Speaker 1: Oh, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast
Speaker 1: about things falling apart and about what we like to
Speaker 1: call the crumbles in here. And a key aspect of
Speaker 1: the crumbles is the ongoing resurgence of fascist political parties
Speaker 1: and politicians in the United States and elsewhere. And today
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about about one of said fascists,
Speaker 1: a fella you might have heard of named Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: I'm putting Ron, yeah, pudding Ron Old dasanct de aemonious. Now, Garrison,
Speaker 1: you've got a banger of an episode written out here.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at your script right now. It's beautiful. Right
Speaker 1: before we get into it, I do want to give
Speaker 1: an update on a past subject of It Could Happen Here,
Speaker 1: Lord Miles Rutledge, for those of you who may not
Speaker 1: have caught that episode, Lord Miles is a British Man
Speaker 1: who went to Afghanistan to hang out and got caught
Speaker 1: up in the Taliban's you know, victory in that war,
Speaker 1: and then turned himself into a danger travel influencer, visiting
Speaker 1: in dangerous place, going to war zones, going to Ukraine
Speaker 1: and like making it about him. He went back to
Speaker 1: Afghanistan because it really was better for his social media
Speaker 1: following than any of the other places he went, bragged
Speaker 1: about breaking laws, including faking his visa, and then got
Speaker 1: arrested and has been radio silent for about the last
Speaker 1: five months now. A lot of people have wondered is
Speaker 1: Lord Myles dead that he liked die in custody in
Speaker 1: the Taliban are trying to keep it a secret, but
Speaker 1: worry no longer. Friends. Today his account posted this is
Speaker 1: a friend of Lord Miles to give an update. Four
Speaker 1: months in Taliban custody. He's treated very well, has several servants,
Speaker 1: loads of movies on his laptop, goes on picnics and
Speaker 1: as tea with the Taliban cabinet government. He still loves Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: And then there's a photo of him giving the thumbs
Speaker 1: up doubt. So he's not He's not dead, guys. He's
Speaker 1: in a nice Taliban farm upstate. He gets to run
Speaker 1: all he wants, you know, wide open fields. He's super happy.
Speaker 1: It's really funny one of his All of these people
Speaker 1: are so fucking brained, poised, brain poisoned, but like a
Speaker 1: big part of Miles, he was like trying to also
Speaker 1: be kind of a right wing influencer. He was doing
Speaker 1: this like anti woke. The Taliban is awesome and like
Speaker 1: actually kind of good guys because they they don't like
Speaker 1: believe in the woke agenda. And one of his friends,
Speaker 1: after this message got posted, like messaged his account be like, hey, Taliban,
Speaker 1: if you're the guys that have like captured him, we
Speaker 1: really want him back. I'll pay a ransom. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I know, this is probably just a misunderstanding because you
Speaker 1: guys are on our side on the anti woke war.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I'm sure Taliban cares about the woke culture
Speaker 2: war facing America.
Speaker 1: That's what they're That's what's they're all about. That shit work, guys.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they tuned into shodthead of the Every Night.
Speaker 1: So Funny, So funny. Anyway, that dude Debt is dead
Speaker 1: as hell. Look, I'm not saying that to gloat. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that the motherfucker's dead as hell. I don't
Speaker 1: care what a prick he's dead. He deserved.
Speaker 3: Many many people have died in Afghanistan and it's been
Speaker 3: a tragedy.
Speaker 1: This one less. So anyway, Garrison, please continue.
Speaker 2: All right, So we we we're gonna return to this
Speaker 2: podcast being your number one source for slightly homo erotic
Speaker 2: fascist memes. Once again.
Speaker 1: That was how we pitched it to iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Explaining the erotic fascist themes.
Speaker 1: A lot of people talking about fascists these days, but
Speaker 1: none of them are homo erotic.
