July 20, 2023 • 31 mins
Gare talks with Robert and James about the history of the alt-right’s defacto online aesthetic, dubbed Fashwave, and how it led to the disastrous “Dark MAGA.”
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast
about things falling apart and about what we like to
call the crumbles in here. And a key aspect of
the crumbles is the ongoing resurgence of fascist political parties
and politicians in the United States and elsewhere. And today
(00:27):
we're going to be talking about about one of said fascists,
a fella you might have heard of named Ron DeSantis.
I'm putting Ron, yeah, pudding Ron Old dasanct de aemonious. Now, Garrison,
you've got a banger of an episode written out here.
I'm looking at your script right now. It's beautiful. Right
before we get into it, I do want to give
(00:48):
an update on a past subject of It Could Happen Here,
Lord Miles Rutledge, for those of you who may not
have caught that episode, Lord Miles is a British Man
who went to Afghanistan to hang out and got caught
up in the Taliban's you know, victory in that war,
and then turned himself into a danger travel influencer, visiting
(01:10):
in dangerous place, going to war zones, going to Ukraine
and like making it about him. He went back to
Afghanistan because it really was better for his social media
following than any of the other places he went, bragged
about breaking laws, including faking his visa, and then got
arrested and has been radio silent for about the last
five months now. A lot of people have wondered is
(01:33):
Lord Myles dead that he liked die in custody in
the Taliban are trying to keep it a secret, but
worry no longer. Friends. Today his account posted this is
a friend of Lord Miles to give an update. Four
months in Taliban custody. He's treated very well, has several servants,
loads of movies on his laptop, goes on picnics and
as tea with the Taliban cabinet government. He still loves Afghanistan.
(01:57):
And then there's a photo of him giving the thumbs
up doubt. So he's not He's not dead, guys. He's
in a nice Taliban farm upstate. He gets to run
all he wants, you know, wide open fields. He's super happy.
It's really funny one of his All of these people
(02:20):
are so fucking brained, poised, brain poisoned, but like a
big part of Miles, he was like trying to also
be kind of a right wing influencer. He was doing
this like anti woke. The Taliban is awesome and like
actually kind of good guys because they they don't like
believe in the woke agenda. And one of his friends,
after this message got posted, like messaged his account be like, hey, Taliban,
(02:40):
if you're the guys that have like captured him, we
really want him back. I'll pay a ransom. I'm like,
I know, this is probably just a misunderstanding because you
guys are on our side on the anti woke war.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Sure, yeah, I'm sure Taliban cares about the woke culture
war facing America.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
That's what they're That's what's they're all about. That shit work, guys.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I'm sure they tuned into shodthead of the Every Night.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
So Funny, So funny. Anyway, that dude Debt is dead
as hell. Look, I'm not saying that to gloat. I'm
just saying that the motherfucker's dead as hell. I don't
care what a prick he's dead. He deserved.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Many many people have died in Afghanistan and it's been
a tragedy.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
This one less. So anyway, Garrison, please continue.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
All right, So we we we're gonna return to this
podcast being your number one source for slightly homo erotic
fascist memes. Once again.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That was how we pitched it to iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Explaining the erotic fascist themes.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
A lot of people talking about fascists these days, but
none of them are homo erotic.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
So on the on the last day of Pride Month,
Desantas's campaign shared a ad that's been described as bizarre
and mystifying. He pedals a whole bunch of pretty pretty
extreme like homophobia. He attacks Trump for for for previous
statements that Trump has made regarding LGBTQ what rights, and
(04:13):
then the video kind of transitions and we see basically
a version of what's what we're gonna call fash wave.
And I'm gonna explain all of these terms here in
this episode, but we're seeing kind of a resurgence of
a political meme style that was popular years ago. It's
kind of laid dormant the past year or so for
(04:34):
reasons that we will very soon discuss. But a whole
bunch of both conservatives and liberals are kind of not
really sure how to take this ad shared by the
DeSantis campaign and are ill equipped to understand what the
fuck is going on. But luckily I am equipped because
I spent my teen years in telegram chats watching this
(04:59):
meme style develop.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
So how do you, buddy?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Thanks in the telegram trenches once again.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
All right, So.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
The first image of DeSantis, when it flashes to this
other kind of weird, more like bizarre editing style, has
him with like these these blue or red like glowing eyes.
And this is gonna be something that is going to
be a recurring trend that we're gonna be talking about
in this episode, these like these like glowing laser eye
type things. So we're gonna start with this because this
(05:33):
is actually one of the one of the most common
traits of fash wave. And we've seen this be adopted
by multiple politicians in the past, and most people probably
like don't know what the fuck this is? Like, is
this like a Superman thing? Like, what the fuck is this?
So laser eye memes started in the early twenty tens,
originally referencing video games like Mass Effect two and other
(05:53):
like sci fi and superhero media people like Superman or
anyone with like laser eyes. Is also like a it's
like a cultural touch stone for this sort of thing.
The laser eyes usually represent like a figure growing in power,
So when when someone has laser eyes and a meme,
it's like they are they are They're gaining power, the
gaining security. The The original caption for the early laser
(06:15):
eye memes was assuming direct Control, which was also just
a video game reference. So again I would have someone
with like glowing, glowing laser eyes and text that says
like assuming control or assuming direct control. So this was
this was this was this was popping off in like
the early twenty tens. Around the same time, synth wave
and vapor wave were gaining traction as both like nostalgic
(06:39):
musical microgenres and a memetic visual style featuring neon glitchy
kind of eighties retro computer athetics mixed with traditional Greco
Roman sculpture for a variety of reasons which we'll touch on,
but vapor wave had influences from video games, cyberpunk, anime,
and it was it was relatively popular as in mycer
(07:01):
genre in like the twenty teens and through the twenty teens,
both the laser eye memes were steadily growing in popularity
on places like Reddit and four chun, alongside the rise
of a vapor wave and its kind of surrealist, nostalgia
laden aesthetics focused on highlighting the comfort and unfulfilled promises
of the Internet of yester year. And this like nostalgic
(07:26):
surrealist aesthetic was prime bait for easy co option into
the reactionary meme variant dubbed fash wave, which soon became
kind of the de facto esthetic of the then burgeoning
alt right. Glowing laser eyes on various fascistic political figures
became a staple of fash wave during the rise of
the alt right around twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen. I
(07:50):
actually kind of like vapor wave. I think it's maybe
a bit overplayed now, and it certainly is frustrating how
much it was kind of taken over by reaction because
actual vapor wave is almost actually like anti capitalistic in
a few ways. It's it's kind of it's kind of
criticizing the disposableness of like modern consumerist culture, using like
(08:14):
forgotten eighties technology and like software and that kind of stuff.
