This past year, official social media accounts from the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, and other government agencies have adopted a distinct voice online. The posts look like memes, utilizing dramatic AI-generated art, general patriotic slogans, and cinematic language about “defending the homeland” and shaping America’s future.
But if you look closer, a pattern emerges.
Many of these phrases, images, and attached media aren’t just regular social media content. They repurpose language, symbolism, and cultural references with direct connections to neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements. It’s content that experts say is instantly recognizable to those who are in the white supremacist know, but can be largely invisible to everyone else.
There has been not one, but two posts from our government institutions that reuse a phrase ripped straight from William Gayley Simpson’s book Which Way Western Man?. It was published and promoted by the National Alliance—considered one of the “best organized” neo-Nazi groups in the United States. The book is antisemitic, racist, and explicitly states that Adolf Hitler was right.
Can’t the Israel lobby handle this?
The zionists of the 1930s and 40s aligned themselves with the Nazis against the British. If somehow Israel came to be 20 years earlier they would have been an axis powers.
That’s so freaking terrifying to think about.
But we’re seeing it here too: People seeing their neighbors dragged away, and they will do any mental gymnastics necessary to separate themselves from the victims instead of defending or even standing with them.
I mean, we practiced a lot of fascist stuff for decades, usually with a liberal smile. Now it is mask off.
Examples please.
Decades of “liberalism” gave us the Taft-Hartley Act to crush labor movements, McCarthyism to criminalize dissent, and the systematic use of redlining to enforce economic exclusion. We’ve seen the carceral state explode and domestic policing militarize under the guise of “public safety,” proving that the state’s velvet glove always hides an iron fist ready to strike whenever the working class actually organizes.
It’s true. Much of the evil shit Trump does was done under liberalism where it was fairly popular. Christian Nationalists, Americans imperialists, bigots, and bloodthirsty capitalists were able to accomplish their goals within the system. They could get enough of what they wanted at the ballot box because their views had enough popularity to sustain it.
However, as neoliberalism eroded the middle class, as civil rights for minorities became more popular, as there was less support for war and supporting authoritarian allies, as people turned away from churches, the right knew there would come a day when they could no longer win through playing the liberal democratic game. They knew that if they waited long enough, left wing populism would usher in either a progressive era of labor reforms, or even more radical changes that would fundamentally threaten their power.
Under Trump, their goals are either to make their ideas popular, or take away any of the levers of control that regular people could use to stop them. The bigots and the Christians can use the billionaire media and newfound kingdom to enforce their dogma from the top down. Deport enough migrants, create enough anti trans laws, and suppress enough open discussions of sex through payment processors that much of it will become normalized. The billionaires can use those helpful idiots to take away the ballot box as an option and make the hollowed out husk of the government so broken and impotent that any liberal efforts to restrain them will be fruitless. Even the imperialists win because America’s lost ground to China will galvanize future liberals into being more anti communist and cruel in promoting national self interest.
Liberalism may have died, but it’s fully responsible for its own demise. It always had a fascist contingent that used the republicanism liberal ideology afforded to accomplish their own goals.
If I were a conspiracy theorist I would say they are signaling to the Nazis that if the 2028 election doesn’t go their way the administration has their back at insurrection part two electric boogaloo.
how did America become the NAZI home front? all the other countries needs to put a massive embargo on the USA untill this administration is out of power.
Once the Conservative Propaganda Machine successfully demonized the Left as literally the worst thing in human history, EVERYTHING else became better. So Nazis, KKK, MAGA, dictatorships, etc. are all preferred to the horrors of The Left.
No! Not the right to healthcare!! Anything but that!!!
“Oh, you mean ¿death panels‽ Where a bunch of faceless, soulless bureaucrats decide whether you’re worth saving or not? You know, completely unlike the wonders of profiteer healthcare!”
Well, it all started with the greatest and most successful genocide of human history, during which time we became the monolith of chattel slavery. This is literally what inspired the holocaust. So we started being the nazi home front somewhere around 100+ or so years before the nazis ever existed.
where do you think Nazis got their inspiration?