Speaker 2: So on the on the last day of Pride Month,
Speaker 2: Desantas's campaign shared a ad that's been described as bizarre
Speaker 2: and mystifying. He pedals a whole bunch of pretty pretty
Speaker 2: extreme like homophobia. He attacks Trump for for for previous
Speaker 2: statements that Trump has made regarding LGBTQ what rights, and
Speaker 2: then the video kind of transitions and we see basically
Speaker 2: a version of what's what we're gonna call fash wave.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna explain all of these terms here in
Speaker 2: this episode, but we're seeing kind of a resurgence of
Speaker 2: a political meme style that was popular years ago. It's
Speaker 2: kind of laid dormant the past year or so for
Speaker 2: reasons that we will very soon discuss. But a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of both conservatives and liberals are kind of not
Speaker 2: really sure how to take this ad shared by the
Speaker 2: DeSantis campaign and are ill equipped to understand what the
Speaker 2: fuck is going on. But luckily I am equipped because
Speaker 2: I spent my teen years in telegram chats watching this
Speaker 2: meme style develop.
Speaker 1: So how do you, buddy?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Thanks in the telegram trenches once again.
Speaker 1: All right, So.
Speaker 2: The first image of DeSantis, when it flashes to this
Speaker 2: other kind of weird, more like bizarre editing style, has
Speaker 2: him with like these these blue or red like glowing eyes.
Speaker 2: And this is gonna be something that is going to
Speaker 2: be a recurring trend that we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 2: in this episode, these like these like glowing laser eye
Speaker 2: type things. So we're gonna start with this because this
Speaker 2: is actually one of the one of the most common
Speaker 2: traits of fash wave. And we've seen this be adopted
Speaker 2: by multiple politicians in the past, and most people probably
Speaker 2: like don't know what the fuck this is? Like, is
Speaker 2: this like a Superman thing? Like, what the fuck is this?
Speaker 2: So laser eye memes started in the early twenty tens,
Speaker 2: originally referencing video games like Mass Effect two and other
Speaker 2: like sci fi and superhero media people like Superman or
Speaker 2: anyone with like laser eyes. Is also like a it's
Speaker 2: like a cultural touch stone for this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: The laser eyes usually represent like a figure growing in power,
Speaker 2: So when when someone has laser eyes and a meme,
Speaker 2: it's like they are they are They're gaining power, the
Speaker 2: gaining security. The The original caption for the early laser
Speaker 2: eye memes was assuming direct Control, which was also just
Speaker 2: a video game reference. So again I would have someone
Speaker 2: with like glowing, glowing laser eyes and text that says
Speaker 2: like assuming control or assuming direct control. So this was
Speaker 2: this was this was this was popping off in like
Speaker 2: the early twenty tens. Around the same time, synth wave
Speaker 2: and vapor wave were gaining traction as both like nostalgic
Speaker 2: musical microgenres and a memetic visual style featuring neon glitchy
Speaker 2: kind of eighties retro computer athetics mixed with traditional Greco
Speaker 2: Roman sculpture for a variety of reasons which we'll touch on,
Speaker 2: but vapor wave had influences from video games, cyberpunk, anime,
Speaker 2: and it was it was relatively popular as in mycer
Speaker 2: genre in like the twenty teens and through the twenty teens,
Speaker 2: both the laser eye memes were steadily growing in popularity
Speaker 2: on places like Reddit and four chun, alongside the rise
Speaker 2: of a vapor wave and its kind of surrealist, nostalgia
Speaker 2: laden aesthetics focused on highlighting the comfort and unfulfilled promises
Speaker 2: of the Internet of yester year. And this like nostalgic
Speaker 2: surrealist aesthetic was prime bait for easy co option into
Speaker 2: the reactionary meme variant dubbed fash wave, which soon became
Speaker 2: kind of the de facto esthetic of the then burgeoning
Speaker 2: alt right. Glowing laser eyes on various fascistic political figures
Speaker 2: became a staple of fash wave during the rise of
Speaker 2: the alt right around twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen. I
Speaker 2: actually kind of like vapor wave. I think it's maybe
Speaker 2: a bit overplayed now, and it certainly is frustrating how
Speaker 2: much it was kind of taken over by reaction because
Speaker 2: actual vapor wave is almost actually like anti capitalistic in
Speaker 2: a few ways. It's it's kind of it's kind of
Speaker 2: criticizing the disposableness of like modern consumerist culture, using like
Speaker 2: forgotten eighties technology and like software and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So I'm looking at two of my little vapor wave
Speaker 2: images here in the script, and it does some of
Speaker 2: some of the little like ways that the images are
Speaker 2: broken up makes it look kind of like like old
Speaker 2: Internet pop up ads back when they had like clearly
Speaker 2: defined borders and x's and weren't just like overtaking your
Speaker 2: entire screen and you had no way to close them.