So I'm looking at two of my little vapor wave
images here in the script, and it does some of
some of the little like ways that the images are
broken up makes it look kind of like like old
Internet pop up ads back when they had like clearly
defined borders and x's and weren't just like overtaking your
(08:36):
entire screen and you had no way to close them.
But you know what does kind of overtake your entire
viewing experience via an ad? It's it's podcast advertising. Because
it's going to go straight into your ears, and there's
no way to X out. You have to you have
to suffer through the ad unless you unless you figure
it out that you can press a button that makes
you go forward thirty seconds. Anyway, anyway, here is Here
(08:59):
is our beloved are beloved sponsors who fund such vital
research that I'm doing for this episode. Anyway, the rise
of the Alright. This is kind of where fashwave is,
(09:21):
both like getting the name fashwave and also you know,
it's becoming a larger problem because there's more Nazis walking around.
So after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,
the Alright went through a sort of split between the
more Trumpian adherents who made up large parts of the
then dubbed all to Light, a term we don't really
use it very much anymore. And then this this kind
(09:43):
of other section which had more of the accelerationist to
neo Nazis who were starting to congregate on the messaging
app Telegram. And then we have groups kind of like
the Proud Boys that are like in between. They're kind
of Trumpian. They're also also like more fascy, but they're
not like really full skull ask. Usually some would adopt
that esthetic later on, but that's kind of due to
(10:04):
this cultic milieu that's starting to develop on Telegram. So
a fast wave largely followed the self proclaimed fascists, so
it too became the central visual style of the of
the burgeoning network of militant accelerationist Telegram channels, which would
eventually be dubbed terror Gram Terror as in terrorist. And
(10:25):
this was combining with a whole bunch of weird factors
around twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, including the Boogloo Boys, which
Robert has written about at length before It's and it
was also influenced by the Iron March Forums, and like
the skull Mask network with groups like Adam Waffen and
the Bass, they were all kind of the.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Iron March Forums are like the Boomers of Nazi Internet people,
not quite the boomers, maybe the gen X.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
The jed X, Yeah, very much, the XE Forum generation.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
There's a generation of people. Yeah, before social media it's
Nazi something awful, right, It's we're not quite into the
Chans yet.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah. And after Iron March kind of collapsed, a whole
bunch of these weird accelerationists, we're starting to all congregate
on Telegram. And this is where we see kind of
fash wave develop into a much more overt apocalyptic and
a doumer focus. The the hontology inspired and nostalgic reflections
on the false promises of techno capitalism that were already
(11:24):
present in vapor Wave were ripe ground for the addition
of like return to tradition style reactionary fascism.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Do you want to explain horntology if people are familiar.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, Uh, Hontology is a I mean, it started as
a term which then developed into a musical genre, but
it's it's similar to vapor wave. It's about kind of
looking back on the unfulfilled promises of the past that
we were like promised as a culture that then never
came to place, but these promises still kind of follow us.
They kind of like haunt us in hoontology is a
(11:56):
big reason why liminal spaces got popular because of early
nineties and uh and two thousands, like aesthetics of like
big office buildings that are now left empty.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Office buildings, like schools, like particularly like the you know,
like the doors to a school or whatever. You get
a lot of like photos of that. Yeah, so stuff
that makes people feel a longing for a past that
was never really real.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, and like like a longing for like this sense
of home and this sense of like a safe home
which you maybe that you never actually really had.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, Yeah, because she hated being in school. You just
have forgot.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, you've kind of been aathologized, like pers calls it
post memory, when you re remember things based on you know,
you're sort of standpoint.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So the the sort of doomer accelerationism of this of
this kind of variant of fashwap or this like evolution
of fash wave was was also accompanied by by groups
like the Boogler Boys who were strying to make their
memes in this in this style as well. I have
I have a few examples of fashwave here showing to
to Robert and James Son and Rad's pretty We're pretty popular.
It's like the sun wheel version of the swastika essentially,
(13:04):
But a lot of these are like remember tradition, embrace
your race with like Nazi figures in like this monochrome
style over over like scan lines like you would see
on like a like an old like arcade video game
that has like that has like a horizon, but you know,
all like neon colors kind of kind of like glitchy
type stuff. There's there's one Trump one here from from
(13:27):
like twenty eighteen where he has a glowing yellow eyes,
also in the fashwave style. So this was kind of
the the aesthetic around around twenty nineteen here, and like
fashwave was definitely still common on imageboards like four chan,
eight chan, and eight kune, but the but the ever
pressened kind of hitler particles and poor web design on
(13:50):
those sites drove away most of the mega conservatives who
might try to stumble on to four chan or or
to eight chan to like watch qan on stuff. It
was it was just the site was too hostile to
them and then circled like twenty twenty among waves of
Twitter and Facebook suspensions Trump supporters and high profile far
(14:11):
right figures started congregating on other platforms. A few Twitter
clones popped off, like Parlor and eventually Trump's Own Truth
Social but a number of mega conservatives also ended up
on Telegram, in part due to Telegram's largely hands off
approach to moderation. So around this twenty twenty and like
just post twenty twenty time period is when Telegram began
(14:35):
functioning as the far right's very own cultic milieu, a
sort of like shared online space where various memes, ideologies,
conspiracy theories, and propaganda could all intermingle with each other
and spread. Now, part of this is how Telegram operates
as a platform. I'm going to quote from an article
about Telegram and the cultic milieu from logically quote, Telegram
(14:57):
offers features that straddle the line in between social media
and messaging app. Users can create channels, which function as
one way message channels that allow someone to send a
feed of messages available to all of their subscribers. Public
channels and group chats are searchable by name, allowing anyone
to subscribe to a public channel or join a public group.
