Speaker 1: Ah, it could happen here. A podcast that is right
Speaker 1: now happening in your year. It could happen a year.
Speaker 1: That's what we should call it, Garrison. We're changing the name.
Speaker 1: We're rebranding our valuable valuable titles, uh, completely moving, moving
Speaker 1: overnight to a whole new thing based on a whim you.
Speaker 2: Know, gambitzer.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, this is a This has been a fun week.
Speaker 1: We're all laughing a little bit at Elon Musk, but
Speaker 1: we have something serious to talk about today, and that
Speaker 1: is everybody's favorite fascist governor, Ron DeSantis. Garrison, you and
Speaker 1: I spent just way too much time last week talking
Speaker 1: about meetball Ron, and now now we're back. Now we're
Speaker 1: back to because he keeps meatballing meetball ron Is ballin
Speaker 1: and meeting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we wrapped up like a like a two
Speaker 2: part episode on Ron Desanis's use of Fashi rave asthetics,
Speaker 2: and then like two days later, the funniest thing happened,
Speaker 2: uh where he just decided to basically basically post Son
Speaker 2: and Rads. So we're gonna we're gonna get to that.
Speaker 2: But first there's a whole bunch of other information that's
Speaker 2: come out these these past like really three days that
Speaker 2: have kind of that are actually giving more context to
Speaker 2: what's going on at the Dasantas campaign because stuff doesn't
Speaker 2: look too good. Actually, you know, he he kind of
Speaker 2: looks like he's losing everything as he slowly watches it
Speaker 2: all crumble. So let's see. Let's let's start by talking
Speaker 2: about everyone's favorite topic, campaign finances. I know this is
Speaker 2: what what everyone tunes in to listen to.
Speaker 1: Yes, we love campaign finances.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so last week the public finally got a glimpse
Speaker 2: at DeSantis's campaign finances. The financial disclosures that DeSantis had
Speaker 2: about twice as much staff as Donald Trump and as
Speaker 2: of last week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Garrison, you just said that, and I imagine in
Speaker 1: my head for a second that you were referring to
Speaker 1: the amount of staff infections he's had versus Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: That's not true. No, Trump's definitely had more staff.
Speaker 1: There's almost no way, Yeah, that Trump is not leading
Speaker 1: in the staff infections category. Please, I'm sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 2: But as of last week, the Florida governor had already
Speaker 2: spent about forty percent of the twenty million dollars fundraised
Speaker 2: from April to June of twenty twenty three. So the
Speaker 2: campaign's suspending rate was averaging more than two hundred and
Speaker 2: twelve thousand dollars per day, which is an astronomical cost
Speaker 2: for a campaign for someone like running for president, basically
Speaker 2: for the first.
Speaker 1: Time this far out too from the season proper hit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolutely absurd. The inflated number of staff have
Speaker 2: use of private jets and luxury event venues has his
Speaker 2: campaign essentially just burning through cash and with very little
Speaker 2: seeming to come of it in terms of positive poll numbers.
Speaker 2: So another thing that they've.
Speaker 1: Gained maybe a point or so on Trump over the
Speaker 1: last year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after spending two hundred thousand dollars per day for
Speaker 2: the past like four months. Another thing that these financial
Speaker 2: disclosures exposed is DeSantis's heavy dependence on high contributors. So
Speaker 2: just about fifteen percent of fundraising contributions came from donors
Speaker 2: who gave less than two hundred dollars, and the vast,
Speaker 2: vast majority of DeSantis's money has come from donors who
Speaker 2: gave the legal maximum of three thy three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: in the primary, which also means that those who gave
Speaker 2: that can cannot contribute any more money either. So he's
Speaker 2: running out of people that are actually able to fund
Speaker 2: his operation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's worth noting he does have a super pack.
Speaker 1: You are not limited in how much you can donate
Speaker 1: to a super pack, but super packs cannot spend money
Speaker 1: on the same things as general campaign funds, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there are limitations in what you can use that on.
Speaker 1: So this is actually a logistical problem for him that
Speaker 1: he has maxed out his donor base.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and The New York Times has reported that future
Speaker 2: like large prospective donors have been spooked by DeSantis's sliding
Speaker 2: poll numbers, and they may be less willing to invest
Speaker 2: in what's looking like a losing battle. So to combat
Speaker 2: these swelling campaign expenses, including two hundred and seventy nine
Speaker 2: thousand dollars at the four seasons in Miami, DeSantis's Tallahassee
Speaker 2: based campaign has began undercoing massive cuts to campaign staff
Speaker 2: this past week. Previously, Desanta's had upwards of ninety people
Speaker 2: on payroll, but just this month they've eliminated thirty eight
Speaker 2: jobs in a variety of departments, cutting more than one
Speaker 2: third of his payroll. DeSantis's cutbacks are nearly quill to
Speaker 2: the size of Trump's entire twenty twenty four campaign staff.
