After that Access Hollywood tape of Trump bragging that his fame allowed him to get away with sexually assault women on a whim, his supporters and surrogates seized on what they saw as the ultimate rebuttal to Trump’s critics. Borrowing the argument from a meme that had already been circulating on the Internet for some time, they declared that they were “much more bothered by what Hillary has done than by what Trump has said.”
This argument would be a lot more convincing if a) Trump hadn’t been talking about things he claimed to have, you know, done, if b) women weren’t coming forward to tell media that he had in fact done these things to them and if c) Trump’s apologists were actually bothered by Trump’s claims.
While there are no doubt some Trump supporters who are genuinely troubled by Trump’s remarks, many of his most fervent followers think his comments (and presumably the actions he was describing) are hilarious. To many Trump superfans in the Alt-Right, Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. And they have made it into their new favorite Trump meme.
In the latest “Memetic Monday” thread on Internet Nazi tabloid The Daily Stormer, you will find, alongside the standard racist caricatures and Hitler jokes and “Hillary for Prison” memes, a wide assortment of “grab ’em by the pussy” memes created by Daily Stormer readers or borrowed from other sites — some of them slick, some of them amateurish, and none of them funny.
Here are some of them. You will notice that some of the meme-makers have managed to work in some of their other favorite subjects — Hitler, Hillary being jailed, and even (I regret to have to tell you this) kittens. In the interest of keeping this post more-or-less safe for work, I’ve avoided the worst of the batch.
Of course, the “grab ’em by the pussy” memes were not the only jokes about sexual assault in the thread. Because these are neo-Nazi Trump fans, and that’s just how they roll.
Trump 2016: Every Day is a New Low.
EDIT: Added a reference to the women who have come forward to say that Trump had indeed sexually assaulted them.
Hmm. I’m not Hungarian, but had a Hungarian colleague 1989-90, who was a FIDESZ supporter, and my impression was that they were already pretty right-wing (he was a great fan of Thatcher and I picked up a slight whiff of antisemitism once or twice).
I can almost see the appeal of fascism in America, since we never directly suffered under it, but what the f*ck Europe? Wasn’t actually experiencing it enough to sour the continent on the whole idea? How did Mosely ever leave his house after the Blitz? How does any Frenchperson look at the history of the 20th century and say, “Yes, this was a good choice then, and it’s a good choice still?” Just baffling.
Not trying to single out any actual people here, just a hypothetical citizen of said continent/country. The U.S. of course has its own crop of facists, but since they never actually took power so they could f*ck everything up there isn’t a memory of how bad they are. But in places they actually ran? How do you forget, or worse, see it as a golden age?
I see they can’t make up their minds on whether Trump actually did it and these women aren’t lying or whether he DID do it and therefore we should CELEBRATE!!
@Weird (and just about drained) Eddie, I won’t get into the details of it here. If you’d like to read about it, I was referring to something called the Dual Process model, specifically regarding reasoning (though it all applies, really). It’s interesting stuff, with a growing body of evidence. It doesn’t excuse them from being terrible and wrong, though, which is what I think Dalillama’s reply was about. @Dalillama, if I disturbed your calm, I apologize.
@Dali
By ‘no teams’, I mean that you can’t assume too much from that ‘team’. And the more vague the designation (‘left and rght’ are the worst offenders), the less can be assumed. How you identify doesn’t at all matter to me. I don’t care about your team. What do you think? How do you act? No expectations
Understood
So, I’m anthropomorphizing? I see that…
I’m more mad when the fuckery carries the stars and stripes
I’m not saying the country’s good. I’m saying what it does (culture or government) can be good. I’ll cheer that stuff. Every time
@ Scildfreja
Thanx, I’ll research that
Also, this is precious!!
I’ve got someone who thinks that if Clinton gets elected, she’ll eliminate ethics in politics, censor EVERYONE and EVERYTHING, making America a place without freedom. They think that Trump is the person who will stop all that from happening.
*sigh*
*headdeskheaddeskheaddeskheaddeskheaddesk*
@Scildfreja
I did understand what you were getting at, but I think you are incorrect. To wit, I argue that activating the compassionate mode of thinking won’t help, because they will feel compassion for Trump, not his victims. I will also note that they’re total crap at distant, analytical thinking, so it really doesn’t matter what mode they’re in for most purposes.
