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rachelramirez

The Creator of Pepe the Frog Talks About The Alt-Right - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...499892

pepe politics US trump

shared by rachelramirez on 03 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • It's Not Easy Being Meme
  • Tuesday morning Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign denounced a cartoon frog named Pepe.
  • For most of his lifespan as a meme on the internet, Pepe the Frog was a benign, if sometimes bawdy figure beloved by pop stars and teenagers alike.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • But reporters today are more likely to encounter Pepe’s smug visage in his latest incarnation, as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes put it, people with “Nazi frog avatars” who are “tweeting about the Jews.”
  • Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out a modified image of the poster for the action movie The Expendables with prominent Trump supporters’ faces photoshopped onto those of the action stars. The image, which introduces the group as The Deplorables, includes Pepe in a Donald Trump wig.
  • Reporters now often describe Pepe as a “white-nationalist symbol”
  • The internet is basically encompassing some kind of mass consciousness, and Pepe, with his face, he’s got these large, expressive eyes with puffy eyelids and big rounded lips, I just think that people reinvent him in all these different ways, it’s kind of a blank slate.
  • The interesting thing about this situation, is that I’m talking to you, and it’s like a newsworthy thing that this cute, generally happy frog character has taken on a life of its own for better or worse.
anonymous

Pro-Trump Capitol rioters like the 'QAnon Shaman' looked ridiculous - by design - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...-ridiculous-design-ncna1254010

shared by anonymous on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • To many, the costumes at the "Stop the Steal" riot seem ridiculous. "We spend $750 billion annually on 'defense' and the center of American government fell in two hours to the duck dynasty and the guy in the Chewbacca bikini,"
  • But when we actually read the T-shirt slogans and interpret the symbols — especially given the history of groups like the Ku Klux Klan — what the Capitol insurrectionists wore becomes more consequential and a lot more menacing.
  • When the Ku Klux Klan started in the mid-1860s, Klansmen did not wear the white hoods and robes we imagine them in now. They had no uniform. As historian Elaine Frantz explains in her essay "Midnight Rangers: Costume and Performance in the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan," the early Klansmen wore something far more similar to the hodgepodge we saw on display at the Capitol last week: animal horns, fur, fake beards, homemade costumes that drew on traditions of carnival or Mardi Gras, masks, pointy hats, polka dots.
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  • "When I looked at this weirdo who was dressed as a Viking, I was like, 'Does he know what he's doing?'" Frantz tells NBC THINK about Angeli. "Is he aware of this tradition, or is it a coincidence? Or is it not just a coincidence and he's not aware, but it's something which travels through our culture in the background? Maybe he doesn't even know what he's doing, but he's doing exactly what he would have done in the 19th century."
  • "Comic frames are very helpful, because it gave people a way to deny what was really happening," she says. She cites using Pepe the Frog as an example of how that tactic is still used today. "The comic deniability of populist movements,"
  • Abe Rutchick, a professor of psychology at California State University, Northridge, explains that dressing in costume can affect how we act. "If we're dressing in costume, we're clearly trying to evoke a role or a character. It can influence people's self-perception and behavior,"
  • The fact that many of the outfits from the Capitol look comical is, historically, also not a coincidence. "Adopting this carnivalesque posture, they can actually say: 'We're not really hurting them. They're just afraid because they're fearful,'"
  • But whether or not the "Q Shaman" knew exactly whom he was channeling when he put on his horns and fur, putting on the outfit is likely to have influenced his behavior.
  • Take, for instance, the lunacy of a man waving for the camera as he walks off with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's lectern. How could he be doing something wrong — he looks so emboldened and silly? Or the brazenness of wearing your employee ID badge to the revolution.
  • Rutchick explains that the purpose of wearing uniforms, insignias, tattoos or symbols that show allegiance is twofold; they create a sense of in-group camaraderie and a sense of out-group distance.
  • Members of the far-right Proud Boys — whom Trump famously told to "stand back, and stand by" during his 2020 campaign — were at the Capitol in large numbers, and they were characteristically organized. The group, which usually dresses in yellow and black — often in the form of a Fred Perry polo shirt — told members to dress all in black this time, as if they were part of the anti-fascist movement known as antifa.
maddieireland334

