Apparent? Shut the fuck up.
Throwing in the word “apparent” is cowardly, but it’s also a lot cheaper than being sued for libel by a fucking billionaire.
So at what point of doing something does it actually become the thing that it was?
Seems pretty obvious to me.
From a legal point of view it hasn’t been tried in a court of law, which is why words like “apparently” and “allegedly” are used.
In this case I think the point is to be on the nose about how fucking ridiculous it is - just from this article:
Steve Bannon made a gesture that is identical to a Nazi salute
Bannon made the gesture — extending his arm, palm down, fingers straight, at an upward angle away from his chest, which is also what Nazi salutes look like
the gesture was also identical to one made by billionaire Elon Musk
extended his arm straight out, palm down, fingers straight, at an upward angle away from his chest. Which, whatever the billionaire’s intention, just happens to be precisely how a Nazi salute is performed.
Musk repeated the gesture. Here’s how that looked. <pic of Musk doing a Nazi salute>
Oxford’s top definition for Apparent is “clearly visible or understood; obvious”
And the second (which is how they are using it) is “seeming real or true, but not necessarily so”.
Having read the article, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The undertones of the writing seem to be “There have been some attempts to deny that these are Nazi salutes (and not from the people making the gestures), but plausible deniability is rapidly running out and it definitely looks exactly like a Nazi salute”.
Getting upset when journalists explicitly flag their interpretations is pretty fucked up and fragile.
They came to the same fucking interpretation as you did, but that’s still not good enough. “Apparently” they don’t just have to oppose nazis, they have to participate in your daily Two Minutes Of Hate. Clearly differentiating between objective observation and the inferences drawn from those objective observations IS A GOOD THING. So fucking fragile.
I’d like to go back to a simpler time. A time when nazis got shot in the fucking face.
It’s always incredible to see how so many people say they’re willing to do something is contrasted with the close to zero people who do it.
I’m 100% sure if you remove the momentum of the system your statement will become a lie.
Judge for yourselves … pretty blatant Nazi salute if I’ve ever seen one. Short and quick but it was a plainly obvious gesture.
1930s German Nazis would have laughed at it for being so pitiful and weak but it was there from what I saw.
https://www.youtube.com/live/0BN-62AQT4Q?t=29801s
If the linked time doesn’t work … scroll through to the end of his 15 minute speech at 8:16:32
I can’t even think of a way that this could be given some veil of innocence either. The “my heart goes out to you” thing was always bullshit, but it was an attempt at plausible deniability. I don’t think even that could be done here
It’s just an involuntary hand movement, like when someone reaches for glasses they are already wearing, or reach out for a phone that’s not in the pocket. He got the habit from all the times he does the Nazi salute behind closed doors. /s (but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s actually true)
In times past, anyone doing anything like that around the president would have put the president on the fast track to impeachment.
Today, this will just slide, and we’ll have another piece of outrageous news tomorrow that nobody will be outraged about for more than 10 minutes. Different values today I guess…
It’s because impeachment is a partisan process. If the Republicans had an ounce of integrity (or even self-preservation) they would have joined the Democrats in voting to convict when Trump was impeached multiple times previously.
The second time was their easiest out. He wasn’t President, he had just lost an election, most of the country was disgusted with his antics post-election or at least just tired with it all.
They could’ve kneecapped him right then and barred him from running again. He would have left Washington a pariah. Most Republians hated the man, and this was their chance to shoot the rabid dog, but they were afraid of getting primaried over it. Which itself is ridiculous because most of the GOP senators were 3-5 years from their next primary.
That was when the GOP was fully-captured.
The goal of fox news post nixon was to prevent anything similar to what happened to nixon as a result of watergate. That and the fact that wall street robber barons were mot punished for the business plot fascist coup attempt against fdr and then the son and grandson of that coup attempt’s primary architect were both sitting presidents and now America has been obviously fascist to anyone paying attention the last 40-50 years now they are so emboldened they don’t even try and hide it.
It’s not so much values as it is a lack of power in the working class. These things can be done because the greater population has no power or influence. Since their is no organization to resist it the mass of the population falls into two areas of “cope”. The crowd that knows it’s fucked up and has no one to organize against it. And the crowd that knows it’s fucked up but “no one is doing anything” so they find a place to normalize or deny it. It’s not “really” a Nazi salute.
You may call this “values”. But I’d say it’s more about how well the ruling class has controlled and passified the population.
Also, when half the country is worried about putting food on the table or paying rent. They really don’t have time to give a fuck. Material conditions really shape what we might perceive as a “lack of values”.
So at this point, the leaders of both major political wings of MAGA have openly done the fascist salute.
Maga America needs to be denazified.
Hopefully the same army that took care of fascists the last time they crawled out from under their rocks.
