The Trump administration's embrace of neo-Nazi themes isn't 'trolling.' It's the real deal

At this point I think American political experts are all pretty comfortable calling the Trump administration, its objectives, its rhetoric, and its hatemongering underlings fascist. It is simply true, objectively, and while I would argue that it has been true among Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society types for several decades now and experts probably should have clued into it around the time "mainstream" conservatives on Fox News first started arguing that laws weren't laws when conservatives broke them and that elections weren't elections when conservatives lost, at least we've mostly reached a nice comfortable consensus that yes, absolutely, the Republican Party is now a fascist party actively seeking the dismantling of the republic.

Bit of a shame it couldn't have happened before an actual violent coup attempt took place, and even more of a shame that every media conglomerate in the nation decided afterwards that even violent felon-led fascism sounded like a pretty good deal if it meant they could get a few more mergers approved and regulations axed, but here we are. That's the way it went in other fascist takeovers, after all, and I don't think anyone can make a plausible case that our upper classes are not just as self-centered and stupid as any past historic enablers. No, we probably should have seen this rapid press and institutional collapse coming a bit sooner ourselves, if we're going to be honest about it. Touché.

Now that we've established that the f-word is what's guiding Republicanism in its current and stupidest incarnation, it's time for our political experts and hangers-on to ask themselves the next uncomfortable question. It's worth asking where this Sudden Onset But Not Really Fascism came from. It didn't come out of nowhere. Aside from Donald himself, who is off doing his own bizarre things that mostly involve spray-painting things gold, misunderstanding tariffs, and putting himself in charge of the Kennedy Center for some reason, Trump's underlings aren't the least bit shy in promoting the heritage of their own personal brands of fascism.

On the contrary, in fact. From the America First slogans to the hatefest in Madison Square Garden to the defense secretary's noteworthy tattoos to Elon Musk slapping out an impressively crisp full-on Heil Hitler, most of these chuds are quite open about the muses that guide them. Neo-Nazism. That's the through line.

It's specifically neo-Nazism that the Trump movement has embraced as the core of its worldview and rhetoric. Not white nationalism. Not white supremacy. They could embrace those things and authoritarianism both without embracing the trappings of neo-Nazism in specific, and yet it's the fringe-of-the-fringe neo-Nazi stuff that keeps coming to the fore. Not just in "Great Replacement Theory," and not just in the constant winks to 14 this and 88 that among Trump's most fervent backers; it's omnipresent.

These couch-fornicating weirdos are obsessed neo-Nazism specifically, and seem outright giddy whenever they find an opportunity to boost American neo-Nazi subculture.

That's the latest Department of Homeland Security recruitment video. You don't need to watch that, though if you do you'll note that it's mostly homage to American militia movement weirdness, all breaking down doors and shooting guns and setting dogs loose on people, all set to a stolen Jay-Z track about the benefits of being a drug dealer for some reason. "What if a dusty white terrorist group really liked rap music" would seem to have been the premise.

You can just skip to the punchline, though, to see what it was all leading up to.

Ah. Got it.

Now, there are very few circumstances in which you'll see that particular family of fonts in the wild. We are not at Oktoberfest, and we're not looking at the menu of an establishment renowned for its beer selection and top-notch bratwurst, so that just leave the third thing: skinhead flyers.

Unless the Department of Homeland Security is announcing the opening of a new restaurant, we can be pretty sure that this is a homage specifically to neo-Nazi subculture. Not Nazi culture, even, but the trashy dumbass-inhabited homages to Nazism that cropped up after the original movement's leaders were planted six feet deep.

This is a thing that keeps happening, over and over, and DHS is at the center of most of it. At some point we are going to find out the names of the particular chuds that run the department's online marketing and recruiting efforts, and that's going to be interesting because whoever these people are, they are definitely neck-deep in neo-Nazi culture and tropes. Lots of references to "heritage." Lots of references to a midcentury aesthetic of a particular sort.

It's sometimes difficult to find the line between American white nationalism and neo-Nazism because the two groups consisted of many of the same members, with "the line" solely dependent on the day's costume choices. The DHS spokescreatures, though, have been doing their best to make it clear.

An official government account invoking a deeply antisemitic book published under the auspices of one of America's most consequential and genocidal neo-Nazi groups is not an accident. The DHS home office continues to display broad knowledge of the whole of the neo-Nazi landscape, focusing on those themes specifically when recruiting new, like-minded members.

That is not trolling, as well-placed media denialists would still have it. That is signaling. Many of these meme-heavy works are not particularly coherent to normal, not explicitly hate-riddled Americans—the reason that one particular font style is found rarely in the wild is because it's all but unreadable, and thus useful only for its stylistic connotations—but a tattooed white supremacist steeped in neo-Nazi subcultures knows what the Save America font means and what the slogan itself means, and sloganeering is being put to use to attract specifically the sort of Americans who are down that particular cultural rabbit hole.

Antisemitism, obsession with Heritage and Homeland, the establishment of concentration camps as top government priority: We're being government not just by fascists, but by fascists who learned their trade wallowing in the grossest and most violent pools of the far-right.

Nor is it just the Trump administration embracing neo-Nazi rhetoric, inside the Republican Party; Republican officeholders and candidates are increasingly becoming even bolder than that.

You'll note there's still no equivalent "perhaps we should not be directly invoking neo-Nazi themes from federal government offices" push from anywhere else in the Republican Party, at least not among anyone who hasn't already been booted out of the party for insufficient Dear Leaderism. The reason for that is, quite obviously, because objecting to these constant shoutouts to neo-Nazi rhetoric will immediately land you in hot water with the Trump administration officials pushing that rhetoric, which will in turn get you yelled at by the dementia-addled man in charge of it all after those neo-Nazi backers come running to him to tell him that you're one of "the bad ones" now. It's Stephen Miller's White House, and Laura Loomer's portcullis, and you're not seeing the hateful grandpa figurehead unless you make it through those freaks first.

I have no real hope that national media figures will brush off their denialism to note that government accounts pushing neo-Nazi messaging does not count as being edgy, or trolling, or fighting against Woke. But they're lying about it, or just deluding themselves, because pushing neo-Nazi messaging just counts as pushing neo-Nazi messaging. There's no such thing as being an "ironic" neo-Nazi, you're just a Nazi like everyone else at the meeting. There's no such thing as "ironically" clubbing a policeman with fire extinguisher, or "ironically" putting up a gallows in front of the Capitol, or "ironically" hoarding guns. You're just the thing.

This is going to turn out to be consequential as we go forward. DHS can't possibly staff up enough to spend all the money they've been given, not without just shoveling it off to private corporations in an orgy of straight-up crookedness, and morale inside the department is reported to be low because of, you know, all that horrible stuff they keep getting caught doing on camera.

There's really only a few groups of people that might still be interested in joining the Department of Child Snatching and Arresting Grandmas, and that's violence-inclined ex-law enforcement officers who have washed out in their prior jobs or violent militia types who always dreamed of becoming a snatch-and-grab sort of officer but could never before make the cut.

There's going to be a lot of gang members and a whole lot of recognizable tattoos in the new crop of hires, and not only does the department's media team know it—they're banking on it. And that, in turn, means that what we've been seeing from DHS agents these last few months will seem mild compared to the chaos that will start when the new crop makes it through their hurried and half-assed training.

It'll be on purpose, and it would be worth knowing the exact names of the people focusing federal government rhetoric on neo-Nazi dog whistles because the consequences on the streets may start becoming clear Real Soon Now.

Update: Oh c'mon now.