July 27, 2023 • 41 mins
Garrison talks to Robert about a new Fashwave video shared by a DeSantis staffer and the campaign’s finance trouble.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Ah, it could happen here. A podcast that is right
now happening in your year. It could happen a year.
That's what we should call it, Garrison. We're changing the name.
We're rebranding our valuable valuable titles, uh, completely moving, moving
overnight to a whole new thing based on a whim you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Know, gambitzer.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Uh yeah, this is a This has been a fun week.
We're all laughing a little bit at Elon Musk, but
we have something serious to talk about today, and that
is everybody's favorite fascist governor, Ron DeSantis. Garrison, you and
I spent just way too much time last week talking
about meetball Ron, and now now we're back. Now we're
(00:52):
back to because he keeps meatballing meetball ron Is ballin
and meeting.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah. So we wrapped up like a like a two
part episode on Ron Desanis's use of Fashi rave asthetics,
and then like two days later, the funniest thing happened,
uh where he just decided to basically basically post Son
and Rads. So we're gonna we're gonna get to that.
(01:21):
But first there's a whole bunch of other information that's
come out these these past like really three days that
have kind of that are actually giving more context to
what's going on at the Dasantas campaign because stuff doesn't
look too good. Actually, you know, he he kind of
looks like he's losing everything as he slowly watches it
all crumble. So let's see. Let's let's start by talking
(01:44):
about everyone's favorite topic, campaign finances. I know this is
what what everyone tunes in to listen to.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yes, we love campaign finances.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, so last week the public finally got a glimpse
at DeSantis's campaign finances. The financial disclosures that DeSantis had
about twice as much staff as Donald Trump and as
of last week.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, Garrison, you just said that, and I imagine in
my head for a second that you were referring to
the amount of staff infections he's had versus Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
That's not true. No, Trump's definitely had more staff.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
There's almost no way, Yeah, that Trump is not leading
in the staff infections category. Please, I'm sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
But as of last week, the Florida governor had already
spent about forty percent of the twenty million dollars fundraised
from April to June of twenty twenty three. So the
campaign's suspending rate was averaging more than two hundred and
twelve thousand dollars per day, which is an astronomical cost
(02:46):
for a campaign for someone like running for president, basically
for the first.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Time this far out too from the season proper hit.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, it's absolutely absurd. The inflated number of staff have
use of private jets and luxury event venues has his
campaign essentially just burning through cash and with very little
seeming to come of it in terms of positive poll numbers.
So another thing that they've.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Gained maybe a point or so on Trump over the
last year.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, after spending two hundred thousand dollars per day for
the past like four months. Another thing that these financial
disclosures exposed is DeSantis's heavy dependence on high contributors. So
just about fifteen percent of fundraising contributions came from donors
who gave less than two hundred dollars, and the vast,
(03:38):
vast majority of DeSantis's money has come from donors who
gave the legal maximum of three thy three hundred dollars
in the primary, which also means that those who gave
that can cannot contribute any more money either. So he's
running out of people that are actually able to fund
his operation.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, and it's worth noting he does have a super pack.
You are not limited in how much you can donate
to a super pack, but super packs cannot spend money
on the same things as general campaign funds, right, Like,
there are limitations in what you can use that on.
So this is actually a logistical problem for him that
he has maxed out his donor base.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, and The New York Times has reported that future
like large prospective donors have been spooked by DeSantis's sliding
poll numbers, and they may be less willing to invest
in what's looking like a losing battle. So to combat
these swelling campaign expenses, including two hundred and seventy nine
thousand dollars at the four seasons in Miami, DeSantis's Tallahassee
(04:40):
based campaign has began undercoing massive cuts to campaign staff
this past week. Previously, Desanta's had upwards of ninety people
on payroll, but just this month they've eliminated thirty eight
jobs in a variety of departments, cutting more than one
third of his payroll. DeSantis's cutbacks are nearly quill to
(05:00):
the size of Trump's entire twenty twenty four campaign staff.
Dessentis's campaign manager, Grenera Peck said in a statement, I
believe late last week quote, following a top to bottom
review of our organization, we have taken additional aggressive steps
to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest
position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden. So
(05:23):
that that was their little statement accompanying the news of
firing almost forty people from their campaign. According to The
New York Times, advertisers are quote promising to reorient the
DeSantis candidacy as a quote unquote insurgent run and remake
it into a quote unquote leaner, meaner operation. So this
(05:44):
is the new strategy that they're trying to do, is
instead of having ninety people on staff in a largely
ineffectual strategy, have a more insurgent run with a smaller
number of people. But in addition to the dozens of
staff members who've been let go this July, two senior
advisors have also departed this month to work for an
outside pro DeSantis nonprofit. One of these senior advisors, who
(06:08):
was supposed to oversee the campaign's television messaging, voluntarily left
quote as the reality of a disappearing advertising budget set in.