Speaker 2: But you know what does kind of overtake your entire
Speaker 2: viewing experience via an ad? It's it's podcast advertising. Because
Speaker 2: it's going to go straight into your ears, and there's
Speaker 2: no way to X out. You have to you have
Speaker 2: to suffer through the ad unless you unless you figure
Speaker 2: it out that you can press a button that makes
Speaker 2: you go forward thirty seconds. Anyway, anyway, here is Here
Speaker 2: is our beloved are beloved sponsors who fund such vital
Speaker 2: research that I'm doing for this episode. Anyway, the rise
Speaker 2: of the Alright. This is kind of where fashwave is,
Speaker 2: both like getting the name fashwave and also you know,
Speaker 2: it's becoming a larger problem because there's more Nazis walking around.
Speaker 2: So after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,
Speaker 2: the Alright went through a sort of split between the
Speaker 2: more Trumpian adherents who made up large parts of the
Speaker 2: then dubbed all to Light, a term we don't really
Speaker 2: use it very much anymore. And then this this kind
Speaker 2: of other section which had more of the accelerationist to
Speaker 2: neo Nazis who were starting to congregate on the messaging
Speaker 2: app Telegram. And then we have groups kind of like
Speaker 2: the Proud Boys that are like in between. They're kind
Speaker 2: of Trumpian. They're also also like more fascy, but they're
Speaker 2: not like really full skull ask. Usually some would adopt
Speaker 2: that esthetic later on, but that's kind of due to
Speaker 2: this cultic milieu that's starting to develop on Telegram. So
Speaker 2: a fast wave largely followed the self proclaimed fascists, so
Speaker 2: it too became the central visual style of the of
Speaker 2: the burgeoning network of militant accelerationist Telegram channels, which would
Speaker 2: eventually be dubbed terror Gram Terror as in terrorist. And
Speaker 2: this was combining with a whole bunch of weird factors
Speaker 2: around twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, including the Boogloo Boys, which
Speaker 2: Robert has written about at length before It's and it
Speaker 2: was also influenced by the Iron March Forums, and like
Speaker 2: the skull Mask network with groups like Adam Waffen and
Speaker 2: the Bass, they were all kind of the.
Speaker 1: Iron March Forums are like the Boomers of Nazi Internet people,
Speaker 1: not quite the boomers, maybe the gen X.
Speaker 2: The jed X, Yeah, very much, the XE Forum generation.
Speaker 1: There's a generation of people. Yeah, before social media it's
Speaker 1: Nazi something awful, right, It's we're not quite into the
Speaker 1: Chans yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And after Iron March kind of collapsed, a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of these weird accelerationists, we're starting to all congregate
Speaker 2: on Telegram. And this is where we see kind of
Speaker 2: fash wave develop into a much more overt apocalyptic and
Speaker 2: a doumer focus. The the hontology inspired and nostalgic reflections
Speaker 2: on the false promises of techno capitalism that were already
Speaker 2: present in vapor Wave were ripe ground for the addition
Speaker 2: of like return to tradition style reactionary fascism.
Speaker 1: Do you want to explain horntology if people are familiar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Uh, Hontology is a I mean, it started as
Speaker 2: a term which then developed into a musical genre, but
Speaker 2: it's it's similar to vapor wave. It's about kind of
Speaker 2: looking back on the unfulfilled promises of the past that
Speaker 2: we were like promised as a culture that then never
Speaker 2: came to place, but these promises still kind of follow us.
