Ancestors

Toot

Written by Mikael on 2025-01-21 at 12:03

I must admit that I find the question of whether Elon Musk’s gesture qualifies as a Nazi salute mostly irrelevant.

It obviously did not strictly follow any of the classical forms of the salute, even though it may have been meant to resemble it, perhaps as a provocation or political message.

Whether we call it an actual Nazi salute or just something resembling it, changes absolutely nothing about Musk’s political stance and actions, and I find the discussions around how it needs to be classified by the media distracting and annoying.

It obviously did have an effect and I suppose that the ambiguity of the gesture might have been intended. It was received by right-wing extremists as a political gesture, while at the same time allowing for plausible deniability and complaining about oversensitive leftists. This aspects I find much more interesting.

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Descendants

Written by Lennart on 2025-01-21 at 12:17

@mkl “The medium is the message”: One doesn’t need to presuppose that any of these people are playing 4d-chess, but the twofold effect of both functioning as a dog whistle and occupying the media/news cycle (“there’s no bad publicity”) — while still being plausibly deniable and working in concert with centrist media’s tendency to both-sides everything is a “move” (for lack of a better term) that should be appreciated and learned from for necessary left-wing counter-populism.

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Written by Lennart on 2025-01-21 at 12:26

@mkl Interestingly, one of the few things leftists actually can agree on is that “populism is bad”, but I don’t think that the world is in any position to just leave the obviously effective instrument of populism to right-wingers to abuse.

Meanwhile, it will be “fun” (🫣) to see which of the new administration’s real actions are going to be overshadowed (coincidentally or by design) by keeping everyone talking about stunts like this.

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Written by Lennart on 2025-01-21 at 12:35

@mkl But, let’s be real here, I think that the world will see Trump’s few foreseeable “good deeds” — e.g. solving/“solving 🥴” some geopolitical issues by actually being seen as a rampant strongman on the world-stage — and collectively decide that those exonerate him for everything else. This in turn will help all the Nazi-esque shit to become the “new normal” and seep into every US-aligned nation’s mainstream culture.

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Written by Lennart on 2025-01-21 at 12:41

@mkl That deep-seeded cultural effect cannot be undone by the occasional progressive government, so the conservative ratchet-effect will work even harder to slowly turn humanity colder and less empathetic on its way to a 3.5 °C-heated world, slowly, bleakly browning-out the last semblances of civilization.

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Written by Lennart on 2025-01-21 at 12:42

@mkl [Sorry. 🫂]

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Written by Mikael on 2025-01-21 at 12:44

@mrpelz It’s alright. I value your feedback and insights, even if they are quite pessimistic.

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