Speaker 2: Dessentis's campaign manager, Grenera Peck said in a statement, I
Speaker 2: believe late last week quote, following a top to bottom
Speaker 2: review of our organization, we have taken additional aggressive steps
Speaker 2: to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest
Speaker 2: position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden. So
Speaker 2: that that was their little statement accompanying the news of
Speaker 2: firing almost forty people from their campaign. According to The
Speaker 2: New York Times, advertisers are quote promising to reorient the
Speaker 2: DeSantis candidacy as a quote unquote insurgent run and remake
Speaker 2: it into a quote unquote leaner, meaner operation. So this
Speaker 2: is the new strategy that they're trying to do, is
Speaker 2: instead of having ninety people on staff in a largely
Speaker 2: ineffectual strategy, have a more insurgent run with a smaller
Speaker 2: number of people. But in addition to the dozens of
Speaker 2: staff members who've been let go this July, two senior
Speaker 2: advisors have also departed this month to work for an
Speaker 2: outside pro DeSantis nonprofit. One of these senior advisors, who
Speaker 2: was supposed to oversee the campaign's television messaging, voluntarily left
Speaker 2: quote as the reality of a disappearing advertising budget set in.
Speaker 2: So these these two more more kind of seasoned Republican
Speaker 2: advisors saw what was happening in the campaign, and they're
Speaker 2: still pro DeSantis, but they believe they can be more
Speaker 2: effective by working from outside of the actual campaign. That's
Speaker 2: so funny, which is not a great sign for DeSantis's
Speaker 2: internal internal team here if you have people like who
Speaker 2: still like you, but they just can't work for you
Speaker 2: because you're doing such a bad job. So Desatus's team
Speaker 2: is now telegraphing a plan to engage with mainstream media
Speaker 2: that in the way that they have not previously done
Speaker 2: because they've he's so far kind of scornfully avoided it,
Speaker 2: as we've talked about obviously. And they're calling this new
Speaker 2: strategy the Dysantis is Everywhere approach, which is a good
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ bad name for strategy.
Speaker 1: The part of the problem, Garrison, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to like I can't like prove this the way that
Speaker 1: we prove, you know, when we're when we're tracing back
Speaker 1: the ideological roots of like a lot of our modern fascists.
Speaker 1: But what I what I believe in my heart is
Speaker 1: that so many of these very young people on the
Speaker 1: extreme right who are who are driving this campaign like
Speaker 1: just want to be villains from a bad late nineties
Speaker 1: early two thousands movie. They want to be they want
Speaker 1: to be the bad guy in like the fucking supervill
Speaker 1: hero movie, right Like that that's you don't You don't
Speaker 1: say that about a guy who's good like this, You
Speaker 1: wouldn't like the Biden campaign if they came to Joe
Speaker 1: and we're like, we want to do a Biden is
Speaker 1: everywhere thing, he'd be like, now that sounds kind of creepy.
Speaker 1: Guys Like I already got a little bit of a
Speaker 1: problem with that, what with a hair sniff, and I
Speaker 1: don't really want to really want to jump on.
Speaker 2: That, right you know, Like it definitely has the vibes
Speaker 2: of like zoomers who grew up watching like late nineties
Speaker 2: animated superhero cartoons who are trying to like it. Yes,
Speaker 2: we're trying to emulate that for some reason. There is
Speaker 2: one one really funny quote from the Times that I
Speaker 2: will read because it quotes like internal sources that that
Speaker 2: I don't have access to, but anyway, quote one person
Speaker 2: close to mister DeSantis, who requested anonymity to speak candidly
Speaker 2: about a candidate whom the person still supports, said the
Speaker 2: governor had experienced quote unquote a challenging learning curve that
Speaker 2: has left him quote unquote a little bit jarred.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't sound like a six year old who's
Speaker 1: like not quite progressing fast enough in the reading where
Speaker 1: they're like, maybe we need to try teaching him another way,
Speaker 1: like we'll get out the different colored books.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, so he seems to have a rough adjustment
Speaker 2: period to campaigning in just more than one state and
Speaker 2: having an actual like opponent to go up against, and
Speaker 2: also like an opponent who's like actually a good who's
Speaker 2: like good at being like a politician. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 2: a challenging learning curve.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I might I might specify, I think actually DeSantis
Speaker 1: is a lot better as being a politician than Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: but that's not what the competition is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, DeSantis is better at being like an effective like governor. Uh,
Speaker 2: he's better.
Speaker 1: He's better at the machinery of politics, yes, whereas Trump
Speaker 1: is better at holding power within the GOP.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and being like a showman. So we will we
Speaker 2: will talk more about some uh some actually relatively breaking
Speaker 2: news regarding the DeSantis campaign.
Speaker 1: Shortly cited for this. I just saw this before we
Speaker 1: got on.
Speaker 2: Short shortly after this at break. Okay, we are we
Speaker 2: are back. So a lot has happened in the past
Speaker 2: two days, a lot has happened in the past two hours actually,
Speaker 2: but we're We're gonna have to work our way there.
Speaker 2: The first bit of news that was kind of both
Speaker 2: it was both confirming my suspicions and in very a
Speaker 2: very interesting piece of news in the first place, is
Speaker 2: that that fast Wave inspired kind of homophobic Pride Month
Speaker 2: video that we talked about in our last Dysantis fash
Speaker 2: Wave episode. It turns out to be slightly more self
Speaker 2: inflicted than what than what at least I said in
Speaker 2: the episode, because I didn't want to make claims that
Speaker 2: I couldn't back up. Because we have we have some
Speaker 2: new new information regarding this video, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 2: quote from this this article in the Times quote a
Speaker 2: DeSantis campaign had originally produced the video internally, passing it
Speaker 2: off to an outside supporter to post it first and
Speaker 2: making it appear as if it was generated independently, according
Speaker 2: to a person with knowledge of the incident, So this
Speaker 2: video turned out to be actually be made in house.