@Axe
I tend to pay more attention to the fuckery the U.S. government gets up to, but that’s because a)I theoretically have some ability to change shit here, and it helps to know what needs changed, and b) changing shit needs convincing other people that something needs changed, and when you’re dealing with decent people, pointing to an atrocity or two is usually convincing. (and if the fuckery in question doesn’t convince someone that it needs changed, you’ve learned something important about them.)
Well, sure, but I’ll cheer when Rwanda does good stuff too; This is really sweet, for instance. I’ve been cheering for Gaviotas for years, for all they’re in Colombia. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is planning to land probes on Phobos and send a solar-sail ship to Jupiter, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Whenever anyone or anyones do good, the world’s a better place, and I’m happy about that. I’m a little happier when it directly affects me, which is mostly gonna be stuff done in/by the States, but stuff that benefits people I know personally can happen most anywhere (Indeed, the reason I happen to know about the Safegas program is that my cousin’s married to the founder), and I also care generally about people’s fate, and like to see folks doing well and doing cool stuff, no matter where it happens or to whom. (Fascists excepted; I will laugh like a hyena at their misfortunes).
There’s been several people lately saying things like “I don’t know how anyone can vote for Drumpf”, and, I know what you mean. But it’s important to be able to imagine people complexly, and that means not just reaching for “well, they must all be evil-hearted bigots”. ‘Cos that’s just an easy answer. There’s been a really good article on Cracked lately about imagining Trump voters complexly, and I’m sure that folks here will be interested:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
@Dali
I consider myself patriotic towards the UK. Partly because if we lefty-types don’t claim the label, then that leaves it in the hands of people who would bring further shame to the country. And partly because there are lots of great things about my country! We had the first underground trains! We have beautiful buildings and landscapes! Cricket in the park on Sunday and clotted cream with scones! I feel like I can love the good bits without white-washing the bad bits.
(Which admittedly are large. I found out the other day that it was the English who invented the blood libel! As soon as I think I know all the things my country’s done that I’m ashamed of, I find another.)
If nothing else, then I don’t have another country to be proud of. I’ve only got this one. So I’d better work to make it as good as I can! It’s got a lot of bad stuff in its past, but it’s the only one I got.
@JennyWren
One can understand that Trump voters are human beings with complex motivations and still believe that they are at the very least saying “I’m okay with voting in a racist, misogynistic, petty, egotistical person into office and all that that implies if it means my pet issue is handled the way I want.”
I tend to think of patriotism as a very negative thing, possibly even outright evil, because it suggests that you need to support “your” country even when it is criminally wrong. As someone who was sent to prison for refusing to participate in a viciously racist genocidal war (Vietnam), I suppose my views on the subject are a bit biased.
In considering the people who still support Trumpelthinskin, I don’t admire them in the least but I think you have to take into account the yuuge propaganda war that has been waged against HRC. I’ve followed her throughout her career, and it is my belief that she is about as honest as you can be and still be a successful politician. However, the propaganda campaign has convinced a lot of people that she’s the most dishonest, corrupt politician in history (hah!), that she’s been involved in murdering 40+ people, that she’s Satan in the flesh (see Alex Jones’s claim that she and Obama stink of sulfur) — that, for example, she’s going to invite the UN in to take over the US.
One of the problems that the internet has exacerbated is the number of conspiracy theories going around, and particularly the myriad ways facts and half-truths can be spun, so that you have to be a pretty sophisticated consumer of information to get fairly close to the truth. I grew up in politics, and I’ve been a very interested spectator all my life, so I have a fairly good idea of what is and isn’t politics as usual.
When you look at conspiracy theories they often seem to be supereficially plausible, but if you look closely enough there’s always a fatal flaw. For example the Birther claim that Obama was born in Kenya is not impossible, but to believe it you have to assume that a very pregnant woman made the arduous trip from Hawaii to Kenya in 1961 so that her son could be technically ineligible to be President and then went to some serious effort to conceal that technical ineligibility.
(TW: violence against children) Recently I got involved in an argument on another blog with people who believe the Sandy Hook shooting was an Obama administration black-flag operation intended to cause demands for gun regulation. They claim the Sandy Hook school had been closed for several years and was re-opened just for the staged shooting, and that no children were killed there. This argument assumes that everyone in the entire town of Newtown (and probably a good deal of the surrounding area) plus probably all the police in Connecticut were in on the deal.
