Most of The Omnivore's readers don't really need to read this.
What you see above is a picture of Dylan Roof wearing his "colors." The colors in question are two flags: The flag of apartheid-era South Africa and the flag of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He's wearing them because (a) he knows what they mean and (b) you don't. You don't--because you're not a Nazi.
Both of them send a message: THIS is what happens when black people take over. The 'THIS' is chaos and destruction.
People like Dylan Roof go to these symbols because you'd recognize a Swastika. Bet you did Nazi that coming!
Take-Away: People in the White Power community are very much in to these symbols.
Hypothesis: Bannon Is A Nazi And Breitbart Is His Voice
Bannon knows he can't publish The Daily Stormer (a for-real Nazi site). He'd get punched in the face like Richard Spencer. So he creates an "alt-right" haven that more ordinary people will visit and exploits their ignorance (willful and otherwise) of the larger picture. White nationalists feel right at home at Breitbart along with less vile perspectives and thus he spreads his voice and message.Here are some sign-posts:
America First
America First was the slogan of a pro-Nazi / antisemitic movement in the early 1900's. Here's Dr. Seuss trying to wise you up. America First was also the slogan of Trump's inauguration speech, which Bannon wrote.Yes, America First sounds fine and dandy to you. What? Should it be America-Second?? However, keep in mind that you also don't know what the heck the flag of Rhodesia looked like. Trust The Omnivore: the people out there who needed to hear it heard it.
Taking the Jews Out of The Holocaust
Anyone who thinks that Trump wrote his Holocaust-Remembrance Day announcement should keep in mind that he often can't get the spelling right on a tweet. For the first time ever, the Holocaust remembrance day didn't mention the Jews. The 'Final Solution'--you should recall was not aimed at the gypsies or the homosexuals--it was specifically about the Jews. This isn't controversial.Here's the Daily Stormer crowing about Trump's speech:
In case you are having a hard time read it, The Omnivore will repeat that last bit here:
This is the first time in history the President of the United States has made no mention of Jews, anti-Semitism, or the science fiction Zionist folklore about ovens and gas chambers so prominent in (((Hollywood))) narratives.Surely this is all coincidence, right?
There's plenty more (the reporter that Breitbart sent to the White House goes by the nickname "Isla She Wolf of the SS"--not a joke, for real)--but this is enough. The fact is: Breitbart is signaling like crazy that Bannon and the whole production are friendly advertising for the Nazis and you can't tell because you're not a Nazi.
But You ARE Receptive To The Message
Bannon knows that he can't just tell you black people are bad for America--you'd know what raw racism sounds like. No, he has to convince you. The good news is that people have figured out how to do that. Behold: the Black Crime Tag.Breitbart makes a point of ensuring that any crime which reflects badly on black people makes it into your viewing space in an organized, pointed manner. This kind of reporting is the active ingredient in radicalizing people like Dylan Roof who came to believe in an Us-vs-Them world view. You will remember that Dylan Roof read a bunch of the Council of Conservative Citizens--a group that initializes to CCC kind of like that other group with similar sounding letters? As The Omnivore said, these guys are really into symbolism.
The CCC presents a white race under attack by savage black criminals. This is the world-view that led Roof to gun down innocent, unarmed grandmothers.
Bannon doesn't want shooters, though, he wants voters. He's getting them. Breitbart is very good at it--and it's nationalist message is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
Also: you don't read the comments. Bannon knows that--he's counting on it.
And he's right.
"...that led Roof to gun down innocent..."
ReplyDeleteI get what you're saying here, Omni. But (at the risk of going off topic) I continue to wonder why when some ass-wipe like Dylan Roof murders people, it's given the less pejorative, less condemning description "he killed X number of people." News reports should instead say he (& others who do similar crimes) "murdered X number of people." I don't understand the resistance to this language. Without it, there is (imho) a whitewashing, or at least an effective de-emphasis, of the crime that was committed.
I mean come on, when a person stumbles off the curb and gets hit by a bus, "he was killed". But when someone takes a gun to that person's head and blows their fucking brains out the side of their head, that's "murder", and that term should remain with the description of the event.
Yes, language matters - and that's precisely why "mainstream" news organizations tend to employ anodyne terminology, for fear of offending their all-important advertisers by appearing to engage in advocacy journalism. Independent websites have no such constraints, nor (to a lesser degree) do politically-motivated enterprises (Fox News, the New York Post, etc.).
DeleteThat said, facts are facts: when a gunman kills people, there's little doubt as to what actually took place. People may try to "spin" their descriptions of events (people on "our team" were murdered, while those on the "other team" were merely killed), but I'm unsure how effective that is. People's bullshit detectors tend to be underrated, in my experience.
Now, before you cite recent events as an attempted refutation: lying to people by telling them what they want to hear is a different matter.
Unfortunately.
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