workers and civil rights progress of the 40’s 50’s and 60’s and sent a majority of us manufacturing jobs to the third world to cut labor costs by 90-95%+

For the first 172 years of the us dollar as a standardized currency the price of gold only fluctuated 95% from $18 to $35 when FDR temporarily suspended the gold standard made it illegal for the rich to hoard gold and bought up the majority of the supply then revalued it from $19 to $35 an ounce so he could double the money supply and repair the damage done by the great depression. But since nixon permanently ended the gold standard in 1971 the price of gold has increased 8400% from $35 to $2900 today. This is directly in tandem with the increase in the national debt from $400 billion in 1971 to 36 trillion and change today or toughly 9200% meanwhile wall street uses the IMF/ world bank inflation figures to lie to us about the extent that the working class has been looted right before our eyes. the inflation statistics they parrot are based on consumer price index which is an inadequate and inaccurate measure of inflation since it does not account for the devaluation of a currency due to the increase in circulating currency supply which the price of gold does by design. So that means the minimum wage in the US has lost between 84-93% of its value in 54 years which in 1968-71 earned the equivalent value of 95 ounces of gold a year which would be $130/hr or $270,000 annually at a 40 hour a week salary of $1.60/hr even in 1950 75¢/hr was 60/hr today or 125,000 and in 1956 it was $1/hr or $82/hr/$168,000 today. This is why one adult working a full time job at any time from 1945-1975 could supply a family of four with enough left to save for their two kids college, their retirement (if they weren't part of the 50% of workers with a pension) own 2 or 3 used cars or one new car(which cost under $1000 at the time) and go on a modest family vacation once a year, today it would take both parents working 80 hours a week with overtime (which the current fascist regime wants to eradicate) at a base pay of$30 an hour to come close to the same quality of life. The American working class were turned to wage slaves and most were so poorly educated they didn't have the intellectual capacity to understand this reality. Today 2/3 of workers live paycheck to paycheck with insufficient savings to cover a $500-1000 emergency expense. Most millennials and gen z will never own a home and have to work till they are too sick to do so or worse while hoping that social security, medicaid and food stamps are not destroyed/ defunded and or privatized so we can survive the end of our lives. This is the sad reality of america and anyone disagreeing with my assessment is choosing to believe the words of career liars who commit fraud regularly and with impunity and have fleeced the American people countless times while our tax dollars have gone to their tax breaks and bailouts so they can enjoy lifestyles of opulent luxury at our expense. Its time to MaGGA- make guillotines great again.

They have more power than ever.

Even Pence wasn't this stupid, but Vance certainly is.

It's always been there; they just stopped even attempting to hide it (even though they never had it very well to begin with).

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

MAGA has always been run by nazis; the blatancy came from winning the last election.

Suddenly? Where have you been the last 20 years?

It's always been there, it's just now coming to the surface.

Like shingles

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

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.

"suddenly"

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.

It's not a new thing, and while I don't think it can be easily distilled into a social media reply. I'll do my best.

This has been a 40-year process, beginning with Ronald Reagan and continuing incrementally with every president since, including Obama unironically. (Remember how he crushed Occupy and ignored Ferguson and legalized torture on New Years Day?) It's become stronger as people have become poorer and more willing to not give a shit about the quality of our country's leadership. Now every person not only has personal biases, but a computer in their pocket constantly telling them everything they think is correct and actively angering them. Hitler would have creamed himself at the thought of being able to dictate social media algorithms.

If people can't afford to feed their kids or see a doctor, they're not going to give a shit about fascism, and no matter who we elect, most people can't afford to see a doctor and adequately feed their kids.

It's going to be worse now than it had to be. In 2016 people were willing to punch Nazis. Now, you can render a Nazi salute twice, in the seat of government, in front of the entire Democratic leadership... and they will fucking clap and smile.

Fascism shouldn't be thought of as a static "thing" or an object of ideology. Peoples beliefs come from their environment. We are so individualized as a society that often we as progressives take "personal responsibility" too far, we buy the premise implicitly without realizing there are flaws with thinking in this way. Every logical system has flaws and contradictions, its proven mathematically though I think some systems are more rigorous and based on evidence.

GWF Hegel's philosophy of Right was written in 1820, and influenced political thought ever since. Liberalism was still in it's revolutionary phase and theories about it were still fairly new, the Wealth of Nations was written just 50 years before, and Karl Marx was like two when it was released, although it would serve as the basis for much of his work analyzing the hidden relationships of Capital, and ethical political philosophy on the whole.