Speaker 2: This actually was made by someone who was working for
Speaker 2: Rondasantis as we speculated it initially, but we couldn't really
Speaker 2: like say for sure because it was it was posted
Speaker 2: first on a third party account.
Speaker 1: Specifically, the guy who was the one who shared it
Speaker 1: is the dude who made it.
Speaker 2: No, that is for this next video we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about. Yeah, the the homophobic one was shared by
Speaker 2: this this this Protosantas account called Proud Elephant, who had
Speaker 2: a corresponding telegram channel. This was the guy who posted
Speaker 2: the first homophobic mean one. But yeah, so we found
Speaker 2: out Sunday night that it was actually made by someone
Speaker 2: at the DeSantis campaign, which kind of just to find
Speaker 2: a lot of our suspicions about DeSantis employing staff of
Speaker 2: zoomers who don't actually understand how to win a political
Speaker 2: election and are more interested in just creating fascist memes,
Speaker 2: which is seems to be not a very effective strategy
Speaker 2: for DeSantis so far. So again, just the day that
Speaker 2: this news broke that that the video was actually made
Speaker 2: in house, another fash wave of inspired video, but with
Speaker 2: much much more overt Nazi imagery, was shared online by
Speaker 2: a Dysantis campaign staffer. I'm Robert. Have you seen this video?
Speaker 1: Yes? Okay, so I'm the son in rad video.
Speaker 2: Yes, So we don't have to watch it here, but
Speaker 2: I will I will give a description of it for
Speaker 2: for the people listening, because also we should probably souldn't
Speaker 2: be sharing these things like everywhere on on like Twitter
Speaker 2: and stuff anyway, Like it's not it's not a great idea, but.
Speaker 1: It's not going to make you happier help you in
Speaker 1: any way. To see this, it's just like it's surprising.
Speaker 1: I will say that I was surprised to see how
Speaker 1: fascy it was, to see how like explicitly accelerationist mass
Speaker 1: shooter fascy it was. Yes, this is like christ Church
Speaker 1: kind of Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're not gonna share it, but but it
Speaker 2: is useful to know what's in it. So I did
Speaker 2: write a pretty in depth description of this video here.
Speaker 2: So this video was posted on Sunday, July twenty third.
Speaker 2: It's about seventy seconds long. It plays over a Meg
Speaker 2: Myers cover of the song Running Up the Hill.
Speaker 1: Which was made you know recent Wait, isn't that the
Speaker 1: one that was the one that the new season of
Speaker 1: Stranger Things? A while back like it brought back to.
Speaker 2: The main Possibly it's it is it is a Kate
Speaker 2: Bush original. This one is is a more like electronic
Speaker 2: cover of the song. Yes, it's talking about like you know,
Speaker 2: like a like a trying to like ask God to
Speaker 2: help you with certain things. Blah blah bla blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. Anyway, it starts with the Doomer wo Jack
Speaker 2: sitting at a computer looking at headlines about the ineffectiveness
Speaker 2: of Trump's border wall, unfulfilled anti immigration policies, and Trump's
Speaker 2: pro COVID vaccine statements. So I guess we should probably
Speaker 2: talk about what a wojack is in case someone is unfamiliar.
Speaker 2: If you've ever spent any amount of time on the Internet,
Speaker 2: you've probably seen memes with kind of crudely drawn like
Speaker 2: human faces and heads. These are called wojack memes. They're
Speaker 2: they're they're very popular in like political spheres. They kind
Speaker 2: of kind of rose to prominence on four Chat and
Speaker 2: spread spread out from there. Everyone kind of uses them nowadays.
Speaker 2: They're pretty common, but there's a few specific like wojack characters,
Speaker 2: like the chad is one. One of the more popular
Speaker 2: ones is the Doomer wojack, which is someone who's taken
Speaker 2: the black pill, so to speak. They've they've they've looked
Speaker 2: at modern society and have decided that it's not worth
Speaker 2: engaging in. Now there's this. There's doomers on the right.
Speaker 2: There's dumers on the left. There's doomers who look at
Speaker 2: like climate change and the acceleration of like of of
Speaker 2: capitalism and just decide, hey, this is this is too
Speaker 2: far gone. So they become a doomer, and they're on
Speaker 2: the left. There's also duomers on the right who are
Speaker 2: like looking at gay marriage and the acceptance of trans
Speaker 2: people to being like, oh, this is so socially degenerate.
Speaker 2: It's the society's too far gone, and then they become
Speaker 2: a doomer. But they're on the right. So it's it.
Speaker 2: It happens on It happens on both sides, and both
Speaker 2: both sides use doomer memes. Uh yeah, this one is
Speaker 2: because we're talking about it in this context of fash wave.
Speaker 2: This is obviously a fascist doomer meme. But that's that's
Speaker 2: kind of what I mean when I say there's there's
Speaker 2: a doomer wojack sitting sitting at a computer. It's like
Speaker 2: it's like a guy with a beanie, like a scruffy beard.