Channels and groups are uniquely connected on Telegram when a
(15:20):
message is forwarded from a public channel into another channel
or group, it links back to the original group, creating
a chain in between different channels and groups. Another common
feature is for users to advertise for channels and groups
in other channels and groups, with some users creating directories
of these channels and these big group chats that have
(15:41):
extremest content. So this kind of interconnected nature that allows
this chain link of being able toward a message. Like
you have a Telegram channel with like three thousand people
in it, and you post fashay memes. You can make
some fashave memes in the style of like Trump, and
then you can forward this message to a Trump channel
that has forty five thousand members in it. They see
(16:02):
this meme, they might like it, they click the meme,
it sends them back into your three thousand person channel.
So now they're going to get exposed to all of
the other weird shit you have going on. So it
became a really easy way to kind of make a
rabbit hole and like a pipeline for people to get
exposed to new aesthetics, new ideologies, and especially conspiracy theories.
I think we should have an ad break now and
(16:23):
we will return to talk about the increased Trumpian focus
on fash wave that happened as a result of this
kind of telegram cross proliferation.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
That's right, everybody, We're gonna break for ads from our sponsors,
who also sponsor Lord Miles Rutledge. So you know, let's
hear it up for these ads from the Taliban. Ah,
(16:55):
we're back. And I don't know about you guys, but
Taliban's making a lot of sense these days to me.
Good pinks, really good. Yeah. I like their war on wokeness.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, speaking speaking speaking of a war on wokeness.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Keats us right back to oron. Well, meetball ron.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So to understand what the fuck is going on in
that Rohnda Santis video. This is probably one of the
most important, important little tidbits of knowledge that some people
may be overlooking. Is this brief fever dream known as
dark Mega.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Oh god, no, I know. I'm just glad. Yeah, I'm glad.
This one didn't work out the way they'd hope.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
No, it did.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
It did not work out, so the opposite of the
they hoped.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
So, because of this kind of telegram cross proliferation, the
far rights memetic aesthetic went through a sort of coagulation
after twenty twenty, which eventually resulted in the upsetting, albeit
short lived Dark Camega, also known as Ultra Mega, both
of which are horrible names.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Yeah yeah, yeah, I remember Ultra Mega being big and
like people putting their Twitter handles along with like an eagle.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
And a flag. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
So.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
The dark Mega trend started around a year after the
January sixth capital attack and steadily grew in popularity for
the next few months during the lead up to the
twenty twenty two midterm elections. After two years of right
wing influencers and politicians operating in Telegram's cultic milieu, the
influence of militant accelerationist propaganda is immediately apparent in this
(18:37):
new stylistic iteration, which is basically downstream from fash wave.
Dark Mega promoted a form of dystopian inspired overt authoritarianism,
with the assumed direct control laser eyes front and center,
and for emphasizing militaristic domestic connotations, dimlylit images were usually
(18:57):
edited in red or blue monocro. Dramatic images of Trump
are fairly prominent, as is the presence of weapons and
the occasional Nazi symbol I have a two examples of
fashwave here for for for the for the gallery. James,
what do you what do you think of this of
these of these two pictures.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
First of all, they look like somebody used like a
MS paint Like it's kind of that. Yeah, that's the
tear of work.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
When none of these are well edited.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
No, they're not nineties horror. Yeah it is yet it
is one of them, the one on the left. He
looks like it's like like the eighth movie in like
a Jason or Freddy type series, right where it's like
straight to DVD, Like they're moving that ship right into
the red box and they just paid a guy forty
five dollars to mock up a cover.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
He is it is it is it is.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It is a two B and direct to digital remake.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I didn't. He's like, it looks like it. It's like
like being developed in a dock room. It's like red
and black.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It's like all red and black. His eyes are glowing blue.
He's skit. It appears to be like a long a
springfield long rifle or something like that. I couldn't tell
you the exact type, but that does I am now
thinking about like So if you've ever loaded black powder,
you tend to like have you know, like a wrapped
you know cartridge that's got the ball and the powder
and you rip it in half in your mouth and
(20:24):
you pour the powder and then you like expect the Anyway,
Trump is such a germophobe, I just desperately want to
see him try to like manage a black powder rifle.
I would, I would really deeply enjoy that. It's as
good as a Tucker Carlson shooting. They like the sec
fire rifle was a very funny moment. Yeah, guys who
pretend to light guns.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
So and then the the other more horror inspired one
has has text at the bottom that says it's time
to just kill them with again with Trump and red
laser eyes.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I was.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
I was upset to find out that the original person,
like the original like Nazi who coined the term dark Mega,
which which which kind of started this trend. Uh followed
me on Twitter, which wasn't wasn't coreast Oh no? Oh no, yeah, yeah,
so that was that was a fun thing I discovered
over the course of researching this episode. So one pro
(21:21):
trumpan neo Nazi, described dark Mega as such, quote dark
Mega is the aesthetic demand that Trump embrace a harder
and more focused approach in the role only he can fill.
He was too kind hearted, too forgiving Dark Mega demands
he learned from his mistakes. Another another Dark Mega propelled
It just described, uh, described the intentionality behind the movement
(21:44):
of being quote, if you want to win, if you
don't want to repeat the past, you have to get mean.
You have to almost embrace the villain role that they're
bringing you with. So that's fun. But uh, but like
dark Mega's ambitions were to be more than just a
meme but instead kind of be the first real attempt
(22:05):
at a coherent post all right aesthetic that was being
pushed by mainstream of political actors. And included in this
push was kind of a pressuring back toward militant posturing
after the failed pseudo coup on January sixth, because in
those first few months after j six everyone was like, oh,
you know, we probably shouldn't be doing super overt like
(22:28):
violent propaganda if we're if we're like on the right,
and then over over time, and I think Dark Mega
was part of this, was the right realizing that maybe
they should just keep going and like go back to
that much more kind of like militant posturing that they
were doing beforehand. I have, I've I have a few
other a few other dark, dark mega images here, one
(22:51):
with Trump and a skull mask and uh and pit
vipers holding a bible in front of a vipers.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Pit Vipers are a type of like ski sunglasses that
have a very distinctive look. There's nothing wrong with them.
