Both Joseph McCarthy and Hitler Praised In Pure Orwellian Developments In Trump World

We are indeed realizing George Orwell’s prophecy. I don’t believe the man thought he was writing a prophecy, I believe he thought he was writing a dystopian novel. But no, he was writing a fascist rulebook. You well recall his most famous passage, “Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.” Take a look at a nominee for an important government post praise Joseph McCarthy. If this isn’t rewriting history into a new narrative, I don’t know what is.

Wow, that bitch is insane. Not merely deluded, but insane. Joe McCarthy was a raging alcoholic trainwreck of a figure who got his ass handed to him by Eisenhower and Nixon and drank himself to death at age 49.

— Groucho Marxist (@Richard89220241) December 4, 2024

I actually know something about Joseph McCarthy personally. A dear friend of mine was McCarthy’s roommate in the Marines. True story. My friend’s name was Duane Leroy Faw and he rose to the rank of Brigadier General. And yes, I derive my pen name from that family, with whom I was close. Duane told me that McCarthy cheated at cards in the Marines and he didn’t drink at that time. But he began drinking alcoholically, which led to his early death.

The last time Duane saw McCarthy he was holed up in an office building, where he was forced to live because “so many people wanted to kill him,” as Duane put it. McCarthy gave Duane elaborate instructions to get to his lair because he was afraid Duane would be followed. McCarthy was a paranoid wreck and had few friends that he could call on for anything.

So the man is no hero. And this woman even planting those seeds is the first step towards, “We are at war with the Deep State. We have always been at war with the Deep State.” It’s sheer insanity.

But it gets worse. How? It’s not just McCarthy who is now being lionized, it is none other than Hitler. A story in the Bulwark tells of Nazi accounts which flourish on Twitter.

Anyway, yesterday the Texas Observer unmasked four anonymous Twitter users who run Nazi accounts. Now, when I say these four men ran “Nazi accounts” what I mean is:

And:

And:

And:

And:

This isn’t winking and nodding. It’s goose-stepping. There are two things worth talking about here.

First: Elon Musk has interacted with these account on Twitter multiple times. The Texas Observer piece has the details of these interactions. It’s not like Musk was on a first-name basis with these Nazis—but between “no guilt by association” and “you can tell who someone is by the company they keep” there’s a pretty wide gray area.

Twitter is a big place. There are scores of millions of people on it. The total number of actual, admitted Nazi sympathizers in this pool has got to be—relatively—small. What are the odds that the average person winds up replying to a Nazi once? How about twice? Or three times? Here’s the Texas Observer’s description of one of the interactions:

On July 23, Musk replied to Gramer’s account 9mm_smg, which Gramer has used to make posts referring to neo-Nazi tropes such as the “14 Words” and “blood and soil” and identifying himself as a white nationalist. Musk’s reply was a laughing emoji in response to a post about a community note—a feature that allows users to add context under a post if enough users vote on it—that described Vice President Kamala Harris as former TV host Montel Williams’ “main hoe,” which 9mm_smg described as “the greatest community note of all time.”

Musk isn’t the only high-profile person to interact with these accounts. Here’s the Observer again:

The X account belonging to Republican U.S. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky follows three of the four neo-Nazi accounts, while the account belonging to GOP Arizona state Senator Wendy Rogers follows two. The account belonging to Sebastian Gorka, former and future deputy assistant to Donald Trump, follows 9mm_smg, and the account belonging to Chuck DeVore, an executive at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has retweeted one of 9mm_smg’s posts.

That’s right: Thomas Massie follows three of these four self-described Nazis. And this fact will cause not even the smallest problem for him.

Which leads to my first point: Nazism/white supremacism has been mainstreamed to a degree that many people may not quite realize. This stuff isn’t just buried on obscure message boards or circulating via photocopied handouts. It’s just out there. And the social stigma about interacting with it is shrinking by the day.

This is not what our forebears died for. And I personally never thought that I could see this kind of a turnaround in my own lifetime, but we are, because the WWII crowd is largely gone. My aforementioned dear friend, General Faw, was a fighter pilot in WWII in the Pacific theater. He saw a lot of his comrades die, needless to say. They did not die so that this could flourish in 2024. He’s only been gone since 2008.

We were a sane and progressive nation — in all interpretations of progressive — in 2008 and life was good. America was prosperous and forward looking. Now we are making a mockery of our most sacred values — and allowing fake revisions of history to take place. This is dangerous ground we tread right now. This is not American what you have just seen. This must be resisted at all costs.

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