So these these two more more kind of seasoned Republican
advisors saw what was happening in the campaign, and they're
still pro DeSantis, but they believe they can be more
(06:29):
effective by working from outside of the actual campaign. That's
so funny, which is not a great sign for DeSantis's
internal internal team here if you have people like who
still like you, but they just can't work for you
because you're doing such a bad job. So Desatus's team
is now telegraphing a plan to engage with mainstream media
(06:53):
that in the way that they have not previously done
because they've he's so far kind of scornfully avoided it,
as we've talked about obviously. And they're calling this new
strategy the Dysantis is Everywhere approach, which is a good
Jesus Christ bad name for strategy.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
The part of the problem, Garrison, I don't know how
to like I can't like prove this the way that
we prove, you know, when we're when we're tracing back
the ideological roots of like a lot of our modern fascists.
But what I what I believe in my heart is
that so many of these very young people on the
extreme right who are who are driving this campaign like
(07:32):
just want to be villains from a bad late nineties
early two thousands movie. They want to be they want
to be the bad guy in like the fucking supervill
hero movie, right Like that that's you don't You don't
say that about a guy who's good like this, You
wouldn't like the Biden campaign if they came to Joe
and we're like, we want to do a Biden is
everywhere thing, he'd be like, now that sounds kind of creepy.
(07:54):
Guys Like I already got a little bit of a
problem with that, what with a hair sniff, and I
don't really want to really want to jump on.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That, right you know, Like it definitely has the vibes
of like zoomers who grew up watching like late nineties
animated superhero cartoons who are trying to like it. Yes,
we're trying to emulate that for some reason. There is
one one really funny quote from the Times that I
will read because it quotes like internal sources that that
(08:21):
I don't have access to, but anyway, quote one person
close to mister DeSantis, who requested anonymity to speak candidly
about a candidate whom the person still supports, said the
governor had experienced quote unquote a challenging learning curve that
has left him quote unquote a little bit jarred.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
So it doesn't sound like a six year old who's
like not quite progressing fast enough in the reading where
they're like, maybe we need to try teaching him another way,
like we'll get out the different colored books.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Like, yeah, so he seems to have a rough adjustment
period to campaigning in just more than one state and
having an actual like opponent to go up against, and
also like an opponent who's like actually a good who's
like good at being like a politician. Yeah. So yeah,
(09:12):
a challenging learning curve.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Indeed, I might I might specify, I think actually DeSantis
is a lot better as being a politician than Donald Trump,
but that's not what the competition is.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, DeSantis is better at being like an effective like governor. Uh,
he's better.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
He's better at the machinery of politics, yes, whereas Trump
is better at holding power within the GOP.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, and being like a showman. So we will we
will talk more about some uh some actually relatively breaking
news regarding the DeSantis campaign.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Shortly cited for this. I just saw this before we
got on.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Short shortly after this at break. Okay, we are we
are back. So a lot has happened in the past
two days, a lot has happened in the past two hours actually,
(10:12):
but we're We're gonna have to work our way there.
The first bit of news that was kind of both
it was both confirming my suspicions and in very a
very interesting piece of news in the first place, is
that that fast Wave inspired kind of homophobic Pride Month
(10:32):
video that we talked about in our last Dysantis fash
Wave episode. It turns out to be slightly more self
inflicted than what than what at least I said in
the episode, because I didn't want to make claims that
I couldn't back up. Because we have we have some
new new information regarding this video, I'm gonna I'm gonna
(10:54):
quote from this this article in the Times quote a
DeSantis campaign had originally produced the video internally, passing it
off to an outside supporter to post it first and
making it appear as if it was generated independently, according
to a person with knowledge of the incident, So this
(11:14):
video turned out to be actually be made in house.
