Today's post is ICHH's "
Dogwhistle Politics and Nazi Code Hunting." Gare and Mia take a deep dive into what is, superficially, a comparatively minor issue—that of conspiratorial thinking on the left. They take as their jumping off point a tweet from the Gestapo featuring John Gast's "American Progress." It's an overtly fascist tweet because the artwork itself celebrates the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and the text reinforces that the poster thinks that this genocide is a good thing, and also because an overtly fascist organization that is currently carrying out a genocide tweeted it. If they'd tweeted a picture of kittens, it would still be a fascist tweet, because it is a fascist organization posting on a platform owned by fascists. Nevertheless, certain segments of the extremely online left and liberals have convinced themselves that there are also
secret fascist messages in the tweet.
The basic thesis of the episode is, "no, you fools, they don't need to dogwhistle anymore because they are in power and doing fascism." But there's another, even more important point here, which is that we're all still basically stuck in 2016-7 and we need to be updating both our thinking and our strategies. I feel a certain way about this because for all that I mocked it back in the day, conspiratorial thinking worked very well for the right, and I sort of disagree with Gare and Mia that it won't reach a particular type of low-information voter who likes to feel privy to exciting secret knowledge. But also, it is counterproductive and has people who might otherwise be useful and productive chasing their tails playing numerology on X, the Everything App.
At any rate, it's an interesting psychological insight and as someone who is not immune from Extremely Online Thinking, it's a useful check-in.
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