So roughly 150 neo-Nazis, alongside some alt-rightists who are basically Nazis but kind of like to pretend that they aren’t, went a-marching in Pikeville, Kentucky this past weekend, dressed to the 88s in an assortment of Nazi-esque uniforms, carrying flags festooned with swastikas and an assortment of other Nazi-ish symbols, chanting chants containing the word “heil” and occasionally breaking out in Nazi — sorry, “Roman” — salutes. A few even brought assault rifles along with them, in case they needed to invade Poland or something.
Now some Nazis are wondering if the Nazi marchers were maybe a bit too obviously Nazi-ish during their Nazi march.
On the neo-Nazi internet tabloid The Daily Stormer, Eric Striker declares the rally “a sleeper hit,” predicting that it will lead to even bigger rallies in the future as “millions of hidden Alt-Right and Nationalsocialists in America” overcome their fears and embrace an explicitly racist agenda.
But Striker is worried that his Nazi buddies were perhaps a bit too blatant about the whole Nazi thing.
I actually support unironic use of the Roman salute, but only in its historic context as a gesture of honor to fellow comrades and leaders. When the goal is to lure Antifa to take off their “peaceful” masks, triggering them by Roman saluting them is also appropriate.
But at this demonstration, where nationalists outnumbered the increasingly irrelevant left, the two NSM affiliated individuals who were doing Roman salutes at a local media outlet zooming in on them committed an extreme propaganda error. It’s not so much the Roman salute itself, but that the image projected was that the rally was about shock value rather than real issues impacting local whites.
So maybe cool it with all the salutes, fellas? They’ll be time for those later!
Striker also has issues with some of the marchers’ fashion choices.
The citizens of Pikeville agree with 99% of what the Nationalists there believe, but superficial blunders like this, and the poor attire choice of wearing Schutzstaffel [SS] collars, distract from the frame we’re trying to build, and cause people to tune-out.
Also, maybe try to hide all your Nazi tchotchkes when the lugenpresse is nearby? In one Youtube clip, Striker notes,
there’s Third Reich memorabilia laying around, which should’ve at least been put away when the press was arriving. Again, optics aren’t everything, but this kind of stuff just triggers inculcated defenses of common folk who otherwise agree with us from joining. After winning them over, you can teach them the truth about the Third Reich, but getting them to listen first is the most important part. …
[F]ew will disagree that if the [National Socialist Movement] toned some of the outward eccentricities, they would have far greater appeal along with way fewer agent provocateurs/federal informants/misfits harassing them.
I guess if they didn’t leave so many swastika souvenirs lying around no one would have ever figured out that a group called the National Socialist Movement was really a bunch of Nazis.
Here are some of the Pikeville marchers in all-out Nazi mode:
And here are some of the same people in STEALTH MODE:
Clearly, without all the “seig heils” no one could have possibly figured out they were Nazis.
In the end, Striker urges his fellow Nazis to emulate European fascist groups like Greece’s Golden Dawn and the Nordic Resistance Movement.
There is no reason their methods can’t be applied to America, with a few adaptations. Being a National Socialist isn’t about flying a Swastika or having an edgy tattoo, it’s about what you project from the inside: Honor, strength, courage, pride, love, loyalty and most importantly: confidence in the final victory.
Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin follows up Striker’s post with a few of his own thoughts on Nazi “optics.” Anglin, who’s been known to throw “Roman salutes” around in public himself, isn’t worried that Nazi outfits and the like are too “edgy” to appeal to Americans, but that they really aren’t hip or sexy enough to get the cool millennial kids on board.
“The Golden Dawn and Nordfront,” Anglin writes, have created an
aesthetic which is both serious and sexy, and that is the model we need to be following. Nazi uniforms, swastika flags and people in bad physical shape are a part of an aesthetic which has been tried for a very long time in this country, with very little in terms of results.
Nazi uniforms not sexy? Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS must be rolling over in her imaginary grave.
@Troubelle
It’s actually a really big thing. Good on you for not being exposed to it, though, I’m glad of that.
Let me familiarize you with this racist nonsense:
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=black+people+can%27t+swim&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Again, I, too, am confused by it because I am a powerful swimmer. I have swimming medals and was the only black person on my local swim team.
I really seriously want to become a swimming instructor just to destroy the preconceptions of rich, racist white people.
I imagine I’m gonna have some heavy resistance doing so as a transwoman, though. May never happen.
“URGH! I DON’T WANT [n-word t-words] TEACHING CONNOR/ELEANOR (common white people names for their kids) TO SWIM!”
Or something like that, I imagine, they will say.
@Franscesca Torpedo
Eugh.
If it’s any consolation, I’d be glad to have you teach me how to improve my swimming any day. (I actually swam for exercise for a while earlier this year…then I got a nasty ear infection.)
Swimming is still good, though. I’ve always enjoyed it, though having to do so with my siblings pestering me to play asinine games with them turned me off on doing it for a while.
@Troubelle
I would be more than happy to. I am 100% the person you want as your exercise partner, too.
Everyone I work out with insists that I keep them motivated and fit. Been thinking about becoming a personal trainer.
@Troubelle
This one is rooted in the racist nature of American public spaces. Whole books could be written on the topic (and have been), but the short of it is that public swimming pools have historically not been built in black neighbourhoods, and the ‘public’ pools that were built elsewhere were segregated or simply closed to black people.
@F. Torpedo (can I call you that?)
Hey, if it works for ya! Only problem is I’m 17 and low on liquid funds, and while my parents might fund me getting a trainer, they…Well, they’re conservative with all that entails. Also, you don’t seem to live in Kentucky, or at least in any part of it I’ve lingered in.
