"That Cannon guy is over 50? I bet he's burned dozens of crosses."
I'll say it again: I didn't notice any greybeards among the tiki-torchers in Charlottesville.
Generation Hippie, for all of their problems, did a lot of good. In previous posts, I've lambasted that generation as hard as I could, but even though the flower-powerites were self-important and smug and not nearly as bright as they presumed, they look like angels compared to Generation Nazi.
Generation Nazi. That's the new term everyone should use to describe the current crop of whelplings. Below, you will find an official group photo of 50 Hitlerjugend from Baraboo High School in Wisconsin.
In case you didn't notice, most of 'em are giving the Sieg Heil salute. A few of them -- like that guy in the black suit and red tie near front row center -- are not-so-secretly giving the White Power sign.
You're going to see a lot of that kind of pseudo-sneaky smirkiness in the future. The smirkers are always going to pretend that they are simply indulging in innocent fun and that the easily-triggered snowflakes are blowing everything out of proportion. These smirking Nazi bastard are going to keep up the "just kidding" pretense right up until the moment when they open up the new concentration camps.
Here is a close up of the White Power Kid. Just look at that smile! As I ponder those teeth, two words come to my mind: Pipe wrench.I know what your first-through-fifth reactions will be: You will cycle through all sorts of rationalizations to convince yourself that this situation isn't as bad as it looks.
Rationalization 1: "C'mon, that can't really be the Nazi salute. Can it? Sorry, but it is. Baraboo High School has admitted as much in an apologetic note.
Also, the kid in grey, in the upper right-hand corner -- the one not saluting -- has confessed that he felt uncomfortable when asked to display his White Pride.
The person who made that request was the photographer. Hired by the school. This, obviously, is an official photo. (High school boys don't wear suits unless they have to.) The school's administration offered apologies only when the bad publicity started. Next time, there will be no apologies.
UPDATE: The Nazi photographer's name is Pete Gust. Nazi Pete Gust operates an enterprise called Wheel Memories, which seems to have something to do with motorcycles. On the relevant page of Nazi Pete Gust's website, the fascist photog writes:
Fuck you, Nazi. You made a bunch of high school students give the "Sieg Heil" salute and now you ask for kindness and civility? DOUBLE FUCK YOU. Nazis always suffer from the hallucination that they are the victims, when in fact they are history's greatest victimizers.Updated page: due to malevolent behavior on the part of some in society; this page has been modified. It is too bad that there are those in society who can and do take the time to be jerks; knowingly and willingly to be jerks! The internet can be a wonderful tool but for some there is an overwhelming urge to destroy. The destruction may not be physical but instead, it can be bullying that is intellectual or emotional. To anyone that was hurt I sincerely apologize.
To those who have harmed them, we as society often ignore them I have chosen not to do that. YOU ARE JERKS! Grow up!
Be kind,
Be gentle,
Be civil!
Did you honestly think there would be no consequences, Peteykins? We really don't want to hear your fucking apologies. We just want you to end up the way Hitler, Goebbels, Goerring and the rest of them ended up -- on the scrap heap of history.
The phone number for Nazi Pete Gust is 608-429-4092. If my readers call, I urge them to be kind, gentle and civil.
(Do you dislike my calling you a Nazi, Pete? You're the one who asked high school students to give the Nazi salute. I strongly doubt that any lawyer will agree that you have grounds for a libel suit.)
(Back to the original post.)
Your next rationalization, dear deluded reader, will probably have something to do with the concept of youthful non-conformity. They're just rebelling, you may tell yourself.
Now, I'm sure that these Hitlerjugend tell themselves that they are mavericks and dissidents, but let us not share in their self-satisfied hallucination. When that many boys are doing the exact same thing, you can't speak of non-conformity or originality of thought. Those aren't rebels or outsiders: They're well-programmed Nazi robots.
Your next rationalization, dear deluded reader, will probably have something to do with region. Maybe such things happen in Baraboo, but not elsewhere.