This actually was made by someone who was working for
Rondasantis as we speculated it initially, but we couldn't really
like say for sure because it was it was posted
first on a third party account.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Specifically, the guy who was the one who shared it
is the dude who made it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
No, that is for this next video we're going to
talk about. Yeah, the the homophobic one was shared by
this this this Protosantas account called Proud Elephant, who had
a corresponding telegram channel. This was the guy who posted
the first homophobic mean one. But yeah, so we found
out Sunday night that it was actually made by someone
(11:56):
at the DeSantis campaign, which kind of just to find
a lot of our suspicions about DeSantis employing staff of
zoomers who don't actually understand how to win a political
election and are more interested in just creating fascist memes,
which is seems to be not a very effective strategy
for DeSantis so far. So again, just the day that
(12:20):
this news broke that that the video was actually made
in house, another fash wave of inspired video, but with
much much more overt Nazi imagery, was shared online by
a Dysantis campaign staffer. I'm Robert. Have you seen this video?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yes? Okay, so I'm the son in rad video.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yes, So we don't have to watch it here, but
I will I will give a description of it for
for the people listening, because also we should probably souldn't
be sharing these things like everywhere on on like Twitter
and stuff anyway, Like it's not it's not a great idea, but.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
It's not going to make you happier help you in
any way. To see this, it's just like it's surprising.
I will say that I was surprised to see how
fascy it was, to see how like explicitly accelerationist mass
shooter fascy it was. Yes, this is like christ Church
kind of Yes.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, so we're not gonna share it, but but it
is useful to know what's in it. So I did
write a pretty in depth description of this video here.
So this video was posted on Sunday, July twenty third.
It's about seventy seconds long. It plays over a Meg
Myers cover of the song Running Up the Hill.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Which was made you know recent Wait, isn't that the
one that was the one that the new season of
Stranger Things? A while back like it brought back to.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
The main Possibly it's it is it is a Kate
Bush original. This one is is a more like electronic
cover of the song. Yes, it's talking about like you know,
like a like a trying to like ask God to
help you with certain things. Blah blah bla blah blah
blah blah. Anyway, it starts with the Doomer wo Jack
sitting at a computer looking at headlines about the ineffectiveness
(14:03):
of Trump's border wall, unfulfilled anti immigration policies, and Trump's
pro COVID vaccine statements. So I guess we should probably
talk about what a wojack is in case someone is unfamiliar.
If you've ever spent any amount of time on the Internet,
you've probably seen memes with kind of crudely drawn like
human faces and heads. These are called wojack memes. They're
(14:26):
they're they're very popular in like political spheres. They kind
of kind of rose to prominence on four Chat and
spread spread out from there. Everyone kind of uses them nowadays.
They're pretty common, but there's a few specific like wojack characters,
like the chad is one. One of the more popular
ones is the Doomer wojack, which is someone who's taken
(14:50):
the black pill, so to speak. They've they've they've looked
at modern society and have decided that it's not worth
engaging in. Now there's this. There's doomers on the right.
There's dumers on the left. There's doomers who look at
like climate change and the acceleration of like of of
capitalism and just decide, hey, this is this is too
far gone. So they become a doomer, and they're on
(15:11):
the left. There's also duomers on the right who are
like looking at gay marriage and the acceptance of trans
people to being like, oh, this is so socially degenerate.
It's the society's too far gone, and then they become
a doomer. But they're on the right. So it's it.
It happens on It happens on both sides, and both
both sides use doomer memes. Uh yeah, this one is
(15:32):
because we're talking about it in this context of fash wave.
This is obviously a fascist doomer meme. But that's that's
kind of what I mean when I say there's there's
a doomer wojack sitting sitting at a computer. It's like
it's like a guy with a beanie, like a scruffy beard.
He looks like very depressed and tired, that sort of thing.
So as as these kind of headlines about Trump's not
(15:54):
conservative enoughness are flashing on this computer, the dumer rojack
is looking increasing lead disillusioned and apathetic. Then there's the
clip of Trump holding up a Pride flag that plays
right before we see Trump signing the First Step Act,
the twenty eighteen Criminal Justice Reform Bill. Then headlines flash
about violent criminals being released into the streets, that sort
(16:17):
of thing. So the doumer BoJack is looking at all
these things about Trump looking more and more depressed, when
suddenly a doorway appears with an almost angelic light pouring
in from behind, and as the door opens, we see
a silhouette of Ron DeSantis. More short clips of Ron play,
and now the wojack is looking happy, almost like exuberant,
(16:39):
seemingly kind of random images of outer space, volcanoes, rocket launches, surfing,
and the beach flash quickly on screen with with like
glitchy silhouettes of Ronda Santis looming above coastal ocean side
cities that are lit up by a sunset. A don't
tread on Florida Alligator flag spins onto screen like it's
(17:02):
a fucking like ms paint like edit and h. Then
the the video flashes more clips of DeSantis wearing sunglasses
standing in front of American flags as the sunset, Happy
Woejack fades in. So this is another woshack meme of
somebody almost like tearied eyed with like contentment, staring into
(17:24):
the horizon as like a sunset is behind their head.
It kind of it kind of reminds me of like
the that guy who who stole that plane in Seattle
and yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, very sad story if you're not aware of it.