Plus we’ve always been a little Nazi-curious
Madison Square Garden, 1939
Europe is working on it. Notice how they’re starting to adopt open source software and are working on their own credit card processor?
Right now, their governments and economies are too reliant on US-based tech companies that can be ordered to cut them off. So they’re working on eliminating that reliance ahead of sanctions.
It just took a handful of connected conspiracists with no principles and some forward thinking about how to sow the worst seeds.
Names like Bannon, Epstein and others who funded them worked in the dark and with great amounts of support from a variety of institutions, worked to simultaneously make fascism cool and make average Americans too distracted to care. Eroded attention spans, people fighting online until nobody knows how to relate to each other anymore, dissolving communities and amplifying the most ridiculous or rage-baiting takes on both sides of ever issue.
That’s all it took for people to stop caring as cartoonishly iconic fascists and nazis took power in the US, and the whole time we were thinking that cartoonishly stereotypical “bad guys” belong only in hollywood and can’t possibly be real.
We all said that to some degree as the cartoonishly iconic and stereotypical villains rose in power and people were too burnt-out or distracted to give it any deeper thought.
worked to simultaneously make fascism cool
Y’know I cringe so hard now at that whole humorous “Muricah” stereotype. You know, gun-nut, God and Country, Reagan was so great, filthy commies blah blah blah. Always with a wry chuckle…it used to be a funny ironic schtick…Colbert parodied it really well.
…Except it’s hitting hard and fast that it wasn’t a schtick and no small percentage of people adopted it in all seriousness.
(Like how many people didn’t understand the Space Marine fascism in 40k was supposed to be over the top parody.)
short version or long version? because bringing over a bunch of nazi scientists and engineers into our security apparatus in 1945 so they didn’t join the USSR certainly didn’t help.
The nazis had plenty support from USA until they started invading people. Even then the US didn’t really give all that much of a fuck, and was mainly mad their profits were suffering. Only when Japan attacked USA and they were forced into the war, did they start having issues with it all. Mainly because telling your soldiers: “We’re ideologically very close, but they’re still the bad guys!” doesn’t really work as a great motivational speech.
I wonder what would have happened if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor.
We probably never would have entered the war, and the Nazis would have conquered all of Europe, and started an endless war with the Soviet Union.
the attack of japan on pearl harbor was a response to an oil embargo. the US had already entered the war economically.
I’ve been pointing out the nazi parallels for years. People said I was hyperbolizing.
You and me both buddy. It sucks seeing all this shit so plainly unfold, only to have what I thought was normal people not just ignore it, but get angry with me for trying to point it out.
Ran across this lately. I guess you can start calling me Cassandra:
https://newrepublic.com/article/204254/survey-2024-election-cassandras-trump-2025
They don’t want to break out of their little bubble of toxic positivity where everything is fine and you just need to put your nose to the grind and work hard to get ahead and everything will be alright.
They think you’re an asshole for telling them EVERYTHING’S NOT ALRIGHT, and things aren’t going to be alright just because you ignore all the heinous stuff going on.
But they’re like “nah, don’t spoil my vibe.”
This is the hardest part. I am trying to let go of my anger as they slowly start to notice and pretend like either no one could have seen this coming, or they were against it all along.
If one single person in my sphere ever just came to me and said “I guess you were right” that would do so much for my mental health. But I need to get past that, and just be happy they finally are coming around.
I am exceptionally bitter seeing some of my formerly maga associates, getting heaps of praise for waking up while the same assholes praising them, were the ones telling me I’m the crazy one. Clearly still have anger to let go of…
Your anger is justified
Honestly, your quick and clear reply is very cathartic. That’s why I prefer Lemmy to my family :).
Real family is who we choose
They don’t want to break out of their little bubble of toxic positivity where everything is fine and you just need to put your nose to the grind and work hard to get ahead and everything will be alright.
They think you’re an asshole for telling them EVERYTHING’S NOT ALRIGHT, and things aren’t going to be alright just because you ignore all the heinous stuff going on.