Speaker 2: They kind of like haunt us in hoontology is a
Speaker 2: big reason why liminal spaces got popular because of early
Speaker 2: nineties and uh and two thousands, like aesthetics of like
Speaker 2: big office buildings that are now left empty.
Speaker 1: Office buildings, like schools, like particularly like the you know,
Speaker 1: like the doors to a school or whatever. You get
Speaker 1: a lot of like photos of that. Yeah, so stuff
Speaker 1: that makes people feel a longing for a past that
Speaker 1: was never really real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like like a longing for like this sense
Speaker 2: of home and this sense of like a safe home
Speaker 2: which you maybe that you never actually really had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, because she hated being in school. You just
Speaker 1: have forgot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've kind of been aathologized, like pers calls it
Speaker 3: post memory, when you re remember things based on you know,
Speaker 3: you're sort of standpoint.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the the sort of doomer accelerationism of this of
Speaker 2: this kind of variant of fashwap or this like evolution
Speaker 2: of fash wave was was also accompanied by by groups
Speaker 2: like the Boogler Boys who were strying to make their
Speaker 2: memes in this in this style as well. I have
Speaker 2: I have a few examples of fashwave here showing to
Speaker 2: to Robert and James Son and Rad's pretty We're pretty popular.
Speaker 2: It's like the sun wheel version of the swastika essentially,
Speaker 2: But a lot of these are like remember tradition, embrace
Speaker 2: your race with like Nazi figures in like this monochrome
Speaker 2: style over over like scan lines like you would see
Speaker 2: on like a like an old like arcade video game
Speaker 2: that has like that has like a horizon, but you know,
Speaker 2: all like neon colors kind of kind of like glitchy
Speaker 2: type stuff. There's there's one Trump one here from from
Speaker 2: like twenty eighteen where he has a glowing yellow eyes,
Speaker 2: also in the fashwave style. So this was kind of
Speaker 2: the the aesthetic around around twenty nineteen here, and like
Speaker 2: fashwave was definitely still common on imageboards like four chan,
Speaker 2: eight chan, and eight kune, but the but the ever
Speaker 2: pressened kind of hitler particles and poor web design on
Speaker 2: those sites drove away most of the mega conservatives who
Speaker 2: might try to stumble on to four chan or or
Speaker 2: to eight chan to like watch qan on stuff. It
Speaker 2: was it was just the site was too hostile to
Speaker 2: them and then circled like twenty twenty among waves of
Speaker 2: Twitter and Facebook suspensions Trump supporters and high profile far
Speaker 2: right figures started congregating on other platforms. A few Twitter
Speaker 2: clones popped off, like Parlor and eventually Trump's Own Truth
Speaker 2: Social but a number of mega conservatives also ended up
Speaker 2: on Telegram, in part due to Telegram's largely hands off
Speaker 2: approach to moderation. So around this twenty twenty and like
Speaker 2: just post twenty twenty time period is when Telegram began
Speaker 2: functioning as the far right's very own cultic milieu, a
Speaker 2: sort of like shared online space where various memes, ideologies,
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories, and propaganda could all intermingle with each other
Speaker 2: and spread. Now, part of this is how Telegram operates
Speaker 2: as a platform. I'm going to quote from an article
Speaker 2: about Telegram and the cultic milieu from logically quote, Telegram
Speaker 2: offers features that straddle the line in between social media
Speaker 2: and messaging app. Users can create channels, which function as
Speaker 2: one way message channels that allow someone to send a
Speaker 2: feed of messages available to all of their subscribers. Public
Speaker 2: channels and group chats are searchable by name, allowing anyone
Speaker 2: to subscribe to a public channel or join a public group.