Speaker 2: He looks like very depressed and tired, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: So as as these kind of headlines about Trump's not
Speaker 2: conservative enoughness are flashing on this computer, the dumer rojack
Speaker 2: is looking increasing lead disillusioned and apathetic. Then there's the
Speaker 2: clip of Trump holding up a Pride flag that plays
Speaker 2: right before we see Trump signing the First Step Act,
Speaker 2: the twenty eighteen Criminal Justice Reform Bill. Then headlines flash
Speaker 2: about violent criminals being released into the streets, that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. So the doumer BoJack is looking at all
Speaker 2: these things about Trump looking more and more depressed, when
Speaker 2: suddenly a doorway appears with an almost angelic light pouring
Speaker 2: in from behind, and as the door opens, we see
Speaker 2: a silhouette of Ron DeSantis. More short clips of Ron play,
Speaker 2: and now the wojack is looking happy, almost like exuberant,
Speaker 2: seemingly kind of random images of outer space, volcanoes, rocket launches, surfing,
Speaker 2: and the beach flash quickly on screen with with like
Speaker 2: glitchy silhouettes of Ronda Santis looming above coastal ocean side
Speaker 2: cities that are lit up by a sunset. A don't
Speaker 2: tread on Florida Alligator flag spins onto screen like it's
Speaker 2: a fucking like ms paint like edit and h. Then
Speaker 2: the the video flashes more clips of DeSantis wearing sunglasses
Speaker 2: standing in front of American flags as the sunset, Happy
Speaker 2: Woejack fades in. So this is another woshack meme of
Speaker 2: somebody almost like tearied eyed with like contentment, staring into
Speaker 2: the horizon as like a sunset is behind their head.
Speaker 2: It kind of it kind of reminds me of like
Speaker 2: the that guy who who stole that plane in Seattle
Speaker 2: and yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very sad story if you're not aware of it.
Speaker 1: A man hijacked I believe it was an Alaska Airs
Speaker 1: flight a couple of years back. It was empty, like
Speaker 1: he he worked at the airport. He just took the
Speaker 1: plane and he got up into the sky and then
Speaker 1: like he was just kind of a dude who was
Speaker 1: sort of suicidal. There's very sad audio of him talking too,
Speaker 1: because he gets on with air traffic control and he
Speaker 1: makes sure that he's not going to hurt anyone else
Speaker 1: and like then the plane goes down, you know, he
Speaker 1: goes down in it and it's it's very bleak. He
Speaker 1: was not a man who wanted to hurt anybody. It's
Speaker 1: just this kind of like exist I've heard. I found
Speaker 1: it set to a lot of vapor wave tracks. Actually,
Speaker 1: like the audio the conversation between them, because he's kind
Speaker 1: of I think a lot of people identify with his
Speaker 1: sense of like I don't really know why I was
Speaker 1: ever here. I don't really know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's someone who's dealing with like postmodern absurdity, but
Speaker 2: in a way that like he doesn't want to hurt
Speaker 2: anybody about it, but he just doesn't know what to
Speaker 2: do with existence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had part of he had like the the
Speaker 1: ten percent of what a mass shooter has, which is
Speaker 1: exactly go out and I want to do something. But
Speaker 1: thankfully he was also a good person and didn't want
Speaker 1: to like murder strangers.
Speaker 2: So this became very popular on the Internet, including on
Speaker 2: redda and four Chan. This he was he was dubbed
Speaker 2: sky King, and there's there's footage of him basically crashing
Speaker 2: this plane as the sun is setting, and there's there's
Speaker 2: fut of which like him flying around in sunset. Played
Speaker 2: often played with vapor wave with his conversation with attackt
Speaker 2: for control. Now this is very popular. The sunset happy
Speaker 2: Rojack is very similar. I've seen people post this image
Speaker 2: in threads about sky King before, and I think a
Speaker 2: lot a lot of people to understand it's like this
Speaker 2: this act that this this skyking thing, that this has
Speaker 2: more in common with like accelerationist like terrorism than what
Speaker 2: most people can like really understand about like between like
Speaker 2: shooting a random person for like violent crime and this
Speaker 2: like this, this is more this, This is closer to
Speaker 2: why people do accelerationist like terroristic acts. But this guy
Speaker 2: was like not actually a monster, so he didn't do that.
Speaker 2: He like explicitly didn't want to hurt anybody. He explicitly
Speaker 2: didn't want to try to land the plane at the
Speaker 2: airport because he thought he might hurt somebody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and presumably since he worked at an airport, he
Speaker 1: had some knowledge of how easily that could go wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this anyway, these two images are kind of
Speaker 2: linked often on the Internet. So anyway, we we we
Speaker 2: see we see the video getting like more hopeful with
Speaker 2: with with Ron de Santis, you know, having stupid fash wave,
Speaker 2: having stupid fash wave imagery. Is this sunset happy Wojack
Speaker 2: fades in as like as the doomer is now has
Speaker 2: like contentment, and then this this, then this is followed
Speaker 2: by very quick flashes of DeSantis and more more, more
Speaker 2: beach imagery. There's a lot of beach in this video. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's like this like rotating sheet of stickers that read
Speaker 2: make America Florida. Then we get this shot of a
Speaker 2: small yacht zooming through the water with DeSantis campaign events
Speaker 2: played over top of the water. And during this shot
Speaker 2: we have another Wojack holding a rifle, wearing Camo military
Speaker 2: fatigues that slides onto screen. He has a patch of
Speaker 2: the flag of Florida on his plate carrier and his helmet.