The company is actually anti Nazi.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Never people post their pit vipers pictures, they will like
donate the price of that pair of pit vipers to
you know, the ad L or something. But they've become
a signifier for Nazis for reasons that we probably don't
need to explain it.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
No, but you can read an article by me and
Robert and Bellingcatter about white boys. Want you really need
that right now if you really want to hear more
about pit vipers.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, we can explain this ship at length, bro.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
And then and then I have these two other images
of Trump in front of these American flags, and one
of them's edited in a glitchy style with him holding
a it looks like some type like machine gun or something.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Tommy, Yeah, m it can't really test too small to see. No, no,
that's got to be some sort of like either ar
nine millimeter carbine with a suppressor on. It is what
it looks like ice to me. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah, I think it's generic. He's gonna yeah, yeah, it's
kind of Wolfenstein style almost that one.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, all of these guys are obsessed with Wolfenstein. Yes,
oh yeah, very good, James, you figured it out.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
There's a longer conversation to be had because Wolfenstein the
most recent game, not a pro Nazi.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Game, anti Nazi, but because you know, it's.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It's a game where like the Nazis won the war
and you're like fighting the YadA YadA YadA, because they're
trying to do like future Nazi troopers, and it's like
a video game where you want to make the bad
guys look cool, same thing as like making the demons
look cool and doom and that you know, it's like
for Nazis to not like that.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Very very selectively edited clips of Wolfenstein cut scenes and
music appears in fashwave propaganda fairly often. The piers in
Schizaway propaganda, which is kind of another downstream iteration of
fash wave, which I am not going to cover on
this episode. And I guess the one other meme style
we have here is red and dark blue monochrome with
(24:59):
Trump with these blue leys, and this is kind of
the this is like the main dark mega aesthetic here
is this one that's just like red with with with
with like a dark dark blue as like the accent
and then these little laser eye things. So dark megas
(25:19):
had the goal of serving as both a rebrand and
an attempt to reunify the various disparate factions of the
online right into using attention grabbing authoritarian propaganda to push
Trump and his supporters even further into the extreme while
holding on the legitimacy that is lacking in the contemporary
sketchiness of like the Proud Boy groups or like Patriot Front, which,
(25:43):
especially after J six, the Proud Boys legitimacy took a
big hit. And all of these fucking dark Mega guys
think that Patriot fronts like a fed op. So it's
it's it's it's it's a it's a way to kind
of like push a new version of the alt right
that still relies on the legitimacy of Trump. To quote
the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, quote. The secondary aim of
(26:04):
Dark Mega is to launder more extreme narratives and aesthetics
into the mainstream Trumpist movement, an attempt to introduce mainstream
conservatives to more extreme parts of the right through melding
Trump memes with these different aesthetics. So, like we kind
of mentioned before, the previous attempt at this was the
White Boy Summer trend from twenty twenty one, which I
(26:26):
and Robert have already wrote about before. And White Boy
Summer was influenced by very similar kind of fash wave
telegram aesthetics, but it was only really successful in leaking
through to one or two Republican politicians, namely Paul Gosar.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Paul Gosar you can look him up if you want.
He's one of the Republicans who had a degree of
mainstream legitimacy and was also super tight with like just
straight up we want to set off bombs place as Nazis. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
But Dark Mega, on the other hand, was picked up
by a large handful of conservative politicians as well as
like the usual suspects made up of right wing influencers
and content creators. Among the Dark Mega proponents were Republican
candidates like Tim Swain, a former strategist now Blazed TV
employee Logan Hall, Andrew McCarthy, far right propagandist Jack sobiec
(27:20):
now former Congressman Madison Cawthorne, and former White House lawyer
Andrew Closter, and was even boosted by the father of accelerationism,
Nick Land was a brief Dark Mega proponent himself. Famously,
Marjorie Taylor Green joined in on the action in May
(27:42):
of twenty twenty two under the hashtag Ultra Mega, but
with the same like red monochrome images with the with
the big glowing eyes. Probably the most upsetting bit of
dark Mega lore was a post that Madison Cawthorne wrote
on Instagram. He he he had this post full of
(28:04):
like here's the list of America First conservatives. Look how
small the list actually is the people who are truly
America First. And attached to this little image of this list,
he wrote an extremely unhinged Dark Mega post. This was
also in May of twenty twenty two. Quote, the time
for genteel politics as usual has come to an end.
(28:26):
It's time for the rise of the new Right. It's
time for Dark Mega to truly take command. We have
an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able
to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak
members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We
are coming unquote. So this this rhetoric did not secure
(28:50):
Vess and cawthorne continued employment in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, it turns out most people in national polotics are
not entirely telegram brained. They cannot just had their skulls
melted by that shit.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
So yeah to quote, so yeah, to quote an analysis
from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. Quote dark
Mega is an embodiment of the revenge president burst from
the far rights urge to reclaim what they crave and
have lost power. Proponents seek to punish their political enemies
(29:30):
without attending to political correctness. Dark Mega is an appeal
to accept the true desires of the most dissident Trump
supporters and mainstream their feelings through the medium of memes,
which played a crucial role in twenty sixteen election. So
dark Mega peaked as an online search topic back in
May of twenty twenty two, and it may have reached
(29:53):
like peak popularity in actual like spread of memes as
early as March of twenty twenty two. I think I
think it peaked in May because there was a few
news articles about it, so more kind of normies were
like googling what it was. But it actually the actual
peak was only in March of twenty twenty two. It
only lasted like three months. You can you can still
(30:13):
find some dark Mega bubbling under the surface, but only
by like random Nazis and like that doesn't that doesn't
that that's not signifying any kind of like political movement.
And the reason why dark Mega kind of stopped being
effective in between between March and May of twenty twenty
two is that there was there was there was something
(30:35):
that happened that summer and that spring that effectively killed
dark Mega while also dealing a pretty big body blow
to fast Wave in general. And we will learn more
about about Brandon's special secret operation in part two. That's right,
this is going to be a surprise two parter because
(30:56):
I wrote get too many words?
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah yeah, Because this took an hour and a half
to record of dense, dense information. So now it's two days.