Speaker 2: Channels and groups are uniquely connected on Telegram when a
Speaker 2: message is forwarded from a public channel into another channel
Speaker 2: or group, it links back to the original group, creating
Speaker 2: a chain in between different channels and groups. Another common
Speaker 2: feature is for users to advertise for channels and groups
Speaker 2: in other channels and groups, with some users creating directories
Speaker 2: of these channels and these big group chats that have
Speaker 2: extremest content. So this kind of interconnected nature that allows
Speaker 2: this chain link of being able toward a message. Like
Speaker 2: you have a Telegram channel with like three thousand people
Speaker 2: in it, and you post fashay memes. You can make
Speaker 2: some fashave memes in the style of like Trump, and
Speaker 2: then you can forward this message to a Trump channel
Speaker 2: that has forty five thousand members in it. They see
Speaker 2: this meme, they might like it, they click the meme,
Speaker 2: it sends them back into your three thousand person channel.
Speaker 2: So now they're going to get exposed to all of
Speaker 2: the other weird shit you have going on. So it
Speaker 2: became a really easy way to kind of make a
Speaker 2: rabbit hole and like a pipeline for people to get
Speaker 2: exposed to new aesthetics, new ideologies, and especially conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: I think we should have an ad break now and
Speaker 2: we will return to talk about the increased Trumpian focus
Speaker 2: on fash wave that happened as a result of this
Speaker 2: kind of telegram cross proliferation.
Speaker 1: That's right, everybody, We're gonna break for ads from our sponsors,
Speaker 1: who also sponsor Lord Miles Rutledge. So you know, let's
Speaker 1: hear it up for these ads from the Taliban. Ah,
Speaker 1: we're back. And I don't know about you guys, but
Speaker 1: Taliban's making a lot of sense these days to me.
Speaker 1: Good pinks, really good. Yeah. I like their war on wokeness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking speaking speaking of a war on wokeness.
Speaker 1: Keats us right back to oron. Well, meetball ron.
Speaker 2: So to understand what the fuck is going on in
Speaker 2: that Rohnda Santis video. This is probably one of the
Speaker 2: most important, important little tidbits of knowledge that some people
Speaker 2: may be overlooking. Is this brief fever dream known as
Speaker 2: dark Mega.
Speaker 1: Oh god, no, I know. I'm just glad. Yeah, I'm glad.
Speaker 1: This one didn't work out the way they'd hope.
Speaker 3: No, it did.
Speaker 2: It did not work out, so the opposite of the
Speaker 2: they hoped.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, because of this kind of telegram cross proliferation, the
Speaker 2: far rights memetic aesthetic went through a sort of coagulation
Speaker 2: after twenty twenty, which eventually resulted in the upsetting, albeit
Speaker 2: short lived Dark Camega, also known as Ultra Mega, both
Speaker 2: of which are horrible names.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, I remember Ultra Mega being big and
Speaker 3: like people putting their Twitter handles along with like an eagle.
Speaker 1: And a flag. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: The dark Mega trend started around a year after the
Speaker 2: January sixth capital attack and steadily grew in popularity for
Speaker 2: the next few months during the lead up to the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two midterm elections. After two years of right
Speaker 2: wing influencers and politicians operating in Telegram's cultic milieu, the
Speaker 2: influence of militant accelerationist propaganda is immediately apparent in this
Speaker 2: new stylistic iteration, which is basically downstream from fash wave.
Speaker 2: Dark Mega promoted a form of dystopian inspired overt authoritarianism,
Speaker 2: with the assumed direct control laser eyes front and center,
Speaker 2: and for emphasizing militaristic domestic connotations, dimlylit images were usually
Speaker 2: edited in red or blue monocro. Dramatic images of Trump
Speaker 2: are fairly prominent, as is the presence of weapons and
Speaker 2: the occasional Nazi symbol I have a two examples of
Speaker 2: fashwave here for for for the for the gallery. James,
Speaker 2: what do you what do you think of this of
Speaker 2: these of these two pictures.
Speaker 3: First of all, they look like somebody used like a
Speaker 3: MS paint Like it's kind of that. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 3: tear of work.
Speaker 2: When none of these are well edited.
