So the alt-right now has a semi-official logo, introduced to the world by Richard Spencer, the guy who came up with the term in the first place, at a weird press-conference/debutante ball for the Nazi-based movement in Washington DC on Friday.
Here it is:
Spencer, who designed the logo himself, “said it had a young, futuristic look, in contrast to the flags and eagles that adorn the logos of the past,” according to Mother Jones.
But one aspect of the logo unintentionally recalls a rather memorable bit of white supremacist branding from years past — the infamous KKK hood. So I’ve taken the liberty of photoshopping-up what I think is a far more honest logo, which you can see at the top of the post.
It’s hard to overstate just how weird the press conference seems to have been. Its location was secret, so reporters had to go to another location first to learn where it really was — a technique popularized by raves in the late 80s and 90s.
“Reporters covering the event were instructed to go to the entrance of the Old Ebbitt Grill, near the White House,” Mother Jones notes.
There, they would encounter a man in a charcoal suit and brown tie who would reveal the new location of the conference.
During the press conference itself, Spencer proudly declared that the alt-right was free of “cucks,” and waxed poetic about what the world might be like if people like him ran it.
“If the alt-right were in power, we would all have arrived here via magnetic levitation trains,” he told the crowd, according to Mother Jones.
We would have passed by great forests and beautiful images of blond women in a wheat field with their hands, running them through the wheat.
Keep dreaming, dude.
But feel free to use my improved logo!
Wasn’t Hitler a decent artist ? I remember having seen a bunch of painting by him and they were what I expect from a local artist.
However, his state *was* unable to make trains run on time (at least, any better than the previous one). Which is part of the joke.
@Mark : in addition to add to the numerous true thing other commenters have said, black people don’t hate white people in general. Some of them are racist, but it’s almost never anti-white racism because that shit don’t really exist.
To take a practical example, in the city I live, there is two groups of black people who are very racist. (note : as usual, thoses two groups aren’t all black people)
The first groups are made of people coming from Guadeloupe, Martinique, and other french island, and they believe that african people are thieving low lives that need to be put in prison or at least heavily monitored. Imagine the alt right spiel about welfare mom, said vocally at any occasion. They often call african people “black” or “nigger”, despite the fact they are black too, and it’s decently hard to tell the two group apart. (about as hard than telling a northern french from a southern german one before they start talking)
The second group is made of people from Mali, Nigeria, and other old african french colonies. While, for obvious reasons, they don’t like the aforementioned guadeloupeans, their racism tend to be concentrated on arabs and especially Romani, that they see as the reason why non-white have a bad rap in french. They have a more nazi-like way to talk about them, saying they should be round up in camps and send back to where they belong.
In both case, and in a totally unsurprising way, their racism is directed toward marginalized groups who aren’t themselves, not toward privilegied people.
The closer I ever have seen from anti-white racism is various people disparaging french women, either saying that they are slutty, that they lack a strong man, that they throw themselve at the speaker, or other sexual remarks. It’s at best very mild compared to, you know, talking about mass deportations or imprisonement, and it’s likely more an issue of misogyny than an issue of racism.
In short, Mark, talk to unprivilegied people more. You will quickly see that racism don’t work the way you think it do.
@ guest
That’s the claim; but it was untrue. Italian trains were famously rubbish. There were some improvements in the 1920s which the fascists claimed credit for (presumably by means of time machine) but even after that they were notoriously unreliable.
It may even be that the phrase started as a joke. Passengers waiting at a railway station saying “Well, at least he got the trains running on time” sort of thing.
So, like, if a klansman died and came back as a ghost, would the ghost look like a guy wearing two sheets over his head?
Re: The graphic design problems of bigots:
What OoglyBoggles and Axecalibur said. This attitude also seeps into their obsessive individualism, often characterized by an undying loyalty to the ideas of Ayn Rand.
Although Atlas Shrugged is considered Rand’s magnum opus, the ideal of an uncompromising visionary standing against the forces of conformity is fairly thoroughly expressed in The Fountainhead. What Rand fails to address in any of her books is that compromise is necessary in the real world because the world is made up of more people than the protagonist, and they all have their own needs, dreams, and goals that may sometimes clash heavily with the vision of the main character; In her world, the unyielding nature of the protagonist invariably commands the respect of everyone around him, including wealthy benefactors who provide him with the funds he needs to continue acting like an insufferable little shit.
Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, a fan of Ayn Rand, originally wrote characters such as The Question and The Creeper as Howard Roark-esque, uncompromising supermen, whose survival is largely secured by rich benefactors who “like their nerve”. While later portrayals by different authors tended to soften the characters’ outlook a bit, I would personally have loved to read about more realistic struggles of characters who attempt to live their lives according to impossible ideals while not having the entire world magically fall in line with their reasoning. Alan Moore briefly touched on the subject with The Question/Mr. A pastiche Rorschach in Watchmen, when we saw his miserable living conditions.
Of course, Rand herself produced nothing new; her self-centered ethics and unrealistic social model are what any immature child believes in before they learn that other people are just as important as them and that the world does not revolve around them. There is a reason why Objectivism (Rand’s “philosophy”) is popular amongst people with privilege (usually well-off white cishet men): Their privilege removes the need for them to treat unprivileged people with respect, thus solidifying their belief that a compromise-free livestyle is possible, even desirable.
And let’s not forget that bigots of the more overtly racist variety tend to idolize the past, or what they think the past was; what matters most to them is what has been, not what could be. The imagery and stories they produce are usually borrowed directly from the imagery and stories they are already in love with. There’s no innovation to be had from that mindset.
Re: Trains and fascists
My personal encounters with people who don’t seem to care about the gravity with which racism, xenophobia and general hatred of anything that doesn’t fit some narrow ideal permeates the fascist ideology suggest that their half-baked understanding of nazis is “people who don’t let me do what I want”. They commonly believe that fascists were evil not because of the hatred of minorities, but because they were supposedly extremely orderly and commanding, like strict parents or something. The strictness is then used to describe their trains as well, although the myth is untrue. Other than that, I’ve noticed that people who use the term “nazi” to insult others also frequently demonstrate some very nazi-esque ideas themselves. Make of that what you will.
And yes, I have heard the phrase commonly attributed to Mussolini, but also to Hitler. No idea why.
Who’s gonna break it to the Nazis that we already have wheat?
What’s interesting about the coverage of that press conference is that it makes it clear that, contrary to what’s often said, what the alt-right find attractive about Trump is not that he would be a “strong leader”. In a sense, it’s quite the reverse! What they like about Trump is his weakness: specifically, his weakness on policy. It means they can view him as a kind of golem, an (almost) empty vessel they can fill with the programme of their choice, and set loose against their enemies.
“If the alt-right were in power, we would all have arrived here via magnetic levitation trains,”
I wouldn’t trust you arseholes to clean the toilet on a regular train.
Hey EJ
I’ve got a limerick for you….
(12 + 144 + 20 + 3 * root 4)/7 + (5 * 11) = 9^2 + 0
“Vote for us! A stock photo on every billboard!”
(Fingers crossed for the nesting blockquotes…)
ETA: Yyyyyyyeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhh
Masse Mysteria:
I was also totally thinking Elovena.
As for maglev trains, have they ever tried ogling pedestrian women from a vehicle that runs 200 mph?
Oh beautiful for spacious skies/And amber waves of breeding vessels…
I haven’t seen anything that so hilariously captures the mindset of its creators since the Trump/Pence penetration logo. This one reminds me of Colorforms.
As for blonde hair, besides being a signal of youth (blonde hair frequently darkens with age), I think insecure racists generally prize recessive traits in women. It always comes back to cuckphobia and uncertainty about paternity with these types.
@Falconer – Yay, you’re back!!! Wonderful to see you again! We’ve missed you.
How are your twins? Mine are nearly five, and…well, I know what you mean about less free time. Yesterday I spent an hour cleaning half a tube of strawberry Chapstick off a fire engine, coping with a lake of fish oil in the kitchen, repairing the couch and the bike pump, and issuing a judicial ruling on whether Twin A is or is not a “roopy stoopy” (the landmark case Did Not v. Did Too was cited as precedent). It’s exhausting. They’re always three steps ahead.
Oh, and not only would they have passed by huge fields of HB filled wheat, they would have seen “great forests”. If only the left would stop cutting trees down!
@Buttercup
Anglin has some… “interesting” views on that. Apparently global warming is a hoax, but there definitely will be some real global warming if those pesky South American and African people don’t stop destroying nature around them.
@Imaginary Petal
Hah!
@Ohlmann
I’d generously describe Hitler’s paintings as “unremarkable”. My SO ventured “biscuit tin” – but not a very good brand of biscuits. Basic competence at putting paint on canvas, but obvious difficulties with colour and composition.