Cruz on Iran Prisoner Deal: 'Propaganda for Iran and the Obama Administration' - Breitbart - 1 views

www.breitbart.com/...iran-prisoner-deal

Cruz Iran Crisis Prisoners Obama Policy US

shared by maddieireland334 on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Cruz said that the release of four American prisoners by Iran is good news but that “we’ve got to shake our heads at how this happened.” He added that “there is a false moral equivalence in a deal like this” and that the deal “serves as a piece of propaganda for Iran and the Obama administration.”
  • Cruz has been engaging in a heated back and forth with Trump after Cruz accused Trump of embodying “New York values.”
  • “You can’t call yourself a tea party member and support ethanol mandate because its good politics in Iowa,” he said.
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  • Cruz hit Rubio on his support of the federal sugar program saying that Rubio can’t call himself a tea party member
  • Rubio has been a long supporter of sugar subsidies, which drive up the price of of sugar for American consumers. His support of sugar subsidies is believed to be because of his close relationship with Jose “Pepe Fanjul,” the Florida billionaire sugar mogul who has been a longtime donor to Rubio.
Javier E

Is Holocaust Denial Conservative Now? - The Bulwark - 0 views

thebulwark.com/ocaust-denial-conservative-now

holocaust denial conservatism trump alt-right extremism

shared by Javier E on 21 May 20 - No Cached
  • his leadership is sabotaging conservatism.
  • Trump retweeted an “America First” post featuring disgraced columnist Michelle Malkin complaining about conservatives being silenced on social media. Trump has retweeted unsavory characters before, but in this case, he added an endorsement: “The radical left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google. The administration is working to remedy this illegal situation. Stay tuned, and send names & events. Thank you Michelle!”
  • In the name of standing up for aggrieved conservatives, Trump soils the brand
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  • The “radical left” is not in control of those outlets, and even if it were, they are private entities, and therefore perfectly free to make their own judgements about content
  • Another detail: Trump has 19.7 million followers on Instagram, 26.7 million on Facebook, and 80 million on Twitter. Perhaps what keeps him so popular is his audience’s inexhaustible appetite for whining.
  • The woman Trump thanked is a columnist and social media entrepreneur who was a respected member of the conservative commentariat
  • In the past two years though, she has been pretty well shunned by respectable conservative outlets, or what passes for such nowadays.
  • Her most grotesque relationship though, and the one that got her booted from the Young America’s Foundation, was with a group calling themselves “groypers,” led by a 21-year-old YouTube host named Nick Fuentes. To get a sense of just how loathsome this figure is, have a look at this video in which he wonders, grinning, about whether 6 million “cookies” could really be baked in ovens and how the “math doesn’t add up.”
  • The occasion for the deplatforming was Malkin’s swan dive into the right-wing fever swamps.
  • Fuentes, you will not be shocked to learn, is one of the “very fine people” who marched with neo-Nazis at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Remember Pepe the Frog? He’s their mascot. He described the mass murder in an El Paso Walmart as an “act of desperation.” Turning Point USA is too tame for his tastes, and his group has lately been heckling speakers like Ben Shapiro, Dan Crenshaw, and even Donald Trump, Jr
  • In other words, if anything is beyond the pale for a civilized country, the “groypers” are it.
  • Yet Michelle Malkin has declared herself the “mother of groypers” and called them “good kids.” When she was rebuked by mainstream conservatives, she declared her allegiances proudly
  • In fact, Trump probably did not know much about those he praised, either Malkin or, by extension, Fuentes. But he has a duty to know. Yes, he’s an indolent ignoramus, but guess what, the taxpayers are paying for a huge staff.
  • He doesn’t use them because he doesn’t care. His moral reasoning is primitive. If you are pro-Trump, no matter what else you are (a murderous dictator, a racist troll), you’re fine in his book
  • He has no objective moral standards. Everything is about him. On a scale of moral reasoning, he is subzero
  • But the world of conservative opinion shapers does still attempt, however weakly, to maintain some guard rails. With every passing day of Donald Trump’s leadership, those standards crumble a bit more.
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