Speaker 1: No, they're not nineties horror. Yeah it is yet it
Speaker 1: is one of them, the one on the left. He
Speaker 1: looks like it's like like the eighth movie in like
Speaker 1: a Jason or Freddy type series, right where it's like
Speaker 1: straight to DVD, Like they're moving that ship right into
Speaker 1: the red box and they just paid a guy forty
Speaker 1: five dollars to mock up a cover.
Speaker 4: He is it is it is it is.
Speaker 2: It is a two B and direct to digital remake.
Speaker 3: I didn't. He's like, it looks like it. It's like
Speaker 3: like being developed in a dock room. It's like red
Speaker 3: and black.
Speaker 1: It's like all red and black. His eyes are glowing blue.
Speaker 1: He's skit. It appears to be like a long a
Speaker 1: springfield long rifle or something like that. I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: you the exact type, but that does I am now
Speaker 1: thinking about like So if you've ever loaded black powder,
Speaker 1: you tend to like have you know, like a wrapped
Speaker 1: you know cartridge that's got the ball and the powder
Speaker 1: and you rip it in half in your mouth and
Speaker 1: you pour the powder and then you like expect the Anyway,
Speaker 1: Trump is such a germophobe, I just desperately want to
Speaker 1: see him try to like manage a black powder rifle.
Speaker 1: I would, I would really deeply enjoy that. It's as
Speaker 1: good as a Tucker Carlson shooting. They like the sec
Speaker 1: fire rifle was a very funny moment. Yeah, guys who
Speaker 1: pretend to light guns.
Speaker 2: So and then the the other more horror inspired one
Speaker 2: has has text at the bottom that says it's time
Speaker 2: to just kill them with again with Trump and red
Speaker 2: laser eyes.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: I was upset to find out that the original person,
Speaker 2: like the original like Nazi who coined the term dark Mega,
Speaker 2: which which which kind of started this trend. Uh followed
Speaker 2: me on Twitter, which wasn't wasn't coreast Oh no? Oh no, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so that was that was a fun thing I discovered
Speaker 2: over the course of researching this episode. So one pro
Speaker 2: trumpan neo Nazi, described dark Mega as such, quote dark
Speaker 2: Mega is the aesthetic demand that Trump embrace a harder
Speaker 2: and more focused approach in the role only he can fill.
Speaker 2: He was too kind hearted, too forgiving Dark Mega demands
Speaker 2: he learned from his mistakes. Another another Dark Mega propelled
Speaker 2: It just described, uh, described the intentionality behind the movement
Speaker 2: of being quote, if you want to win, if you
Speaker 2: don't want to repeat the past, you have to get mean.
Speaker 2: You have to almost embrace the villain role that they're
Speaker 2: bringing you with. So that's fun. But uh, but like
Speaker 2: dark Mega's ambitions were to be more than just a
Speaker 2: meme but instead kind of be the first real attempt
Speaker 2: at a coherent post all right aesthetic that was being
Speaker 2: pushed by mainstream of political actors. And included in this
Speaker 2: push was kind of a pressuring back toward militant posturing
Speaker 2: after the failed pseudo coup on January sixth, because in
Speaker 2: those first few months after j six everyone was like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, we probably shouldn't be doing super overt like
Speaker 2: violent propaganda if we're if we're like on the right,
Speaker 2: and then over over time, and I think Dark Mega
Speaker 2: was part of this, was the right realizing that maybe
Speaker 2: they should just keep going and like go back to
Speaker 2: that much more kind of like militant posturing that they
Speaker 2: were doing beforehand. I have, I've I have a few
Speaker 2: other a few other dark, dark mega images here, one
Speaker 2: with Trump and a skull mask and uh and pit
Speaker 2: vipers holding a bible in front of a vipers.
Speaker 1: Pit Vipers are a type of like ski sunglasses that
Speaker 1: have a very distinctive look. There's nothing wrong with them.