A man hijacked I believe it was an Alaska Airs
flight a couple of years back. It was empty, like
he he worked at the airport. He just took the
plane and he got up into the sky and then
like he was just kind of a dude who was
sort of suicidal. There's very sad audio of him talking too,
because he gets on with air traffic control and he
(17:59):
makes sure that he's not going to hurt anyone else
and like then the plane goes down, you know, he
goes down in it and it's it's very bleak. He
was not a man who wanted to hurt anybody. It's
just this kind of like exist I've heard. I found
it set to a lot of vapor wave tracks. Actually,
like the audio the conversation between them, because he's kind
of I think a lot of people identify with his
(18:19):
sense of like I don't really know why I was
ever here. I don't really know.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, it's someone who's dealing with like postmodern absurdity, but
in a way that like he doesn't want to hurt
anybody about it, but he just doesn't know what to
do with existence.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, he had part of he had like the the
ten percent of what a mass shooter has, which is
exactly go out and I want to do something. But
thankfully he was also a good person and didn't want
to like murder strangers.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So this became very popular on the Internet, including on
redda and four Chan. This he was he was dubbed
sky King, and there's there's footage of him basically crashing
this plane as the sun is setting, and there's there's
fut of which like him flying around in sunset. Played
often played with vapor wave with his conversation with attackt
for control. Now this is very popular. The sunset happy
(19:10):
Rojack is very similar. I've seen people post this image
in threads about sky King before, and I think a
lot a lot of people to understand it's like this
this act that this this skyking thing, that this has
more in common with like accelerationist like terrorism than what
most people can like really understand about like between like
(19:30):
shooting a random person for like violent crime and this
like this, this is more this, This is closer to
why people do accelerationist like terroristic acts. But this guy
was like not actually a monster, so he didn't do that.
He like explicitly didn't want to hurt anybody. He explicitly
(19:51):
didn't want to try to land the plane at the
airport because he thought he might hurt somebody.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, and presumably since he worked at an airport, he
had some knowledge of how easily that could go wrong.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah. So this anyway, these two images are kind of
linked often on the Internet. So anyway, we we we
see we see the video getting like more hopeful with
with with Ron de Santis, you know, having stupid fash wave,
having stupid fash wave imagery. Is this sunset happy Wojack
(20:22):
fades in as like as the doomer is now has
like contentment, and then this this, then this is followed
by very quick flashes of DeSantis and more more, more
beach imagery. There's a lot of beach in this video. Yeah,
there's like this like rotating sheet of stickers that read
make America Florida. Then we get this shot of a
(20:44):
small yacht zooming through the water with DeSantis campaign events
played over top of the water. And during this shot
we have another Wojack holding a rifle, wearing Camo military
fatigues that slides onto screen. He has a patch of
the flag of Florida on his plate carrier and his helmet.
We get more shots of beachfront cities and rocket launches,
(21:06):
followed by headlines about Dysantis on a variety of topics,
including his anti immigration actions, his use of Florida's National
Guard in other states, DeSantis's anti diversity initiatives, his anti
education bills, his anti drag bills, the cancelation of pride
parades in Florida, and in general just kind of how
DeSantis has been pushing Florida further right. So, after this
(21:29):
barrage of headlines. We get to the most mask off
from a moment of the video. The flag of Florida
fills the screen with two lines of armed troops at
either side marching towards the flag. A still photo of
Dysantis is center frame, with his head right in the
middle of the seal of Florida, which is on the
(21:49):
center of their state flag. The head in front of
the seal creates this almost like halo effect around Dusantas's head,
and then the seal turns into a spinning son and
Rad as we zoom into the symbol as troops march
into center, and then the video ends. The Sun and
Rad is on screen for about ten seconds. So this
(22:11):
was a pretty upsetting thing to see on Twitter.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yes, upsetting is one way to phrase it. Yeah, and again.
The Sun and Rad has a long history. It's kind
of a specifically a cultic version of the swastika it reached.