You guys get to enjoy this for two days.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone
Media for more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our
website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Oh, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast
about things falling apart and about what we like to
call the crumbles in here. And a key aspect of
the crumbles is the ongoing resurgence of fascist political parties
and politicians in the United States and elsewhere. And today
(00:27):
we're going to be talking about about one of said fascists,
a fella you might have heard of named Ron DeSantis.
I'm putting Ron, yeah, pudding Ron Old dasanct de aemonious. Now, Garrison,
you've got a banger of an episode written out here.
I'm looking at your script right now. It's beautiful. Right
before we get into it, I do want to give
(00:48):
an update on a past subject of It Could Happen Here,
Lord Miles Rutledge, for those of you who may not
have caught that episode, Lord Miles is a British Man
who went to Afghanistan to hang out and got caught
up in the Taliban's you know, victory in that war,
and then turned himself into a danger travel influencer, visiting
(01:10):
in dangerous place, going to war zones, going to Ukraine
and like making it about him. He went back to
Afghanistan because it really was better for his social media
following than any of the other places he went, bragged
about breaking laws, including faking his visa, and then got
arrested and has been radio silent for about the last
five months now. A lot of people have wondered is
(01:33):
Lord Myles dead that he liked die in custody in
the Taliban are trying to keep it a secret, but
worry no longer. Friends. Today his account posted this is
a friend of Lord Miles to give an update. Four
months in Taliban custody. He's treated very well, has several servants,
loads of movies on his laptop, goes on picnics and
as tea with the Taliban cabinet government. He still loves Afghanistan.
(01:57):
And then there's a photo of him giving the thumbs
up doubt. So he's not He's not dead, guys. He's
in a nice Taliban farm upstate. He gets to run
all he wants, you know, wide open fields. He's super happy.
It's really funny one of his All of these people
(02:20):
are so fucking brained, poised, brain poisoned, but like a
big part of Miles, he was like trying to also
be kind of a right wing influencer. He was doing
this like anti woke. The Taliban is awesome and like
actually kind of good guys because they they don't like
believe in the woke agenda. And one of his friends,
after this message got posted, like messaged his account be like, hey, Taliban,
(02:40):
if you're the guys that have like captured him, we
really want him back. I'll pay a ransom. I'm like,
I know, this is probably just a misunderstanding because you
guys are on our side on the anti woke war.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Sure, yeah, I'm sure Taliban cares about the woke culture
war facing America.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
That's what they're That's what's they're all about. That shit work, guys.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I'm sure they tuned into shodthead of the Every Night.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
So Funny, So funny. Anyway, that dude Debt is dead
as hell. Look, I'm not saying that to gloat. I'm
just saying that the motherfucker's dead as hell. I don't
care what a prick he's dead. He deserved.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Many many people have died in Afghanistan and it's been
a tragedy.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
This one less. So anyway, Garrison, please continue.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
All right, So we we we're gonna return to this
podcast being your number one source for slightly homo erotic
fascist memes. Once again.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That was how we pitched it to iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Explaining the erotic fascist themes.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
A lot of people talking about fascists these days, but
none of them are homo erotic.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
So on the on the last day of Pride Month,
Desantas's campaign shared a ad that's been described as bizarre
and mystifying. He pedals a whole bunch of pretty pretty
extreme like homophobia. He attacks Trump for for for previous
statements that Trump has made regarding LGBTQ what rights, and
(04:13):
then the video kind of transitions and we see basically
a version of what's what we're gonna call fash wave.
And I'm gonna explain all of these terms here in
this episode, but we're seeing kind of a resurgence of
a political meme style that was popular years ago. It's
kind of laid dormant the past year or so for
(04:34):
reasons that we will very soon discuss. But a whole
bunch of both conservatives and liberals are kind of not
really sure how to take this ad shared by the
DeSantis campaign and are ill equipped to understand what the
fuck is going on. But luckily I am equipped because
I spent my teen years in telegram chats watching this
(04:59):
meme style develop.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
So how do you, buddy?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Thanks in the telegram trenches once again.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
All right, So.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
The first image of DeSantis, when it flashes to this
other kind of weird, more like bizarre editing style, has
him with like these these blue or red like glowing eyes.
And this is gonna be something that is going to
be a recurring trend that we're gonna be talking about
in this episode, these like these like glowing laser eye
type things. So we're gonna start with this because this
(05:33):
is actually one of the one of the most common
traits of fash wave. And we've seen this be adopted
by multiple politicians in the past, and most people probably
like don't know what the fuck this is? Like, is
this like a Superman thing? Like, what the fuck is this?
So laser eye memes started in the early twenty tens,
originally referencing video games like Mass Effect two and other
(05:53):
like sci fi and superhero media people like Superman or
anyone with like laser eyes. Is also like a it's
like a cultural touch stone for this sort of thing.
The laser eyes usually represent like a figure growing in power,
So when when someone has laser eyes and a meme,
it's like they are they are They're gaining power, the
gaining security. The The original caption for the early laser
(06:15):
eye memes was assuming direct Control, which was also just
a video game reference. So again I would have someone
with like glowing, glowing laser eyes and text that says
like assuming control or assuming direct control. So this was
this was this was this was popping off in like
the early twenty tens. Around the same time, synth wave
and vapor wave were gaining traction as both like nostalgic
(06:39):
musical microgenres and a memetic visual style featuring neon glitchy
kind of eighties retro computer athetics mixed with traditional Greco
Roman sculpture for a variety of reasons which we'll touch on,
but vapor wave had influences from video games, cyberpunk, anime,
and it was it was relatively popular as in mycer
(07:01):
genre in like the twenty teens and through the twenty teens,
both the laser eye memes were steadily growing in popularity
on places like Reddit and four chun, alongside the rise
of a vapor wave and its kind of surrealist, nostalgia
laden aesthetics focused on highlighting the comfort and unfulfilled promises
of the Internet of yester year. And this like nostalgic
(07:26):
surrealist aesthetic was prime bait for easy co option into
the reactionary meme variant dubbed fash wave, which soon became
kind of the de facto esthetic of the then burgeoning
alt right. Glowing laser eyes on various fascistic political figures
became a staple of fash wave during the rise of
the alt right around twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen. I
(07:50):
actually kind of like vapor wave. I think it's maybe
a bit overplayed now, and it certainly is frustrating how
much it was kind of taken over by reaction because
actual vapor wave is almost actually like anti capitalistic in
a few ways. It's it's kind of it's kind of
criticizing the disposableness of like modern consumerist culture, using like
(08:14):
forgotten eighties technology and like software and that kind of stuff.