Stop kidding yourself. Ghost elephant sightings are a Baraboo "thing." The new fascist youth movement is an international thing, and it is much further along than you would probably prefer to admit.
This brings us to one of my major problems with Democratic strategy in the 2016 and 2018 elections: Liberals keep saying that "All politics is local." (Asshole lefties took this sentiment even further. Remember how they used to say "Think globally; act locally"? Translation: Power corrupts, so make sure you never wield any.)
I have news for you: In the internet age, politics is no longer local.
Nowadays, all politics is digital.
These kids are getting their fascism from the internet, not from their parents or from any other source. The internet supplies these kids with endless red pills.
In August, as neo-Nazis rioted in Chemnitz, Germany, YouTube users were recommended videos from extremist sources blaming the riots on refugees. YouTube was also castigated by researchers at the Counter Extremism Project and by MSNBC host Chris Hayes for broadcasting terrorist propaganda and conspiracy videos. Hayes recently posted a Twitter thread of horrific results YouTube returned for a search on the Federal Reserve. Elsewhere, journalists and researchers have documented women YouTubers promoting white supremacy and YouTube stunts promoting extremist politics in a media environment similar to right-wing talk radio.
YouTube is a principal online news source for young people. According to Pew Research Center, 73 percent of U.S. adults use YouTube, and 94 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds do. Another Pew study found that the platform was second only to Facebook as the most popular social network for viewing news stories. At the same time, YouTube — a subsidiary of Google — has a business model that helps amplify and propagate extremism through social networks.
Like other YouTubers, members of this alternative influence network strive to make their content lighthearted and fun, with what they present as a sensible message of rebellion. And this sometimes leads new viewers gently toward the viciously racist, sexist and homophobic content that maximizes viewership and donations.In the new Orwellian lexicon, "red-pilled" means drugged by Nazis and "woke" means brainwashed by Nazis. From a piece published last January:
Among young white men and women, 36 percent say so-called reverse discrimination is as serious a problem in America today as discrimination against minority groups. But when broken down by gender, white men are significantly more likely to believe in reverse discrimination — 43 percent of men as opposed to only 29 percent of women.
According to PRRI’s study, 48 percent of young white men believe that increased diversity will disadvantage them. This is not a new idea, but given all of the strides African-Americans and other minorities have made over the last 50 years with no empirically significant repercussions for whites, it’s safe to say it’s unfounded.This next bit neatly explains why the easily-triggered campus snowflakes -- the BernieBros, the fans of TYT -- are actually part of the problem:
Harvard professor Steven Pinker believes that part of the answer is political correctness on campuses. When admittedly controversial topics are considered undiscussable, nuance is jettisoned and people gravitate towards provocative and politically incorrect conclusions (which are also regularly incorrect), as students feel they are being called to task for crimes they didn’t commit.Precisely. The BernieBro and the Trumper are twins. One creates the other.
The "moral" generation. Young people love to bask in delusions of moral superiority, yet they turn out to be the supreme rationalizers of evil:
Civil society’s disappearance has been accompanied, understandably, by rising anti-social attitudes amongst younger citizens — people under 30 are more likely than their elders to believe things like taking a bribe or claiming state benefits they aren’t entitled to is justifiable.Hollywood deserves some blame for this. Although I am not among those who reflexively blame the entertainment industry for America's ills, it is nevertheless a fact that modern films and television shows are insanely cynical and value-free. The bad guys in an old-fashioned Western often maintain a code which makes them morally superior to the allegedly good guys in a modern film. Any young person watching 1949's Yellow Sky would probably wonder: "Jeez, why don't they just torture the old man and gang-rape his daughter?" Our corrupt current generation can't visualize a time when such options were unimaginable, even among desperadoes.
Not long ago, I saw an episode of Mr. Robot in which the protagonist and his pals bribe their way into an animal shelter. Never mind why. The important point is that the audience was not asked to pass judgment on either the people offering the bribe or the person who took the money.