Speaker 2: We get more shots of beachfront cities and rocket launches,
Speaker 2: followed by headlines about Dysantis on a variety of topics,
Speaker 2: including his anti immigration actions, his use of Florida's National
Speaker 2: Guard in other states, DeSantis's anti diversity initiatives, his anti
Speaker 2: education bills, his anti drag bills, the cancelation of pride
Speaker 2: parades in Florida, and in general just kind of how
Speaker 2: DeSantis has been pushing Florida further right. So, after this
Speaker 2: barrage of headlines. We get to the most mask off
Speaker 2: from a moment of the video. The flag of Florida
Speaker 2: fills the screen with two lines of armed troops at
Speaker 2: either side marching towards the flag. A still photo of
Speaker 2: Dysantis is center frame, with his head right in the
Speaker 2: middle of the seal of Florida, which is on the
Speaker 2: center of their state flag. The head in front of
Speaker 2: the seal creates this almost like halo effect around Dusantas's head,
Speaker 2: and then the seal turns into a spinning son and
Speaker 2: Rad as we zoom into the symbol as troops march
Speaker 2: into center, and then the video ends. The Sun and
Speaker 2: Rad is on screen for about ten seconds. So this
Speaker 2: was a pretty upsetting thing to see on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Yes, upsetting is one way to phrase it. Yeah, and again.
Speaker 1: The Sun and Rad has a long history. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a specifically a cultic version of the swastika it reached.
Speaker 1: It has been around for quite a while, but it's
Speaker 1: most recent. The kind of thing that brought it into
Speaker 1: modern prominence was the christ Church shooter chose it as
Speaker 1: the cover of his manifesto and also wore a Son
Speaker 1: and Rad. I believe it was on the chest of
Speaker 1: his plate carrier. When he carried out his massacre. He
Speaker 1: also had a couple on his gun.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, so it's very clearly Nazi symbol. I
Speaker 2: know there's some people make jokes about how this must
Speaker 2: have just been an Azov battalion reference. Deeply unserious.
Speaker 1: No, you can see some of these on Azam again,
Speaker 1: this is a Nazi thing. They wear this too. Yes,
Speaker 1: Azof uses it.
Speaker 2: There's people trying to excuse the use of the sun
Speaker 2: and rad by saying, oh, it's justin Azof simple it's
Speaker 2: not a Hoatzia thing is bad, which is a deeply
Speaker 2: unserious thing to say. So, yeah, this video was shared
Speaker 2: by at least one campaign staffer. It's a very short video,
Speaker 2: but it plays into a strain of like accelerationist propaganda
Speaker 2: tropes that even the previous Fashionay video didn't didn't even
Speaker 2: really have in many of the same ways, like like
Speaker 2: all of all of like the dooomer Wojack slowly becoming
Speaker 2: like happy and content than putting on military fatigues to
Speaker 2: go fight for Ron Decantis, who's now in the center
Speaker 2: of like a haloed sun and rad like it's it's
Speaker 2: it is emulating a type of meme that both gained
Speaker 2: popular in order to specifically like inspire mass shootings to happen,
Speaker 2: and also to like to get young depressed male to
Speaker 2: channel their depression into like fascism. It has a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of tropes like it's it's it's really just like
Speaker 2: playing by the playbook. So the video was first posted
Speaker 2: on the Twitter account ron DeSantis fancams, which is a
Speaker 2: horrible sentence. Yeah, the account is a few months old,
Speaker 2: but its visible posts only go back to June. They
Speaker 2: post a lot of videos, all in a very similar style,
Speaker 2: which leads you to believe that whoever operates the account
Speaker 2: must be making the videos themselves. One video from the
Speaker 2: account plays clips of people describing Dasantis as fascist, edited
Speaker 2: together with clips of DeSantis deploying National Guard and calling
Speaker 2: for civilian state military force under his control, all sliced
Speaker 2: together next to footage of Nazis and Mussolini played over
Speaker 2: an upbeat to EDM track. So it's all like explicitly
Speaker 2: fascist stuff like like like it's people like rev like
Speaker 2: it's like uh, proud proudly embracing the fascist label. So
Speaker 2: this style of video is almost identical to the homophobic
Speaker 2: pride Mones video that we discussed last week, and considering
Speaker 2: the recent news that the other video shared by the
Speaker 2: dasantas Warm account was secretly made by a campaign staffer,
Speaker 2: that led myself and others to assume that this Saun
Speaker 2: and Red video was most likely made by the same
Speaker 2: person inside DeSantis's campaign and was operating this DeSantis Fancam
Speaker 2: account as a sock puppet. But you know, I could
Speaker 2: not prove this myself, really, I it's just it's it's
Speaker 2: a it's a hard thing to kind of backtrack this.
Speaker 2: This account was pretty clean in terms of like I
Speaker 2: tried to, like, you know, do do pretty pretty basic
Speaker 2: osen on this account, but it's it was, it was
Speaker 2: I could not find out much about it. But uh.
Speaker 2: The the campaign staff member that first shared this saun
Speaker 2: and Red video to his own Twitter account was former
Speaker 2: National Review writer Nate Hawkman. We will we will talk
Speaker 2: about Nate Hawkman's exploits shortly shortly after this this hat break.