But they’re like “nah, don’t spoil my vibe.”
“That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
- Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)
That whole trilogy is so philosophical and I’m down for it.
People who twist it into some literalist interpretation and say “human minds can’t be uploaded into computer simulations” completely miss the point…
They did mix a lot of different symbology into it, but you are right that people ‘incorrectly’* interpret the meaning.
*There’s something to be said that art is subjective and your interpretation is just as valid of as what the creator intended, but I’m specifically referring to the intended meanings stated by the writers/directors.
I hate that the alt-right claimed the red/blue pill memes.
The symbolism here is describing the process of breaking free of the illusions that you’re suffering under.
The partisans who do things like tying this symbolism to a specific meaning (like ‘anti-/woke means anti/pro-LGBTQ’) is twisting the symbol, intentionally and with intent in some cases, to push a message.
The underlying symbol of red-pill/woke/not illusioned/out of the matrix is simply describing the subjective experience of realizing that you were wrong about reality.
At the current time in history, I think we need a lot of people to understand and internalize this idea and the idea that reality is harder than a comforting fantasy, but worth fighting for.
Exactly. People talk about “simulation theory,” but the truth is that we don’t have to be avatars in a computer program in order for consensus reality to be contrived and dictated from the top down. It’s a really reductive interpretation of the sociopolitical commentary made by the Matrix series.
It’s only a simulation inasmuch as “work hard and achieve the american dream” is a fabrication intended to keep us pacified. Streaming services, social media feeds, drinking culture, all of that has replaced religion as the new “opiate of the masses.” Those are the circuses to go with your bread.
But none of that implies we’re just chips in a circuit board. That’s called “losing the meaning in the symbol.”
And besides, “life is just a computer simulation” is just the cyberpunk/transhumanist rendition of the “life is just a dream” that’s been floating around for as long as humans have been thinking about the nature of reality, whether you ask Zhuang Zhou, Patanjali, or Terence McKenna.
You’re just as likely to be a disembodied spirit floating in the void as you are to be a computer chip, but all of that is beside the point that consensus reality is being curated for you by states and corporate interests.
Well said
We aren’t copying the Nazis. The Nazis were copying us.
No such thing as an original idea, we’re iterative. Humans are monkey see, monkey do, even with bigotry.
Now they’re still denying it and snickering in front of our faces that they’re so clever.
At least their buffoonery is finally on full-display. Only the true believers could still follow them now.
(I’ve been saying that way too long and yet…)
Yup. Way too many true believers. Don the con really does have some mutant power when it comes to twisting the minds at the bottom of a normal distribution.
Before the election I was saying the Dems needed someone charismatic to go up against him. People told me “He’s not charismatic though.” But that was missing the point.
Do I personally find him to be charismatic? No, of course not. But he has some strange hold on so many people’s minds, and that’s the literal definition of charisma. Whether you’re charmed by him or not doesn’t change the fact that he has a personality cult.
Part of the issue is that for all it’s evil, the nazi government was a functional government. Look at all it got done. So any functional government will have parallels. So we need to focus more on the paralells in intentions that are not common to most functional governments.
Edit: For the slow people in the back… The nazi government managed to invade and conquer all (or nearly all) of mainland europe. If you have ever worked at a large company and seen how poorly company initiatives are organized, you know the nazis were well organized. The methods they used were effective, and have significant overlap with any government that can get things done. Which is why I am saying, focus on the evil intentions, instead of the methods.
That’s not even true though, “the trains were always on time in nazi germany” is a false statement. It’s simply an emanation of nazi propaganda that bled into mainstream culture after operation paperclip.
Actual nazi germany was run by corrupt sycophants incapable of getting anything done besides massacres, abductions, and genocide.
Your last line was my point. Accomplishing the evils it accomplished is not a trivial thing to do. Those things took a lot coordination. So it was good at getting things done.
You said
Look at all it got done. So any functional government will have parallels.