Regarding the right’s ineptitude at design in general… I suspect a large part of it is choosing a designer based on their level of evil rather than their skill at design, but I’m just as happy to speculate that fundamental lack of empathy and inflated sense of their own ideas’ importance is indeed behind it.
I am a little hurt that y’all didn’t ask me for my opinions on the “Why are bigots bad graphic designers?” question (I’m still a graphic designer, I sear to Katie!) but y’all said what I was going to say anyways, so….*shrug*
This question is unanswerable, because it contains an unsupported presupposition. Make both of your points openly so that they can both be rebutted. Don’t embed one in your sentence structure as if it were accepted fact.
No. Care to explain why you think that might be?
This is pretty clearly untrue, Mark. There are many law makers in your country who are continually eroding the protection of pregnant people’s (mostly women) bodily autonomy, without consequence. Judges in my country and yours frequently blame the victim and are lenient on the perpetrator in rape cases, and see few or no consequences. What consequences have you personally faced for your anti-feminism?
It’s kind of hilarious that you would make this faulty comparison on a post about the alt right, a movement that includes many open, proud Nazis (as well as the more covert dog-whistle kind). You have lots to say about feminists, but very little to say about them. Do you actually dislike Nazis? Or are they just a convenient rhetorical device for you?
Mark – The short answer to your questions is “No.” Happy to clear that up for you.
I spent a while looking at the logo trying to work out what the negative between the A & R was meant to represent – I thought it might be another letter I couldn’t quite see ( Maybe a bit of an ‘M’). But no, I think they just suck at spacing.
Mark – i think you’re confusuing social recrecussions from saying ‘i don’t think women are full people’ with actual reprecussions where the controlling power in the land rounds up all dissenters and puts them into camps.
I think you’re also confusing things said prediminately by NOT people of colour with things they actually say.
Do some research, listen to minorities, and maybe you’ll be able to see your errors.
So the short answer is ‘no’. No, feminism does not equal nazism, and i’m sure the actual nazis of the world would be horrified that you ever thought to confuse the two.
Out of curiousity, have you tried this rhetoric on a alt-right blog?
@Alan
Tee. Hee
@PI
Oh no no no, sorry about that. Do you have any insights? Critique of the logo? I’d love to hear a more learned takedown if you please (all I got was ‘space shapes is stupid’ and ‘the R looks like boobs’) 🙂
@ axe
Aww, maths puppy. I was wondering if it actually added up; but can you suss out the Limerick? 🙂
@ paradoxy
If it’s any consolation my first thought was “they should have asked paradoxy” but my second thought was this was a gig that you might not want.
(12 + 144 + 20 + 3 * root 4)/7 + (5 * 11) = 9^2 + 0
Uh
One two added with one four four,
8
Plus twenty plus three by root four
8
Divided by seven
6
Plus five by eleven
6
Equals nine squared and nothing more
8
I guess.
Oh look, Farky Fark has farted again!
Let’s break things down for our wondering fartlet, shall we?
No, we don’t. We hate SEXISM. And the idiots who keep perpetuating and propagating it. Like you. There ARE decent men in the world, and I think they outnumber the indecent, but the indecent ones sure are loud and clamorous. And STUPID.
No, because it’s not a club you belong to, with uniforms and insignia and cards and shit. Anyone can use feminism. It’s not limited to one group or another. Feminism is a type of thinking, a tool of analysis. You know, something you use when using your br…oh, never mind.
That’s real cute, Farky, but it’s bullshit. Germans didn’t have a choice about being a member of the Nazi party if they wanted decent jobs and for their wives and kids not to be shot. I know this, because that’s what happened to my grandfather when he was conscripted into the SS, and my other grandfather wasn’t exactly given a choice about entering the Kriegsmarine, either…it was that or be sent to the Eastern Front. In SIBERIA. Do you know how many Germans came back from there alive? I do, and it wasn’t many.
BTW, the Nazis HATED feminism, because it was all about liberating women from their traditional subordinate role as breeding/cooking/cleaning/child-rearing machine (which the Nazis LOVED). They even formed their own anti-feminist propaganda organization for women in order to combat it. It was called the Frauenschaft. Here, do a little light reading so you don’t embarrass yourself this way again.
@ ooglyboggles
Near enough!!! 🙂
The full version is:
Have a cigar