Speaker 1: The company is actually anti Nazi.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Never people post their pit vipers pictures, they will like
Speaker 1: donate the price of that pair of pit vipers to
Speaker 1: you know, the ad L or something. But they've become
Speaker 1: a signifier for Nazis for reasons that we probably don't
Speaker 1: need to explain it.
Speaker 2: No, but you can read an article by me and
Speaker 2: Robert and Bellingcatter about white boys. Want you really need
Speaker 2: that right now if you really want to hear more
Speaker 2: about pit vipers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can explain this ship at length, bro.
Speaker 2: And then and then I have these two other images
Speaker 2: of Trump in front of these American flags, and one
Speaker 2: of them's edited in a glitchy style with him holding
Speaker 2: a it looks like some type like machine gun or something.
Speaker 1: Tommy, Yeah, m it can't really test too small to see. No, no,
Speaker 1: that's got to be some sort of like either ar
Speaker 1: nine millimeter carbine with a suppressor on. It is what
Speaker 1: it looks like ice to me. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's generic. He's gonna yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: kind of Wolfenstein style almost that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of these guys are obsessed with Wolfenstein. Yes,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, very good, James, you figured it out.
Speaker 1: There's a longer conversation to be had because Wolfenstein the
Speaker 1: most recent game, not a pro Nazi.
Speaker 2: Game, anti Nazi, but because you know, it's.
Speaker 1: It's a game where like the Nazis won the war
Speaker 1: and you're like fighting the YadA YadA YadA, because they're
Speaker 1: trying to do like future Nazi troopers, and it's like
Speaker 1: a video game where you want to make the bad
Speaker 1: guys look cool, same thing as like making the demons
Speaker 1: look cool and doom and that you know, it's like
Speaker 1: for Nazis to not like that.
Speaker 2: Very very selectively edited clips of Wolfenstein cut scenes and
Speaker 2: music appears in fashwave propaganda fairly often. The piers in
Speaker 2: Schizaway propaganda, which is kind of another downstream iteration of
Speaker 2: fash wave, which I am not going to cover on
Speaker 2: this episode. And I guess the one other meme style
Speaker 2: we have here is red and dark blue monochrome with
Speaker 2: Trump with these blue leys, and this is kind of
Speaker 2: the this is like the main dark mega aesthetic here
Speaker 2: is this one that's just like red with with with
Speaker 2: with like a dark dark blue as like the accent
Speaker 2: and then these little laser eye things. So dark megas
Speaker 2: had the goal of serving as both a rebrand and
Speaker 2: an attempt to reunify the various disparate factions of the
Speaker 2: online right into using attention grabbing authoritarian propaganda to push
Speaker 2: Trump and his supporters even further into the extreme while
Speaker 2: holding on the legitimacy that is lacking in the contemporary
Speaker 2: sketchiness of like the Proud Boy groups or like Patriot Front, which,
Speaker 2: especially after J six, the Proud Boys legitimacy took a
Speaker 2: big hit. And all of these fucking dark Mega guys
Speaker 2: think that Patriot fronts like a fed op. So it's
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's a it's a way to kind
Speaker 2: of like push a new version of the alt right
Speaker 2: that still relies on the legitimacy of Trump. To quote
Speaker 2: the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, quote. The secondary aim of
Speaker 2: Dark Mega is to launder more extreme narratives and aesthetics
Speaker 2: into the mainstream Trumpist movement, an attempt to introduce mainstream
Speaker 2: conservatives to more extreme parts of the right through melding
Speaker 2: Trump memes with these different aesthetics. So, like we kind
Speaker 2: of mentioned before, the previous attempt at this was the
Speaker 2: White Boy Summer trend from twenty twenty one, which I
Speaker 2: and Robert have already wrote about before. And White Boy
Speaker 2: Summer was influenced by very similar kind of fash wave
Speaker 2: telegram aesthetics, but it was only really successful in leaking
Speaker 2: through to one or two Republican politicians, namely Paul Gosar.
Speaker 1: Paul Gosar you can look him up if you want.