These are extreme examples, of course, but the science of deception by advertising is greatly advanced and can be used to create very effective propaganda for political purposes — and once people have swallowed a lie, it is very hard for most of them to disgorge it. When I was a kid, one brand of aspirin claimed to have “instant flaking action” and used an elaborate glass esophagus filled with water to demonstrate the “fact”. Being the curious little shit I was, I threw a store-brand aspirin into a glass of water and discovered that the same thing happened. But I’ll bet most of the people who saw that commercial thought that it was something special that only Bayer aspirin did. Then, recently, some company marketing acetaminophen was claiming that it was superior because it wasn’t an NSAID. I wonder how many people realized that all that really meant was that — unlike ibuprofen — it had no anti-inflammatory effect.
What I’m saying is that we live in a world where we are surrounded by questionable claims made by trained propagandists, and you really have to be both smart and wary to resist them. There are a lot of people who are neither.
@msexceptiontotherule
Hey they have a point. Without Trump what will happen to our freedoms! Freedom has no better defender then the Trumpster! I mean take Freedom of the Press for exam…
Ok but Body autonomy that’s….
Freedom of Religion! He has tons of that unless you’re….
Freedom to a fair trial and no cruel and unusual punishment he HAS to..um..
Well at least I will be free to use all the racial slurs I want. That’s freedom right?
/s
@JennyWren
‘Cept they kinda are. These are the same people who support HB2, who post ‘Blue Lives Matter’ signs in their yards, scream epithets outside Planned Parenthood clinics, and harass rape victims. The fact that they’re willing to tolerate Trump’s horrible shit makes them horrible people, full stop.
Samuel Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. He was wrong; it’s usually the first. The only use that patriotism ever had is shrouding atrocities in a flag. If they weren’t doing shameful things under its cover, they’d have no need of it. The left certainly hasn’t any.
It’s beyond my comprehension why anyone would be proud any nation, to be honest. I’m no more proud of my nation than I am of my computer.
@Grumpy
Did they actually claim that it not being an NSAID made it superior or did you assume that because they were advertising it as such they were implying that made it superior? I’m asking because there are other reasons to advertise that a drug isn’t an NSAID. For example, some medications can’t be mixed with NSAIDs, so for people taking those, it’s a positive. I see this same attitude with other advertising / labeling. For example, when people complain about how organic foods aren’t more nutritious or how gluten free foods aren’t always healthier, my response is, “yes, and?” Those were never the reasons people wanted those things. It’s just an assumption that other people made that the only reason to advertise / label something in a certain way is superiority, but that’s not always true.
/rant
I think you missed my “favorite” one here
It confuses me on so many levels…. Is the creator aware that the “in soviet russia” reversal meme still requires an actual joke in order to be funny? Did they realize that they were using a picture of Katya Zamolodchikova, fabulous and talented drag queen? Is this part of the “joke”? Or was this someone googling “russian woman” and not paying any attention?
@kupo You’re putting your finger on the problem. In the context of the ad, they were obviously trying to imply that there was something sinister about NSAIDs without actually saying it. (I myself can’t take NSAIDs because of kidney issues.) The point I was making is that there are all sorts of ways of laying a message between the lines without literally lying, many of which are more sophisticated (and thus less easy to defend against) than this one.
Fox news has promoted a world view that is fairly consistent and easy to swallow for unsophisticated viewers. It is very difficult for people who have bought into Foxthink to see HRC as anything much less than evil incarnate, which from that point of view makes Trumpelthinskin seem like the lesser evil. I hear a lot of people who ask how I could possibly consider voting for a member of the Clinton Crime Family.
About patriotism: I come from a long line of soldiers and soldiers’ spouses. My parents, stepmother, godparents, and grandparents were all decorated veterans of one sort or another, and very clear on the fact that one of the duties a person owed her country by the patriotic American was to stand up and point out when it was being untrue, unjust, and unAmerican. To misquote the plagiarism an absolute asshole who did have a few good things to say, Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the second-worst form of government ever— every other form of government that has heretofore been tried being tied for first place.”
I love my country. I know it has done revolting things. My disgust at its treatment of damn’ near everyone and everything (and the labeling of its puerile hatred of the brown, the queer, the poor— 2/3 of that is ME— by the ignorant and the fearful as “patriotic”) does not excuse me from loving it and learning its true history and trying to fix it by every means necessary, any more than an overstimulated toddler’s squeal of “I hate you, Mommy!” give a mother the excuse to walk away from her child. That’s when you hold your baby the tightest and teach it to breathe deeply, because that’s when it needs calm kindness and maturity most of all. I know the United States, from eugenics to “night doctors” to genocide to human trafficking on my doorstep. I know my country is capable of better, and I will not stop asking for it.