Speaker 2: All right, we are back and in a much better
Speaker 2: position currently than twenty five year old Nate Hawkman.
Speaker 1: Yes, so really was a tragically was a promising career.
Speaker 1: You know what, Let's give them another chance, Garrison, reach
Speaker 1: out to Nate. We can bring him on the team,
Speaker 1: you know, have him start making some videos for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll I'll build an invoice to Nate Hawkman's address. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll see where he lives. So, twenty five year old
Speaker 2: Nate Hawkman has been working as a speech writer for
Speaker 2: de Santis's campaign after rising to prominence among young conservatives
Speaker 2: for his online references and willingness to entertain ideas outside
Speaker 2: the Overton window. Uh. Hawkman hosted a Twitter space late
Speaker 2: last year centered around the question of if white supremacists
Speaker 2: like a Nick Fuentes should have a place in the
Speaker 2: modern conservative movement. Funtes himself appeared in the Twitter space,
Speaker 2: and Hawkman thanked him for radicalizing children by saying, quote,
Speaker 2: You've gotten a lot of kids based and we respect
Speaker 2: you for that. And he also said that Fuentes quote
Speaker 2: is probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young
Speaker 2: men who might otherwise be conservative unquote. So Hawkman has
Speaker 2: retweeted the Dysantis fancam account at least six times before
Speaker 2: he shared this Son and Rata video this past Sunday,
Speaker 2: But he's not the only Dysantis linked account to share
Speaker 2: these videos. The campaign's war room Twitter account and the
Speaker 2: pro DeSantis Never Back Down super pac have also shared
Speaker 2: video from this Rondissantis fancam Twitter account. By using this
Speaker 2: fancam account to post videos and then by retweeting on
Speaker 2: Nate's account, someone was certainly testing the waters to see
Speaker 2: how close the Dysantas campaign can get to like just
Speaker 2: doing explicit Nazi shit, and considering the New York Times,
Speaker 2: who Hawkman has written for, by the way, basically confirming
Speaker 2: that the person who made the Pride Month video was
Speaker 2: secretly employed by Dysantis and posted the a third party
Speaker 2: to get some distance from the official campaign. This led
Speaker 2: many to suspect that Hawkman was secretly the person behind
Speaker 2: this fancam account due to the similarities in video styles
Speaker 2: and his frequent boosting of the account. The sun and
Speaker 2: Ride video was deleted the same day was posted, and
Speaker 2: the fancam account has not posted since then. But then suddenly,
Speaker 2: just a few hours ago as of time of recording,
Speaker 2: news dropped that Nick Hachman has been fired from the
Speaker 2: Dasantis campaign, and the sources at Axiom confirmed that he
Speaker 2: has in fact secretly been making these Fashway videos. So
Speaker 2: it was it was Hawkman on all along. This is
Speaker 2: what happens when you hire a twenty five year old
Speaker 2: gropewer to work on your to work on your presidential bid, your.
Speaker 1: Very serious presidential campaign.
Speaker 2: Yeah so uh. The Dessentant's campaign officially has only said
Speaker 2: a few words on the subject, quote, Nate Hawkman is
Speaker 2: no longer with the campaign and we will not be
Speaker 2: commenting on him further.
Speaker 1: Not that easy, guys, But other.
Speaker 2: Anonymous sources have confirmed to news outlets that it was
Speaker 2: Hawkman who was making these videos. So this is weird
Speaker 2: because like this hasn't been a great move for DeSantis
Speaker 2: hiring Hawkman, having Hawkman do all this like behind the
Speaker 2: scenes like Scooby Doo shit of like you're posting fasci
Speaker 2: fascist videos on sock pupons to then get reboosted by
Speaker 2: d Santa's campaign like it's it's all. It's all very
Speaker 2: like dark but like comical, like it's it's silly, like uh,
Speaker 2: similar to the Descentus video we talked about in the
Speaker 2: Last Adventures in fash d episode. This video it was
Speaker 2: not meant to like convince older Trump supporters to vote
Speaker 2: for dissenttis right, like that that's not the intention of
Speaker 2: posting this video.
Speaker 1: No, this new video drives they are first off, going
Speaker 1: for the zoomer vote always a mixed bag.
Speaker 2: An.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anytime you're going for the youth vote, this is
Speaker 1: like famously a difficult thing. It kind of sometimes works
Speaker 1: for the dims because the youth tend to be pretty
Speaker 1: progressive and the Republicans are terrifying. Yeah, but going for
Speaker 1: the trying to base your campaign as a Republican presidential
Speaker 1: candidate on the youths is uh quite a move. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's let's see how it pays off for him gotten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because like this new video is almost more chronically
Speaker 2: online than the last one. Like, not even considering the
Speaker 2: Nazi imagery, it's it's heavy use of BoJack memes is
Speaker 2: just like cartoonish to the median voter. What this video
Speaker 2: is trying to do is signal to self describe fascists
Speaker 2: that Dysantis is their guy, and trying extremely desperately to
Speaker 2: create another like meme magic moment like we had in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, to recruit a slew of teenage Nazis to
Speaker 2: try and meme another based president into office, which isn't
Speaker 2: gonna work this time around, because it's not twenty sixteen anymore.