The book is the closest I think someone can honestly get to an actual "horseshoe theory" because not only did it influence the left but it also influenced the far right. Hegel, using the works of other great liberal philosophers such as Locke and Kant, who Hegel was always working to surpass, applied his dialectical philosophical methods to the writings of liberalism.

What he discovered was a natural tendency toward what we would calll fascism. Like he prefigured fascism by 100 years. He wasn't a fascist, there was no such thing. He was just exploring the ideas of this revolutionary philosophy, one that purported to liberate the mind, body and spirit, and discovered the oppressive seeds which might grow into something quite different.

This isn't to call liberals fascists, I'm a communist and 20th century communism had a lot of problems, to put it mildly. I would say confidently that progressive liberals are not crypto fash, in fact the term "progressive" is a typically left-Hegelian ideal, in that it describes human progress and development as the subject of history. Instead it challenges the idea of the liberatory nature of private property, a key component of liberal thought. Of course this is all depending how you look at it, right-Hegelians see this same formulation as proof of the inevitability of their ideas and justification for their actions.

You're getting a lot of different opinions about this stuff so I'm trying to make sort of a different point about philosophy, history and action. Other reading for a deep dive on fascism is the essay Ur Fascism by Umberto Eco (great empirical analysis, but the least scientific IMO), Trotsky's pamphlet Fascism: What it is and How to Fight It, and HA Roy's Fasism, Its Philosophy, Professions and Practice.

In a way, fascism has always been there below the surface, informally shifting the sands of history until it was formalized in the early 20th century. I don't think you can have a society based on private property without some elements of fascism somewhere. Mostly "western democracies" will outsource their extreme cruelty to other countries where it doesn't affect their citizens.

But in summary, Fascism is the realization of the contradictions inherent in liberal ideology, its liberalism turned inside-out, with all its appearances of justice and freedom cut away, leaving only the logic of expansion and domination that most liberal democracies do their best to hide. This is how fascists are able to hide in our society, their individual beliefs are not completely unpalatable to centrists and conservatives who have also started to dispense with justice and freedom in the interest of national greatness. Its what makes their beliefs so malleable, and its also why liberals have such a hard time defining it. But fascism isn't an individual's beliefs, if it was it would be just regular bog-standard chauvinism. Fascism is a mass movement which will use charismatic leaders amenable to their politics to rally the masses.

In our society, the middle classes are the "battery" for fascism. Middle classes are constantly under attack under capitalism and the individuals often feel this and become paranoid (doomsday prepping, etc.,) and this paranoia and real social pressure to produce or be wiped out, the fear from the constant threat of precarity and uncertainty fits hand in glove with the aims and means of fascists.

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.

Astroturfing and boosting on Twitter and other platforms.

The fact that the salute is so offensive, they did it so blatantly, and their denial was so disingenuous is the point. It's a demonstration of power. They can do a Nazi salute and their opponents can't punish them. They can deny that they did a Nazi salute and their opponents can't control the narrative. If they did something more subtle, then people might think that they weren't facing any consequences because their opponents were giving them the benefit of the doubt. With the Nazi salute there is no doubt. The only explanation for why they aren't facing any consequences is that their opponents are powerless.

It’s funny, the posters over at r/conservative truly believe they aren’t nazis and say thing like why is the left so violent, you do anything and they call you a nazi etc etc.

Crazy they can’t see the wood for the trees. Maybe they should have a bit of introspection, like maybe look in to why everyone calls the leaders and followers nazis…

Ironic coming from the “sheeple” crowd.

Nazis are a symbol of power and authority for the far right the same way every international dictator has used hilters style of government to rule and oppress. They aspire to build a country similar to the one of the Nazis. Elements of this include: "christian" values, centralisation of power, uniting of the country, removal of "impures" (trans people).

Plenty of answers here but I don't think anyone has answered this part:

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.

So here's my take ...

Musk did the sig heil as a fuck you to everyone that doesn't like him. That's it.

They just won the election by basically lying, ignoring, and playing for time. They can literally do whatever the fuck they like for the next n years with impunity.

Imagine if Harris had won and in her victory speech said something like "Don't worry Don, I'll make sure they give you diapers in jail." It would've been a low blow but we would've loved her for it because it's poking fun at the conservatives for no other reason than to stir them up.

I think there's another, longer conversation to be had about why racism (and by extension nazism) resonates with voters in 2025, but I'm too weary for that I think.