@Dalillama
Yeah, that was one of two things I came up with (worded as “Maybe black people just didn’t have access to public pools because racist city planning and shit?”) as theories as to why that could be. The other thing thought it might have had to do with claiming that natural hair is some kind of massive impediment.
@Troubelle
Yes, you may! Fran is fine as well.
I’m 27 years old and a hagridden old woman according to the Merps.
Also, I’d do the job for free for you I have alternative sources of income, you needn’t fret. I want to move away from this place so I wouldn’t mind coming to where you are.
@Fran, then
Unfortunately, where I am right now isn’t where I’ll be for much longer.
I’ll tell you this much: I’m in a program that lets me take all uni classes on a uni campus, while staying on said uni campus, while still technically in high school and getting credit for that.
The semester’s about to let out. (Next week is finals week.)
My mom lives about two hours away; my dad, two hours and change. I’ll be switching between them weekly over the summer.
Then one more year of this program (assuming disaster doesn’t strike), and…I’m going to have to start climbing. Dunno where that’ll be yet, but it’ll probably be in the Indiana-Ohio-Kentucky tri-state.
Francesca Torpedo:
I hear that US white families who had an odd dark-skinned ancestor a few generations ago (usually a woman, either black or native) often retcon her to be an “Indian princess” or specifically “Cherokee princess”.
Then I had this random mental image of a Cherokee (or other native or black) person claiming, “My great-grandmother was an Anglo-Saxon princess”.
I just tried to make an avatar. It’s a pic of Marie Dressler.
ETA It worked!! My first non-quilt block! I’ll always remember you, blue quilt block…
@Artic Ape
That’s me irl.
@Hambeast:
You can always trust Nazis to overestimate their support among other white people.
Francesca Torpedo–I had never even seen this “ironic Nazi” shit until I started hanging around Pony fan sites. I’m not sure why–it’s probably mostly demographic overlap.
@ColeYote:
And especially among Germans. THIS German right here has no fucking use for them, since the original gangsters dragged both sides of my family tree into a war they wanted no part of, made refugees of my mom’s side (they were ethnic Germans in Serbia, at least until the Russians invaded in ’44), and proved themselves only too happy to threaten my grandpa on my dad’s side when he complained that you couldn’t get decent shoes in Germany ever since “that shitty Austrian” had backroom-bullied his way into office. Any party that would do such things, never mind killing 6 million Jews outright, has no fucking right to call itself a champion of anything or anybody. Nazis are THUGS. Period. End of story.
@Scoots
Saaaaaay, are you by any chance a writer of ponyfics?
Scoots,
You wrote,
Probably because a lot of these racist losers think that my Little Pony is Nazi propaganda, and no I’m not joking.
Neo-Nazi Trump Supporters Can’t Stop Fapping To Anime: Your Saturday Nerdout
https://wonkette.com/597930/neo-nazi-trump-supporters-cant-stop-fapping-to-anime-your-saturday-nerdout
Deleted Comments: Nazis And Furries And My Little Pony Because Man, People Suck
https://wonkette.com/616087/deleted-comments-nazis-and-furries-and-my-little-pony-because-man-people-suck
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, it doesn’t make any sense. Obviously to 99% of us, My little Pony isn’t pro white supremacy. I guess that these racist idiots are just desperate to find something on mainstream television that endorses with their backwards worldview.
I think the whole ‘Black people can’t swim’ nonsense dates back even farther than public pools, all the way back to slavery. Slave owners would punish Black people for swimming since it could be used to escape. I’ll have to look it up to be sure, though.
Some racist white hotel manager poured acid into a pool because a Black woman was swimming in it.
@Crit
@Scoots
http://mynationalistpony.tumblr.com
Average cishet white male brony’s reaction to this blog:
Franscesca, you ignorant [awesome black lady], that’s just some troll. You can’t possibly believe he did that seriously!”
I wonder how the “my Nationalist Pony” would respond to the fact that the show’s creator herself disagrees with him about the My Little Pony’s message.
My Little NON-Homophobic, NON-Racist, NON-Smart-Shaming Pony: A Rebuttal
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2010/12/24/my-little-non-homophobic-non-racist-non-smart-shaming-pony-a-rebuttal/
Off course I’ll bet he thinks Lauren Faust is just lying so that the “evil” Jews don’t come after her and stop her from eating pork, or something.
I was in Pikeville that day, and feel the need to say that the Nazis most definitely did not outnumber us and it’s hilarious to see them blatantly make shit up. If anything the numbers were pretty even.
“Outward eccentricities”?!
So their attempt at gracious living through Third Reich memorabilia is an eccentricity.
Hipster facial hair is an outward eccentricity. SS insignia, swastika shirts and ‘Roman’ salutes are an efficient way to demonstrate your status as a toxic Dumpster fire.
These cholmondeleys think they’re Horst Wessel, but they’re Rudolph Hess.
@Francesca Torpedo
I can’t find that page anymore, but if I remember correctly I read an article of the Italian translation of the focus magazine website long ago (2009, maybe) in which they explained that the reason black people can’t swim (or “why there isn’t any black Olympic champion in swimming”, the real title of the article), which stated that the reason you don’t see very often black winners or competitors in swimming championships has to do with the fact that black people had denser bones compared to other races, meaning their body were less adept than other races for activities such as swimming, even tough they did state that there were exceptions like Ethiopians and Somalians who were capable enough to compete if trained properly.
Also, can you tell me in which anime does it come from the character that you use as your avatar?
“After winning them over, you can teach them the truth about the Third Reich, but getting them to listen first is the most important part.”
Replace “Third Reich” with “Xenu”
I realized these guys were cult-like, but not THIS cult-like…