Speaker 2: Like we we've we've already been We've already been inoculated
Speaker 2: to some degree to this, to this style of of
Speaker 2: campaign tactics, all of all of the all the people,
Speaker 2: and like like four chan isn't the thing that it
Speaker 2: used to be. It is it is, it is a
Speaker 2: shell of its of its former self. But like what
Speaker 2: we have here on like the DeSantis side is like
Speaker 2: in terms of hiring people like cockmen, right, these are
Speaker 2: like seasoned gropers who grew up and are now like
Speaker 2: getting into their twenties. Uh, you know, they're taking jobs
Speaker 2: at National Review and as and as campaign staffers. But
Speaker 2: due to their isolated, niche political upbringing, they have deluded
Speaker 2: themselves into thinking that there's like a mythical far right
Speaker 2: youth voting block that just like quite simply doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: So you can spend all day making and retweeting these
Speaker 2: meme heavy videos with Nazi imagery that really only succeed
Speaker 2: in turning off the reliable boomer Republican voters. Now, like
Speaker 2: there's a few other you know, future scenarios here. If
Speaker 2: these if these like up and coming gropers continue to
Speaker 2: like grow up, polish their act, take more jobs as
Speaker 2: staffers or on Capitol Hill, and like slowly grow in
Speaker 2: numbers as they learn to like hide their power level
Speaker 2: like hea like hide their amount of racism. Then we
Speaker 2: might have a problem if they like actually like put
Speaker 2: like intentionality into a long term strategy to like put
Speaker 2: more of these young freaks into positions in Washington. But
Speaker 2: we're simply not there yet. Like in the case of Hawkman,
Speaker 2: he kind of just like he blew up the spot
Speaker 2: right like he went like he went too hard, too fast,
Speaker 2: and then he got fired because they don't want that shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the olds are going to watch this and go like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck is this? This does not look serious,
Speaker 1: This is not speaking to my issues. This is just
Speaker 1: like off putting in strange, and most young people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's some brain poisoned four channer. That's who this guy
Speaker 1: is running as the four chan candidate. Yep, all right now.
Speaker 2: Like so the other fear is that they'll shift from
Speaker 2: like this electoral focus and try to just use this
Speaker 2: type of video propaganda to initiate another wave of like
Speaker 2: Nazi mass shootings, like in twenty eighteen the halo effect
Speaker 2: around DeSantis's head is certainly cause for concern, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot of other factors that go into that sort
Speaker 2: of thing, and that is kind of just more of
Speaker 2: like an ever present fear that anti fascists have, and
Speaker 2: you know, people do a lot of work into trying
Speaker 2: to catch these guys before they actually do mass shootings
Speaker 2: and try to try to isolate the spread of this
Speaker 2: style of propaganda for that very reason. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's certainly an interesting trajectory. When I started, like
Speaker 2: finishing this episode earlier today, I had no idea that
Speaker 2: Hawkman was going to get fired, had no idea that
Speaker 2: it was going to be confirmed that Hawkman was the
Speaker 2: one making making these videos. So that's kind of some
Speaker 2: breaking news on our side. It's it's been a few days.
Speaker 2: If you're if you're listening to this, at the end
Speaker 2: of the week, I'm going to read out one tweet
Speaker 2: from this guy a double doink you, who is a stupid,
Speaker 2: stupid handle no offense, but he made a made a
Speaker 2: made a made a pretty good point here I quote.
Speaker 2: I think DeSantis's real problem isn't just that he's racist,
Speaker 2: it's that his campaign is racist in the same way
Speaker 2: a really annoying teenager is your average xenophobic suburbanite dad
Speaker 2: looks at a son and rad Wojack ad like his
Speaker 2: son crashed his car. A lot of people are arguing
Speaker 2: that your average fifty six year old Trump supporter isn't
Speaker 2: as racist as your average DeSantis supporting zoomer. But that's
Speaker 2: not the point. Putting weird blood and soil shit in
Speaker 2: your ads smells it's deeply uncool to the exact people
Speaker 2: that you want to impress unquote, and I'll add it's
Speaker 2: it's it's deeply uncool to the exact people you want
Speaker 2: to impress if you want to win at being president
Speaker 2: and like are trying to move over Trump voters. It's
Speaker 2: just it's just it's just not going to play. So
Speaker 2: this is this is the state of the d Santa's campaign.
Speaker 2: Now they've they've shed almost forty people from their staff.
Speaker 2: The guy that was supposed to lead their television ads
Speaker 2: has left. They seemingly just have no idea what the
Speaker 2: fuck to do. They they tried to have this guy
Speaker 2: do this like backdoor Nazi video sock puppet strategy that
Speaker 2: has also resulted in not very good things for this
Speaker 2: for the Desanta's campaign. So I guess we'll we'll see
Speaker 2: how their how their campaign develops, if they if they
Speaker 2: continue this is sort of like fash wave rhetoric and style.
Speaker 2: I kind of doubt it now that now that now
Speaker 2: that Hawkman is out. But yeah, it's been a certainly
Speaker 2: certainly an interesting interesting few months here or a few
Speaker 2: weeks here rather in terms of in fashwave videos resurfacing
Speaker 2: again for the first time in quite a while. In
Speaker 2: terms of like mainstream of political use.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm kind of suspecting that this might be the
Speaker 1: death knell of that as a at least for a spell,
Speaker 1: as a as a relevant form of propaganda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's been in some ways like
Speaker 2: internally rejected at the Disanta's campaign, and he is arguably
Speaker 2: the most fascist mainstream candidate that they that we like
Speaker 2: have right now.