Yeah no, functioning governments that don’t coordinate every mechanism of the state towards oppressing, ethnic cleansing, and aggressive imperialism, don’t have parallels worth mentioning.
Which is why I am saying, focus on the evil intentions, instead of the methods.
That sounds dangerously close to “the ends justify the means.” Are you saying that if a state has “good” intentions, then they’d be justified in borrowing the nazi’s methods? Because that sounds an awful lot like what you’re saying.
You seem to be assuming a lot about my intentions.
That said. Let’s take the indocturnation of the populace as an example. Just about all functioning governments do it. Some do it with the aim of making thier citizens happy, healthy, and productive. So do it to further exploit the people. The nazis did it to build a war machine. But the tool is the manipulation of the education system.So if you say to me… the government is manipulating the education system, and so did the nazis. It’s not that much of an insult. If you say the government is manipulating the education system to build up a population they can call on to follow orders no matter how evil those orders are… now you are saying something very significant.
This administration is not only using the same tools the nazis did, but their intentions are very similar. The second half is a much more meaningful statement. And I am saying we should focus on their evil intentions instead of just dogwhistling. A lot of people don’t see the intended goals of this administrations actions, and they need help to see it, and hopefully join the fight. Many who are already in the fight, will fight harder when they understand more of the goals.
The general strike in Minneapolis was a possible turning point. It could have spread and snowballed. But it didn’t. Too many people just don’t see the goals of this administration. Too many people have become desensitized to the word Nazi. We need to counter the administrations propoganda with things more than just name calling.
That’s not even true though, “the trains were always on time in nazi germany” is a false statement.
The trains line was about fascist Italy. And was also bullshit.
Like what? What was accomplished under Nazi Germany that couldn’t have been done under other governments?
Well, it controlled all of mainland Europe for one thing. That’s no small thing.
Napoleon already did it
So did a number of other European empires.
Yes, and they were obviously functional too. So sounds like you at least agree on that point now. Probably the least relevant thing I said of course.
Can’t believe the Nazis won’t stop doing Nazi stuff. That’s so unlike them.
Nazi government will not stop sharing Nazi propaganda. More on the 11 o’clock news
the rest of the world needs to take note. The US and Israel are fascists states. Learn from history. Fascist will not stop until they are made to stop. I do not know how to stop it from the inside because my fellow countrymen do not seem to see the urgency of what is going on even though it was laid out in Project 2025.
I don’t know how to stop it either, because I don’t think we can (short of violent rebellion).
Unfortunately, everyone’s just sitting around waiting for the midterms like it’s some panacea. I don’t think they understand that the damages done already will take at least 40+ years to reverse and that there’s a very, very high likelihood the midterms don’t really happen.
can stop if we don’t effectively create wealth. If our economy slowed to a crawl because maybe all our workers were not the most efficient. Some people won’t do violence but we can all bartelby the scrivner it up.
I suppose I could get behind the concept of that working.
I don’t think I believe for a second enough people can do it, because the majority of us are stuck in the check to check cycle.
im not saying quit. im not saying show up. but I am saying don’t worry about getting fired and take your time. They say time is money and that is very much what they have stolen from us. We have been robbed of using all the nice formal niceties and taking our time and talking with customers and coworkers in an unhurried way.
Ohhh, I get what you’re putting down 🫡
In a tiny bit of fairness. The US gov has always done a lot of things just like the nazi’s. It’s oh soo much worse right now, and they are not trying very hard (or at all) to hide it like the past. But some people are just now coming around to see how much the government manipulates the people rather than help them. So don’t expect the next administration to “fix” these things.
what could this mean 🤔
They are the badies
"Nazis won’t stop promoting their own nazi made propaganda; Nazis are loving it. "
Did I time travel to 1939 Germany and not realize I understand German?
Does anyone really expect them to stop doing that?
I’ve been pointing out these nazis for over a decade now… Beuller…
I bet Kristi Noem has a leather nazi costume hanging in her closet with all her other “work uniforms”.
she has trophy of hunting farm and pet animals in her house.