Speaker 1: He's one of the Republicans who had a degree of
Speaker 1: mainstream legitimacy and was also super tight with like just
Speaker 1: straight up we want to set off bombs place as Nazis. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But Dark Mega, on the other hand, was picked up
Speaker 2: by a large handful of conservative politicians as well as
Speaker 2: like the usual suspects made up of right wing influencers
Speaker 2: and content creators. Among the Dark Mega proponents were Republican
Speaker 2: candidates like Tim Swain, a former strategist now Blazed TV
Speaker 2: employee Logan Hall, Andrew McCarthy, far right propagandist Jack sobiec
Speaker 2: now former Congressman Madison Cawthorne, and former White House lawyer
Speaker 2: Andrew Closter, and was even boosted by the father of accelerationism,
Speaker 2: Nick Land was a brief Dark Mega proponent himself. Famously,
Speaker 2: Marjorie Taylor Green joined in on the action in May
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty two under the hashtag Ultra Mega, but
Speaker 2: with the same like red monochrome images with the with
Speaker 2: the big glowing eyes. Probably the most upsetting bit of
Speaker 2: dark Mega lore was a post that Madison Cawthorne wrote
Speaker 2: on Instagram. He he he had this post full of
Speaker 2: like here's the list of America First conservatives. Look how
Speaker 2: small the list actually is the people who are truly
Speaker 2: America First. And attached to this little image of this list,
Speaker 2: he wrote an extremely unhinged Dark Mega post. This was
Speaker 2: also in May of twenty twenty two. Quote, the time
Speaker 2: for genteel politics as usual has come to an end.
Speaker 2: It's time for the rise of the new Right. It's
Speaker 2: time for Dark Mega to truly take command. We have
Speaker 2: an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able
Speaker 2: to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak
Speaker 2: members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We
Speaker 2: are coming unquote. So this this rhetoric did not secure
Speaker 2: Vess and cawthorne continued employment in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it turns out most people in national polotics are
Speaker 1: not entirely telegram brained. They cannot just had their skulls
Speaker 1: melted by that shit.
Speaker 2: So yeah to quote, so yeah, to quote an analysis
Speaker 2: from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. Quote dark
Speaker 2: Mega is an embodiment of the revenge president burst from
Speaker 2: the far rights urge to reclaim what they crave and
Speaker 2: have lost power. Proponents seek to punish their political enemies
Speaker 2: without attending to political correctness. Dark Mega is an appeal
Speaker 2: to accept the true desires of the most dissident Trump
Speaker 2: supporters and mainstream their feelings through the medium of memes,
Speaker 2: which played a crucial role in twenty sixteen election. So
Speaker 2: dark Mega peaked as an online search topic back in
Speaker 2: May of twenty twenty two, and it may have reached
Speaker 2: like peak popularity in actual like spread of memes as
Speaker 2: early as March of twenty twenty two. I think I
Speaker 2: think it peaked in May because there was a few
Speaker 2: news articles about it, so more kind of normies were
Speaker 2: like googling what it was. But it actually the actual
Speaker 2: peak was only in March of twenty twenty two. It
Speaker 2: only lasted like three months. You can you can still
Speaker 2: find some dark Mega bubbling under the surface, but only
Speaker 2: by like random Nazis and like that doesn't that doesn't
Speaker 2: that that's not signifying any kind of like political movement.
Speaker 2: And the reason why dark Mega kind of stopped being
Speaker 2: effective in between between March and May of twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two is that there was there was there was something
Speaker 2: that happened that summer and that spring that effectively killed
Speaker 2: dark Mega while also dealing a pretty big body blow
Speaker 2: to fast Wave in general. And we will learn more
Speaker 2: about about Brandon's special secret operation in part two. That's right,
Speaker 2: this is going to be a surprise two parter because
Speaker 2: I wrote get too many words?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Because this took an hour and a half
Speaker 1: to record of dense, dense information. So now it's two days.
Speaker 1: You guys get to enjoy this for two days.
Speaker 4: It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone
Speaker 4: Media for more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our
Speaker 4: website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 4: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 4: you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
Speaker 4: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.