So I'm looking at two of my little vapor wave
images here in the script, and it does some of
some of the little like ways that the images are
broken up makes it look kind of like like old
Internet pop up ads back when they had like clearly
defined borders and x's and weren't just like overtaking your
(08:36):
entire screen and you had no way to close them.
But you know what does kind of overtake your entire
viewing experience via an ad? It's it's podcast advertising. Because
it's going to go straight into your ears, and there's
no way to X out. You have to you have
to suffer through the ad unless you unless you figure
it out that you can press a button that makes
you go forward thirty seconds. Anyway, anyway, here is Here
(08:59):
is our beloved are beloved sponsors who fund such vital
research that I'm doing for this episode. Anyway, the rise
of the Alright. This is kind of where fashwave is,
(09:21):
both like getting the name fashwave and also you know,
it's becoming a larger problem because there's more Nazis walking around.
So after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,
the Alright went through a sort of split between the
more Trumpian adherents who made up large parts of the
then dubbed all to Light, a term we don't really
use it very much anymore. And then this this kind
(09:43):
of other section which had more of the accelerationist to
neo Nazis who were starting to congregate on the messaging
app Telegram. And then we have groups kind of like
the Proud Boys that are like in between. They're kind
of Trumpian. They're also also like more fascy, but they're
not like really full skull ask. Usually some would adopt
that esthetic later on, but that's kind of due to
(10:04):
this cultic milieu that's starting to develop on Telegram. So
a fast wave largely followed the self proclaimed fascists, so
it too became the central visual style of the of
the burgeoning network of militant accelerationist Telegram channels, which would
eventually be dubbed terror Gram Terror as in terrorist. And
(10:25):
this was combining with a whole bunch of weird factors
around twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, including the Boogloo Boys, which
Robert has written about at length before It's and it
was also influenced by the Iron March Forums, and like
the skull Mask network with groups like Adam Waffen and
the Bass, they were all kind of the.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Iron March Forums are like the Boomers of Nazi Internet people,
not quite the boomers, maybe the gen X.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
The jed X, Yeah, very much, the XE Forum generation.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
There's a generation of people. Yeah, before social media it's
Nazi something awful, right, It's we're not quite into the
Chans yet.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah. And after Iron March kind of collapsed, a whole
bunch of these weird accelerationists, we're starting to all congregate
on Telegram. And this is where we see kind of
fash wave develop into a much more overt apocalyptic and
a doumer focus. The the hontology inspired and nostalgic reflections
on the false promises of techno capitalism that were already
(11:24):
present in vapor Wave were ripe ground for the addition
of like return to tradition style reactionary fascism.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Do you want to explain horntology if people are familiar.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, Uh, Hontology is a I mean, it started as
a term which then developed into a musical genre, but
it's it's similar to vapor wave. It's about kind of
looking back on the unfulfilled promises of the past that
we were like promised as a culture that then never
came to place, but these promises still kind of follow us.
They kind of like haunt us in hoontology is a
(11:56):
big reason why liminal spaces got popular because of early
nineties and uh and two thousands, like aesthetics of like
big office buildings that are now left empty.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Office buildings, like schools, like particularly like the you know,
like the doors to a school or whatever. You get
a lot of like photos of that. Yeah, so stuff
that makes people feel a longing for a past that
was never really real.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, and like like a longing for like this sense
of home and this sense of like a safe home
which you maybe that you never actually really had.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, Yeah, because she hated being in school. You just
have forgot.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, you've kind of been aathologized, like pers calls it
post memory, when you re remember things based on you know,
you're sort of standpoint.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So the the sort of doomer accelerationism of this of
this kind of variant of fashwap or this like evolution
of fash wave was was also accompanied by by groups
like the Boogler Boys who were strying to make their
memes in this in this style as well. I have
I have a few examples of fashwave here showing to
to Robert and James Son and Rad's pretty We're pretty popular.
It's like the sun wheel version of the swastika essentially,
(13:04):
But a lot of these are like remember tradition, embrace
your race with like Nazi figures in like this monochrome
style over over like scan lines like you would see
on like a like an old like arcade video game
that has like that has like a horizon, but you know,
all like neon colors kind of kind of like glitchy
type stuff. There's there's one Trump one here from from
(13:27):
like twenty eighteen where he has a glowing yellow eyes,
also in the fashwave style. So this was kind of
the the aesthetic around around twenty nineteen here, and like
fashwave was definitely still common on imageboards like four chan,
eight chan, and eight kune, but the but the ever
pressened kind of hitler particles and poor web design on
(13:50):
those sites drove away most of the mega conservatives who
might try to stumble on to four chan or or
to eight chan to like watch qan on stuff. It
was it was just the site was too hostile to
them and then circled like twenty twenty among waves of
Twitter and Facebook suspensions Trump supporters and high profile far
(14:11):
right figures started congregating on other platforms. A few Twitter
clones popped off, like Parlor and eventually Trump's Own Truth
Social but a number of mega conservatives also ended up
on Telegram, in part due to Telegram's largely hands off
approach to moderation. So around this twenty twenty and like
just post twenty twenty time period is when Telegram began
(14:35):
functioning as the far right's very own cultic milieu, a
sort of like shared online space where various memes, ideologies,
conspiracy theories, and propaganda could all intermingle with each other
and spread. Now, part of this is how Telegram operates
as a platform. I'm going to quote from an article
about Telegram and the cultic milieu from logically quote, Telegram
(14:57):
offers features that straddle the line in between social media
and messaging app. Users can create channels, which function as
one way message channels that allow someone to send a
feed of messages available to all of their subscribers. Public
channels and group chats are searchable by name, allowing anyone
to subscribe to a public channel or join a public group.