These lessons in cynicism have a cumulative effect. Without intending to do so, Hollywood screenwriters helped to give us Generation Nazi.
Lulz. You know what else has contributed to the creation of Generation Nazi? Irony. This is the great gift of the left to the far right.
In the 1980s, irony became a kind of god. Postmodernist academics and artsy-fartsy taste-makers made the smirk mandatory. All art must smirk. All entertainment must smirk. Smirkety-smirkers took over the entire goddamned culture. For decades, it was considered uncool to say what you mean and mean what you say.
In more recent years, postmodernist philosophers finally revealed themselves as either neofascists or their close kin.
The postmodernists despise the Enlightenment -- which means that the PoMos now share the same page with barbarians like Julius Evola and Alexander Dugin. One of the defining features of fascism is the denial of an objective reality, and that denial is at the heart of Postmodernism. (Every time Trump speaks, he identifies himself as PoMo, although he doesn't know it.)
Irony always veils the swastika. The article at the other end of the link discusses how Stormfront appeals to youth. The following images are taken from the Stormfront style guide:
H.H. Ha Ha. Hee Hee. Heil Hitler.
Again: Look at the smirk on the face of that young Nazi bastard. You know damned well that, if confronted, he'll tell you that he didn't mean it, his hand signal was all a big joke, and that he did it for the lulz. Hee hee. Ha ha.
No. This is not a joke. This is deadly serious business. And if things get much worse, we are going to have to solve it the way our forefathers solved it.
14 comments:
You might be a tad rash, rather we should wait thirty years when one of the nazi boys is at his SCOTUS hearing and explains he was flicking a booger, "Haven't you ever flicked a booger, Senator?"
Pipe wrench, yup.
Booger, yup. Hatch, “Let me lick it off your finger, son.”
While those sick fucks over in Baraboo think they’re the rising tide, and have the support to back them for a while, the real struggle for high ground awaits. Pretty sure the big money (which will leave those Baraboo chumps sunk in the Dells) is already in, though I haven’t checked real estate prices in the Alpine regions lately.
Hope my supply of decent booze and good jazz records is sufficient to get me through.
And such classic movies as “Beat the Devil,” (1953) which, since it had lapsed into the public domain, is available free. I’ve read Claud Cockburn’s novel, upon which the film is based. The film is better. Sharper, more focused satire involving desperate criminals.
For those not aware, Cockburn (father of Alexander, et al) was a Communist with a good, critical sense of humor. The film was written by Truman Capote. Don’t bother with the lengthy Wikipedia page. Just see the movie.
“I say time is a crook.”
Tom
Well, geez, Joseph.
While I was going on about an early 50s send-up of ex-Nazi Capitalism you were posting a phone number most worthy of calling. I’ll be taking care of that tomorrow morning and evening, should he leave his phone on. Nazi fucker.
Nice cartoon of those worthless trap house fucks, though their moldy couch covered with skid marks was left out.
Somebody out there is putting names to those faces in that photo. Those idiots just relegated themselves to a future in retail hamburger sales or worse. I'm optimistic enough to think Koathanger Kavanaugh and Matthew Whitaker types rising to positions of power is coming to an end. For now. After all it only took eight years of President Obama for America to forget what Bush the Lesser did to the country.
The one big obstacle going forward is letting the print and broadcast news media define the protagonists. Al Gore serial liar and Hillary Clinton unindicted witch were creations of the New York Times and Washington Post.
How do adults still fall for the "It's just a joke" defense? Did everyone not learn that this is the excuse grade school bullies use to excuse their actions? Saying "It's a joke" is the cheapest way to give yourself immunity from any bad actions you take.
