Trump, Pence use Nazi concentration camp symbol in ads targeting political enemies

[Judi Lynn]

Hunter
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday June 18, 2020 · 11:51 AM CDT

On the immediate heels of scheduling a campaign rally in Tulsa—where Black Wall Street was burned to the ground—for Juneteenth and shifting the Republican National Convention to coincide with the 60th Jacksonville, Florida's infamous Klan-stoked Ax Handle Saturday riots, the Trump campaign has made a new symbolic move that cannot reasonably be brushed aside as coincidence.

In new Facebook ads and posts, the campaign is urging supporters to sign a new petition condemning antifa, an ideological lumping of anti-fascism activists held up by the party as the most recent enemy of Trump and Trump's nation. They are doing so, in part, by using one of the most notorious symbols of Nazi concentration camps: the inverted red triangle, the patch used by Nazi guards to designate those imprisoned as political enemies of the fascist state. The campaign is using the symbol not accidentally, but correctly: It was, indeed, the badge used by fascists to identify enemies of fascism.

Link to tweet

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While The Washington Post quotes an expert historian who says it is "hard to imagine it's done on purpose," due to the relative obscurity of the symbol, it is harder to imagine the dead-on use of that particular symbol to designate anti-fascist enemies was done by accident. The campaign has repeatedly adopted white nationalist and anti-Semitic imagery and themes, sometimes replacing them and sometimes not, after being confronted on their meaning. The campaign and White House both have also courted white nationalist reporters and lavished special attention on outlets, like OAN, that have promoted conspiracy theories pulled from white nationalist groups.

More:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/18/1954135/-Trump-Pence-use-Nazi-concentration-camp-symbol-in-ads-targeting-political-enemies

[soothsayer]

1. Snip from Heather Cox Richardson's latest "Letters from an American"

Snip

Parker Molloy, editor at Media Matters, noted that this sort of dog whistle is designed to attract like-minded racists, but also to make opponents seem “paranoid, easily offended, and see Nazis everywhere they look.” She also suggested that this was a deliberate attempt to avoid having to pay for more ads because media would pick up the story and run with it. “It’s expensive to run ads,” she wrote, “but media coverage is free.” She noted that it’s far cheaper to run something offensive, get banned, and then cry “censorship--” which feeds the right-wing’s existing narrative-- than it is to pay for ads.