Channels and groups are uniquely connected on Telegram when a
(15:20):
message is forwarded from a public channel into another channel
or group, it links back to the original group, creating
a chain in between different channels and groups. Another common
feature is for users to advertise for channels and groups
in other channels and groups, with some users creating directories
of these channels and these big group chats that have
(15:41):
extremest content. So this kind of interconnected nature that allows
this chain link of being able toward a message. Like
you have a Telegram channel with like three thousand people
in it, and you post fashay memes. You can make
some fashave memes in the style of like Trump, and
then you can forward this message to a Trump channel
that has forty five thousand members in it. They see
(16:02):
this meme, they might like it, they click the meme,
it sends them back into your three thousand person channel.
So now they're going to get exposed to all of
the other weird shit you have going on. So it
became a really easy way to kind of make a
rabbit hole and like a pipeline for people to get
exposed to new aesthetics, new ideologies, and especially conspiracy theories.
I think we should have an ad break now and
(16:23):
we will return to talk about the increased Trumpian focus
on fash wave that happened as a result of this
kind of telegram cross proliferation.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
That's right, everybody, We're gonna break for ads from our sponsors,
who also sponsor Lord Miles Rutledge. So you know, let's
hear it up for these ads from the Taliban. Ah,
(16:55):
we're back. And I don't know about you guys, but
Taliban's making a lot of sense these days to me.
Good pinks, really good. Yeah. I like their war on wokeness.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, speaking speaking speaking of a war on wokeness.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Keats us right back to oron. Well, meetball ron.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So to understand what the fuck is going on in
that Rohnda Santis video. This is probably one of the
most important, important little tidbits of knowledge that some people
may be overlooking. Is this brief fever dream known as
dark Mega.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Oh god, no, I know. I'm just glad. Yeah, I'm glad.
This one didn't work out the way they'd hope.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
No, it did.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
It did not work out, so the opposite of the
they hoped.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
So, because of this kind of telegram cross proliferation, the
far rights memetic aesthetic went through a sort of coagulation
after twenty twenty, which eventually resulted in the upsetting, albeit
short lived Dark Camega, also known as Ultra Mega, both
of which are horrible names.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Yeah yeah, yeah, I remember Ultra Mega being big and
like people putting their Twitter handles along with like an eagle.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
And a flag. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
So.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
The dark Mega trend started around a year after the
January sixth capital attack and steadily grew in popularity for
the next few months during the lead up to the
twenty twenty two midterm elections. After two years of right
wing influencers and politicians operating in Telegram's cultic milieu, the
influence of militant accelerationist propaganda is immediately apparent in this
(18:37):
new stylistic iteration, which is basically downstream from fash wave.
Dark Mega promoted a form of dystopian inspired overt authoritarianism,
with the assumed direct control laser eyes front and center,
and for emphasizing militaristic domestic connotations, dimlylit images were usually
(18:57):
edited in red or blue monocro. Dramatic images of Trump
are fairly prominent, as is the presence of weapons and
the occasional Nazi symbol I have a two examples of
fashwave here for for for the for the gallery. James,
what do you what do you think of this of
these of these two pictures.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
First of all, they look like somebody used like a
MS paint Like it's kind of that. Yeah, that's the
tear of work.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
When none of these are well edited.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
No, they're not nineties horror. Yeah it is yet it
is one of them, the one on the left. He
looks like it's like like the eighth movie in like
a Jason or Freddy type series, right where it's like
straight to DVD, Like they're moving that ship right into
the red box and they just paid a guy forty
five dollars to mock up a cover.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
He is it is it is it is.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It is a two B and direct to digital remake.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I didn't. He's like, it looks like it. It's like
like being developed in a dock room. It's like red
and black.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It's like all red and black. His eyes are glowing blue.
He's skit. It appears to be like a long a
springfield long rifle or something like that. I couldn't tell
you the exact type, but that does I am now
thinking about like So if you've ever loaded black powder,
you tend to like have you know, like a wrapped
you know cartridge that's got the ball and the powder
and you rip it in half in your mouth and
(20:24):
you pour the powder and then you like expect the Anyway,
Trump is such a germophobe, I just desperately want to
see him try to like manage a black powder rifle.
I would, I would really deeply enjoy that. It's as
good as a Tucker Carlson shooting. They like the sec
fire rifle was a very funny moment. Yeah, guys who
pretend to light guns.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
So and then the the other more horror inspired one
has has text at the bottom that says it's time
to just kill them with again with Trump and red
laser eyes.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I was.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
I was upset to find out that the original person,
like the original like Nazi who coined the term dark Mega,
which which which kind of started this trend. Uh followed
me on Twitter, which wasn't wasn't coreast Oh no? Oh no, yeah, yeah,
so that was that was a fun thing I discovered
over the course of researching this episode. So one pro
(21:21):
trumpan neo Nazi, described dark Mega as such, quote dark
Mega is the aesthetic demand that Trump embrace a harder
and more focused approach in the role only he can fill.
He was too kind hearted, too forgiving Dark Mega demands
he learned from his mistakes. Another another Dark Mega propelled
It just described, uh, described the intentionality behind the movement
(21:44):
of being quote, if you want to win, if you
don't want to repeat the past, you have to get mean.
You have to almost embrace the villain role that they're
bringing you with. So that's fun. But uh, but like
dark Mega's ambitions were to be more than just a
meme but instead kind of be the first real attempt
(22:05):
at a coherent post all right aesthetic that was being
pushed by mainstream of political actors. And included in this
push was kind of a pressuring back toward militant posturing
after the failed pseudo coup on January sixth, because in
those first few months after j six everyone was like, oh,
you know, we probably shouldn't be doing super overt like
(22:28):
violent propaganda if we're if we're like on the right,
and then over over time, and I think Dark Mega
was part of this, was the right realizing that maybe
they should just keep going and like go back to
that much more kind of like militant posturing that they
were doing beforehand. I have, I've I have a few
other a few other dark, dark mega images here, one
(22:51):
with Trump and a skull mask and uh and pit
vipers holding a bible in front of a vipers.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Pit Vipers are a type of like ski sunglasses that
have a very distinctive look. There's nothing wrong with them.