I try to attribute to ignorance that which can also be attributed to malice. I think the real problem is not that these kids are racists, I think the real problem is their ignorance. There was a time that I thought the problem was that non-Jews didn't understand Judaism, now I realize that is wrong. Nazis viewed Jews as a different race. That is the essence of racism, the view that others are a different race and therefore inferior. The racism of white nationalists is that they view others as of a different race. The result is that see their membership in white America as giving them an innate superiority to people who are not white Americans, that is, Blacks, Browns, immigrants, and really Jews, Muslims, Irish, Italians and many others. Of course, this is biologically insane. Pope Pius XI said that there was only one race, the human race and if these students could be taught that, I think they would quickly understand it. But they haven't been taught the horrors of racism, it is their ignorance that is the real problem.
When I was in my early teens, my friends and I used to do the Sieg Hiel salute when a particular friends father would leave the room. This man was particularly severe in his demeanor and how he handled young people, so we felt justified (though I'm sure we snickered about it afterwords). As it turns out, in more recent times, I've been told that that same father physically abused both my friend and his younger sister, so I suppose we were more correct in our mocking salute than we knew.
Anyway, my point is, young people do stupid shit without thinking about it. It's called being young. Now, in the case of this photographer who encouraged them to do the salute, that is an adult being a sick bastard who obviously didn't do it to be funny. I agree with your overall post though Joseph, and I'm not trying to make excuses for the kids and certainly not the photographer.
When I was in college, I used to think that the world would be a so much better place if young people had more say, more power. Of course, now that I'm facing down age 50, I realize how naive that thought was (actually, I realized it before age 30). Young people should have a say, and shouldn't be ignored, but adults should also make sure to put them in their place when called for.
Please take the phone number down. I'm horrified by what you've done. Can we agree that doxxing should never be done by anyone to anyone? This is not a public figure of consequence, and even if the offense if true as you stated it is less offensive and harmful than what the Trump administration and Republican Congress have been doing for two years.
The photographer's story is that he asked them to raise their arms to wave to their parents; he took the picture when their arms were raised and he didn't make an association with Nazism. You could have offered his side, whether it turns out to be true or not, but it is plausiblethat the kids on their own thought it would be more fun to do what they did than follow his instructions to wave bye-bye.
The student interviewed who did not raise his arms did not say that the photographer told them to do a Nazi salute, he said they were asked to raise their arms.
I thought by the tone of the article that you were going to reveal actual additional evidence of the photographer's Nazism! but if the only evidence is he took the photograph and put in online and possibly never noticed or cared or understood what it looked like, it's not enough for the accusation, let alone going ballistic.
It was not an official school picture; it was a picture taken by a photographer parent while parents were leaving kids at their prom. They are dressed up for the prom.
You seem like the violent one.
When I initially left a comment I appear to have clicked on the
-Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and from now on every time a comment is
added I get four emails with the same comment.
Is there a means you are able to remove me from that service?
Thanks a lot!
So Anonymous you are going with the theory that those idiots are waving and not doing the Nazi salute? Just how stupid do you think we are? There is no way those kids were waving to their parents using the sieg heil salute. They all knew full well what they were doing. They know full well what it means. In defiance to one of the other statements in this discussion these kids aren't ignorant. They have chosen to be this way. They choose to be racist. They choose to view others as insignificant or inferior. It isn't about intelligence, lack of understanding or anything other than choices. One chooses to be a racist. It is acquired. It isn't innate.
To the Anon's, what the kid who didn't raise his arm said, was that he remembers things differently than what the photographer claims. The quote I see from the kid in various articles is this: “I felt upset, unsafe, disappointed and scared," Blue said. "I felt unsafe because I go to school with them, I don’t believe in what they represented and the symbol they shared … they knew it was wrong, but they still did it.” Why would he feel unsafe because a photographer told them to wave goodbye? Or even telling them to raise one arm (which is what the kid claims)? It doesn't make much sense. I also read that Gust was hired to do prom photos for the school, and these were pre-prom photos (haven't been able to find confirmation that he was actually hired to do the prom photos though).
Anyway, I tend to agree that it's not a good idea to post his phone number, though it's probably easy to find for anyone so inclined to look for it.
Anon327 How is he supposed to remove you from some list if you're anonymous? How do you think that works?
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