Speaker 1: Nothing puts a stink on stuff like this like failure, right,
Speaker 1: you know, these guys, these guys are not anarchists, and
Speaker 1: the anarchs are we nearly always lose. So there's this
Speaker 1: like because things fail, you know that, Like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of Spanish Civil War, you know, iconography and stuff,
Speaker 1: that's still very relevant on that chunk of the left,
Speaker 1: But with the right, it is all about power, and
Speaker 1: when something like this fails, when it actually weakens a campaign,
Speaker 1: when it weakens the insurgent right, when it makes them
Speaker 1: less able to exert power. Yeah, I kind of feel
Speaker 1: like we may have seen the last of this as
Speaker 1: a thing that matters, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll definitely be watching these next few months. But
Speaker 2: I think that's that's definitely a very a very fair
Speaker 2: assessment at this point. Lastly, I just want to clarify
Speaker 2: one thing about our last episode due to some viewer feedback.
Speaker 2: So last time we were talking about how the Biden
Speaker 2: administration's use of dark branded memes had like inadvertently led
Speaker 2: to Fast way of taking a big body blow. Now,
Speaker 2: I think some people misinterpreted our discussion as downplaying and
Speaker 2: fascists and leftists attempt to disrupt Dark Mega and fash
Speaker 2: wave in general by like proliferating the satirical dark branded memes.
Speaker 2: So in the episode, we talked about the methodology behind this,
Speaker 2: this this strategy of like normies seizing onto memes and aesthetics,
Speaker 2: thus making them cringe and unattractive to the niche groups.
Speaker 2: That they that that once enjoyed using them with Dark Brand,
Speaker 2: and there were certainly an attempt from anti fascists and
Speaker 2: leftist posters to appropriate fash waves aesthetics with the hope
Speaker 2: that if spread widely enough, it would disarm some of
Speaker 2: fashwaves more dangerous and inspirational aspects. But you can't really
Speaker 2: force mainstream like virality. This kind of thing works best
Speaker 2: when it appears natural, and for the majority of dark
Speaker 2: branded posters, they were just doing this shit for like
Speaker 2: shits and giggles like that. That was the primary factor,
Speaker 2: is that it was funny, and no effort to damage
Speaker 2: fash waves legibility would really be successful without mainstream liberal spread.
Speaker 2: A small group of leftists could mean like eternally, but
Speaker 2: until it breaks through that bubble, it would have little
Speaker 2: to no effect. Now, because of how Twitter's algorithm worked
Speaker 2: during the summer of last year, after a few months,
Speaker 2: Dark Branded did in fact break through to the liberal mainstream.
Speaker 2: But I've seen nothing to suggest that the White House
Speaker 2: staff had any intention of trying to damage fash Wave's
Speaker 2: legibility by sharing laser I memes in August to twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two.
Speaker 1: I think the key here is that you were not
Speaker 1: saying this was purely the result of liberals accidentally like
Speaker 1: jumping on to this, but that the primary like success
Speaker 1: was achieved. Like, the part of the success that was
Speaker 1: achieved as a result of this going like mainstream among
Speaker 1: Biden supporters was accidental. Yeah, it was the part that
Speaker 1: was key, not saying that the people who recognize this
Speaker 1: and we're putting in the background work to try to
Speaker 1: push this stuff and make it, you know, eventually go viral.
Speaker 1: That was certainly not accidental.
Speaker 2: But correct.
Speaker 1: The part that the liberals played was an accidental part
Speaker 1: in killing this.
Speaker 2: That's that's the point, yes, Because what I mean by
Speaker 2: accidental is that when Dark Brandon started in March of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, there was no way to guarantee that
Speaker 2: four months later the white and like the White House
Speaker 2: and Blue Wave liberals would be sharing these memes on
Speaker 2: mass Like I remember conversations I had like last August
Speaker 2: when liberals were seemingly like ruining the funny dark branded memes.
Speaker 2: But like me, like myself and research colleagues during this time,
Speaker 2: like that was when we realized that if, like, if
Speaker 2: liberals keep sharing these cringy memes, we might actually have
Speaker 2: a shot at killing off a fash wave. So yes,
Speaker 2: this was to not discount the efforts at anti fascists
Speaker 2: or others who pioneered the spread of Dark Brandon and
Speaker 2: their attempts to insert it into greater public consciousness. But
Speaker 2: I think to frame this as like a meticulously planned
Speaker 2: siop from the very start is also kind of inaccurate,
Speaker 2: in like a very like spotlight like this was. This
Speaker 2: was a collaborative effort with the with the liberals not
Speaker 2: realizing the degree that their collaboration played in this larger
Speaker 2: game of trying to disarm fascist aesthetics and like meme styles.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's one one clarifying note as we hopefully
Speaker 2: wrap up this dysantis fashwave sega for the time being,
Speaker 2: because I definitely did not plan on making this episode
Speaker 2: when I finished recording last week with you.
Speaker 1: So here we are cool all right, that's the episode.
Speaker 2: That's the episode. It could happen here as a production
Speaker 2: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 2: visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.