The company is actually anti Nazi.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Never people post their pit vipers pictures, they will like
donate the price of that pair of pit vipers to
you know, the ad L or something. But they've become
a signifier for Nazis for reasons that we probably don't
need to explain it.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
No, but you can read an article by me and
Robert and Bellingcatter about white boys. Want you really need
that right now if you really want to hear more
about pit vipers.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, we can explain this ship at length, bro.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
And then and then I have these two other images
of Trump in front of these American flags, and one
of them's edited in a glitchy style with him holding
a it looks like some type like machine gun or something.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Tommy, Yeah, m it can't really test too small to see. No, no,
that's got to be some sort of like either ar
nine millimeter carbine with a suppressor on. It is what
it looks like ice to me. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah, I think it's generic. He's gonna yeah, yeah, it's
kind of Wolfenstein style almost that one.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, all of these guys are obsessed with Wolfenstein. Yes,
oh yeah, very good, James, you figured it out.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
There's a longer conversation to be had because Wolfenstein the
most recent game, not a pro Nazi.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Game, anti Nazi, but because you know, it's.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It's a game where like the Nazis won the war
and you're like fighting the YadA YadA YadA, because they're
trying to do like future Nazi troopers, and it's like
a video game where you want to make the bad
guys look cool, same thing as like making the demons
look cool and doom and that you know, it's like
for Nazis to not like that.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Very very selectively edited clips of Wolfenstein cut scenes and
music appears in fashwave propaganda fairly often. The piers in
Schizaway propaganda, which is kind of another downstream iteration of
fash wave, which I am not going to cover on
this episode. And I guess the one other meme style
we have here is red and dark blue monochrome with
(24:59):
Trump with these blue leys, and this is kind of
the this is like the main dark mega aesthetic here
is this one that's just like red with with with
with like a dark dark blue as like the accent
and then these little laser eye things. So dark megas
(25:19):
had the goal of serving as both a rebrand and
an attempt to reunify the various disparate factions of the
online right into using attention grabbing authoritarian propaganda to push
Trump and his supporters even further into the extreme while
holding on the legitimacy that is lacking in the contemporary
sketchiness of like the Proud Boy groups or like Patriot Front, which,
(25:43):
especially after J six, the Proud Boys legitimacy took a
big hit. And all of these fucking dark Mega guys
think that Patriot fronts like a fed op. So it's
it's it's it's it's a it's a way to kind
of like push a new version of the alt right
that still relies on the legitimacy of Trump. To quote
the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, quote. The secondary aim of
(26:04):
Dark Mega is to launder more extreme narratives and aesthetics
into the mainstream Trumpist movement, an attempt to introduce mainstream
conservatives to more extreme parts of the right through melding
Trump memes with these different aesthetics. So, like we kind
of mentioned before, the previous attempt at this was the
White Boy Summer trend from twenty twenty one, which I
(26:26):
and Robert have already wrote about before. And White Boy
Summer was influenced by very similar kind of fash wave
telegram aesthetics, but it was only really successful in leaking
through to one or two Republican politicians, namely Paul Gosar.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Paul Gosar you can look him up if you want.
He's one of the Republicans who had a degree of
mainstream legitimacy and was also super tight with like just
straight up we want to set off bombs place as Nazis. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
But Dark Mega, on the other hand, was picked up
by a large handful of conservative politicians as well as
like the usual suspects made up of right wing influencers
and content creators. Among the Dark Mega proponents were Republican
candidates like Tim Swain, a former strategist now Blazed TV
employee Logan Hall, Andrew McCarthy, far right propagandist Jack sobiec
(27:20):
now former Congressman Madison Cawthorne, and former White House lawyer
Andrew Closter, and was even boosted by the father of accelerationism,
Nick Land was a brief Dark Mega proponent himself. Famously,
Marjorie Taylor Green joined in on the action in May
(27:42):
of twenty twenty two under the hashtag Ultra Mega, but
with the same like red monochrome images with the with
the big glowing eyes. Probably the most upsetting bit of
dark Mega lore was a post that Madison Cawthorne wrote
on Instagram. He he he had this post full of
(28:04):
like here's the list of America First conservatives. Look how
small the list actually is the people who are truly
America First. And attached to this little image of this list,
he wrote an extremely unhinged Dark Mega post. This was
also in May of twenty twenty two. Quote, the time
for genteel politics as usual has come to an end.
(28:26):
It's time for the rise of the new Right. It's
time for Dark Mega to truly take command. We have
an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able
to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak
members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We
are coming unquote. So this this rhetoric did not secure
(28:50):
Vess and cawthorne continued employment in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, it turns out most people in national polotics are
not entirely telegram brained. They cannot just had their skulls
melted by that shit.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
So yeah to quote, so yeah, to quote an analysis
from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. Quote dark
Mega is an embodiment of the revenge president burst from
the far rights urge to reclaim what they crave and
have lost power. Proponents seek to punish their political enemies
(29:30):
without attending to political correctness. Dark Mega is an appeal
to accept the true desires of the most dissident Trump
supporters and mainstream their feelings through the medium of memes,
which played a crucial role in twenty sixteen election. So
dark Mega peaked as an online search topic back in
May of twenty twenty two, and it may have reached
(29:53):
like peak popularity in actual like spread of memes as
early as March of twenty twenty two. I think I
think it peaked in May because there was a few
news articles about it, so more kind of normies were
like googling what it was. But it actually the actual
peak was only in March of twenty twenty two. It
only lasted like three months. You can you can still
(30:13):
find some dark Mega bubbling under the surface, but only
by like random Nazis and like that doesn't that doesn't
that that's not signifying any kind of like political movement.
And the reason why dark Mega kind of stopped being
effective in between between March and May of twenty twenty
two is that there was there was there was something
(30:35):
that happened that summer and that spring that effectively killed
dark Mega while also dealing a pretty big body blow
to fast Wave in general. And we will learn more
about about Brandon's special secret operation in part two. That's right,
this is going to be a surprise two parter because
(30:56):
I wrote get too many words?
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah yeah, Because this took an hour and a half
to record of dense, dense information. So now it's two days.
You guys get to enjoy this for two days.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone
Media for more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our
website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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Garrison Davis
James Stout
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