Maybe that’s jingoism. It’s certainly empty, emotional words; that I give you. I don’t care what label you put on it. It’s what I am.
Be right back for my brutal takedown. Have to go pick up my ‘scripts.
@Aunt Podger
If I wanted children I would have some. The U.S. is not my child, or anyone’s. It is an agreement to organise a chunk of territory and the population thereof in a particular manner, ostensibly for the general benefit. When it is to the general benefit, it’s working well, if not it needs to be reorganised. It is not a person, let alone a member of my family.
The only duty I owe the US is a percentage of the value of any goods I might import.
There’s more than one way to organise a democracy, and ours is frankly second rate.
This is why I advise people to be careful what they make part of your identity or sense of self. Once it’s there it’s hard to get rid of, even in the face of changing knowledge or circumstance. I see it a lot with political affiliation; e.g. people who say that the GOP is full of racists and misogynists, but stay members and keep voting R, because their identity iz tied up being a Republican; it’s who they are.
I’m sorry. I did not mean to imply that you had some sort of duty to this country; that any person has an obligation not to be childfree, so long as that person has not actually spawned offspring without finding a good home for it; or that anyone has the obligation to look upon this country as a person.
I certainly do not think that your opinions are invalid or even particularly incorrect; if respect is something that ought to be earned (a ludicrous notion in my mind; a certain amount of respect is owed to any sentient until such point that they demonstrate that they have no concept of respecting others), you have earned nothing but respect with skillful and incisive rhetoric; wisdom and passion; and great taste in avatars.
The words patriotic and duty appearing in the same sentence are pretty much guaranteed to get my back up, but itook no offence. I also appreciate your estimation if my character 🙂
My position can basically be summed up as follows: That if something is worth doing, that’s enough justification and patriotism is unnecessary, while actions that need the cloakmof patriotism to be swallowed are unjustifiable by any means.
I absolutely see what you’re saying, there, and I see that it makes sense.
I think that patriotism is a gut response, myself. To abuse a conceit, I try to turn my gut responses into useful nitrogen fertilizer, but I definitely see where butt-kicking is called for when some childish churl uses it to ruin a wedding and clear a room.
/delurk
As a citizen of the United States of America, I do feel patriotic to my country.
To me that means, that I call out his faults, because I know it’s better than that.
It means that with every vote, and every political debate I have with a friend; I’m trying to make my country better.
Blind Patriotism is idiotic, I prefer the version that accepts the flaws and knows it can be better.
Jingoism is being warlike. Honestly it’s an Imperialistic ideal that what works for you will work for everyone. That you can somehow apply your nation’s values through war.
That rarely works.
As a swing state voter, both I and my fiance are voting for Hillary Clinton even though we dislike her for various reasons. Because the truth of the matter is any other vote, is a vote against the concept of what America is supposed to be.
A place where anyone can come from nothing, and then suddenly become something.
Lady Liberty has it written on her Stone tablet. And it shames me that so many people want to deny what she says.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Well it seems, unless you are brown. Then get out.
I both love my country for what it can be, and hate the evil tjat hides in its underbelly
@Nick G
“Slight whiff of antisemitism” is unfortunately pretty normal in most of the Hungarian population. Oddly the party with the more Thatcher like politics those days would be MDF (They are still pretty hated for being the biggest party in our first freely elected government and being a big force for privatization). They had a party break too people jumping ship to Fidesz mostly… it was somewhat later than the Fidesz’s mind you.
I swear talking about Hungarian politics is like trying to recap a daytime soap. :/
@Malitia
To be fair, everyone’s politics is like that.
@Malitia:
From what you and my other Hungarian friends say, it sounds very difficult. My sympathies go out to you all. There’s nothing quite as ugly as a privileged group panicking as their grip weakens; and I hope it doesn’t get worse than it is now.
Thank you for sharing with us and for teaching us.
@Dalillama:
This. We need to engrave this on something, in letters eleven and a half feet high, because just quoting it here isn’t sufficient.
(I’d probably go a little further and say the following:
Firstly, if any person attempts to tell you that you must support policy A or B because you happen to be born on a particular side of a line on a map, or because of any other accident of birth, then that person is up to shenanigans.
Secondly, if you find yourself a citizen of a country which is currently engaging in misdeeds, then it is your responsibility to betray your country in whatever way can best bring about the failure of those misdeeds.)