Does anyone remember when a chud brought a bunch of pepe frog signs to a right wing rally and he ended up getting the shit beaten out of him by a bunch of chud boomers who didnt know what memes were?
I think it was during the trump presidency, but early into the trump presidency before qanon. I had a random flashback thinking about it earlier. I’m pretty sure one of the pepes was like Bain from Batman and it had text that said “the fire rises” or something cringe like that.
Hazy memory on that but I think it did happen. I also remember a fascist guy showing up to a Trump rally with I think a swastika and the boomers getting mad at him calling him a socialist and his buddy trying to apologize for him and telling people he's actually on the right
The best part is if I remember right those right-wing chuds were there to protest something that wasn't happening. They had tricked themselves into believing a group of antifa were going to show up to rip down the Hermann Park statue of Sam Houston. I think what was actually happening were some Avakian revcoms were going to hand out fliers. Every Bob Avakian communist I know in Houston is like an 80 year old mild-mannered mail sorter, so that would have been an interesting conflict I guess.
And then meme guy is there like "What about the memes." As if these milita dorks in their chestrigs and 3 percenter caps aren't all cosplaying too. Oh I'm sorry a fellow fascist brought some frog memes to your fictional defense against insurrection that you literally brainwashed yourself into believing was happening because an 87 year old librarian handed out a newspaper saying "Mao was a good boy and we'd like a list of email addresses please"
I remember feeling sad for that guy. I mean fuck him for being fash but he just wanted to touch grass and make friends. I like to believe that after being rejected by the right he switched to being a commie and found a party that actually accepted him.
This is why I don't care that much about the internet fascists, or the Patriot Front or any group like them. Obviously they should still eat lead, but they just aren't going to work.
This is what happens when internet poisoned losers meet real life fascists. The scary ones aren't the guys doing elaborate dog whistles and wearing costumes. They're relatively regular people who probably own businesses and have families and go to church and carry a certain amount of respect in their communities, and also happen to follow the tenets of American fascism without consciously reproducing the iconography.
The internet losers care most about aesthetics (memes?), and the scary fascists care more about results. They still care about aesthetics, but the aesthetics are homegrown Americana, not transplanted Nazism. The internet poisons everything, even fascism.
The ones who consciously align themselves with Nazis are not the biggest threat, except stochastically. I'm more concerned about the ones who unironically believe Nazis were leftist socialist marxists while also perfectly reproducing the Nazi platform.
And obviously the internet freaks are capable, perhaps only capable, of mass shootings. But I honestly think they were 75% of the way to a shooting without the fascism. Also, while shootings are more psychologically damaging, the greater threats statistically to comrades and minorities are car crashes and health issues. We can't let them have an outsized influence on our minds.