It has been around for quite a while, but it's
most recent. The kind of thing that brought it into
modern prominence was the christ Church shooter chose it as
(22:36):
the cover of his manifesto and also wore a Son
and Rad. I believe it was on the chest of
his plate carrier. When he carried out his massacre. He
also had a couple on his gun.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I think, yeah, so it's very clearly Nazi symbol. I
know there's some people make jokes about how this must
have just been an Azov battalion reference. Deeply unserious.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
No, you can see some of these on Azam again,
this is a Nazi thing. They wear this too. Yes,
Azof uses it.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
There's people trying to excuse the use of the sun
and rad by saying, oh, it's justin Azof simple it's
not a Hoatzia thing is bad, which is a deeply
unserious thing to say. So, yeah, this video was shared
by at least one campaign staffer. It's a very short video,
but it plays into a strain of like accelerationist propaganda
(23:29):
tropes that even the previous Fashionay video didn't didn't even
really have in many of the same ways, like like
all of all of like the dooomer Wojack slowly becoming
like happy and content than putting on military fatigues to
go fight for Ron Decantis, who's now in the center
of like a haloed sun and rad like it's it's
(23:49):
it is emulating a type of meme that both gained
popular in order to specifically like inspire mass shootings to happen,
and also to like to get young depressed male to
channel their depression into like fascism. It has a whole
bunch of tropes like it's it's it's really just like
playing by the playbook. So the video was first posted
(24:12):
on the Twitter account ron DeSantis fancams, which is a
horrible sentence. Yeah, the account is a few months old,
but its visible posts only go back to June. They
post a lot of videos, all in a very similar style,
which leads you to believe that whoever operates the account
(24:34):
must be making the videos themselves. One video from the
account plays clips of people describing Dasantis as fascist, edited
together with clips of DeSantis deploying National Guard and calling
for civilian state military force under his control, all sliced
together next to footage of Nazis and Mussolini played over
(24:54):
an upbeat to EDM track. So it's all like explicitly
fascist stuff like like like it's people like rev like
it's like uh, proud proudly embracing the fascist label. So
this style of video is almost identical to the homophobic
pride Mones video that we discussed last week, and considering
(25:14):
the recent news that the other video shared by the
dasantas Warm account was secretly made by a campaign staffer,
that led myself and others to assume that this Saun
and Red video was most likely made by the same
person inside DeSantis's campaign and was operating this DeSantis Fancam
account as a sock puppet. But you know, I could
(25:37):
not prove this myself, really, I it's just it's it's
a it's a hard thing to kind of backtrack this.
This account was pretty clean in terms of like I
tried to, like, you know, do do pretty pretty basic
osen on this account, but it's it was, it was
I could not find out much about it. But uh.
The the campaign staff member that first shared this saun
(25:58):
and Red video to his own Twitter account was former
National Review writer Nate Hawkman. We will we will talk
about Nate Hawkman's exploits shortly shortly after this this hat break.
(26:24):
All right, we are back and in a much better
position currently than twenty five year old Nate Hawkman.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yes, so really was a tragically was a promising career.
You know what, Let's give them another chance, Garrison, reach
out to Nate. We can bring him on the team,
you know, have him start making some videos for us.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, I'll I'll build an invoice to Nate Hawkman's address. Yeah,
I'll see where he lives. So, twenty five year old
Nate Hawkman has been working as a speech writer for
de Santis's campaign after rising to prominence among young conservatives
for his online references and willingness to entertain ideas outside
the Overton window. Uh. Hawkman hosted a Twitter space late
(27:08):
last year centered around the question of if white supremacists
like a Nick Fuentes should have a place in the
modern conservative movement. Funtes himself appeared in the Twitter space,
and Hawkman thanked him for radicalizing children by saying, quote,
You've gotten a lot of kids based and we respect
you for that. And he also said that Fuentes quote
(27:30):
is probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young
men who might otherwise be conservative unquote. So Hawkman has
retweeted the Dysantis fancam account at least six times before
he shared this Son and Rata video this past Sunday,
But he's not the only Dysantis linked account to share
(27:52):
these videos. The campaign's war room Twitter account and the
pro DeSantis Never Back Down super pac have also shared
video from this Rondissantis fancam Twitter account. By using this
fancam account to post videos and then by retweeting on
Nate's account, someone was certainly testing the waters to see
(28:12):
how close the Dysantas campaign can get to like just
doing explicit Nazi shit, and considering the New York Times,
who Hawkman has written for, by the way, basically confirming
that the person who made the Pride Month video was
secretly employed by Dysantis and posted the a third party
to get some distance from the official campaign. This led
(28:33):
many to suspect that Hawkman was secretly the person behind
this fancam account due to the similarities in video styles
and his frequent boosting of the account. The sun and
Ride video was deleted the same day was posted, and
the fancam account has not posted since then. But then suddenly,
just a few hours ago as of time of recording,
(28:54):
news dropped that Nick Hachman has been fired from the
Dasantis campaign, and the sources at Axiom confirmed that he
has in fact secretly been making these Fashway videos. So
it was it was Hawkman on all along. This is
what happens when you hire a twenty five year old
gropewer to work on your to work on your presidential bid, your.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Very serious presidential campaign.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah so uh. The Dessentant's campaign officially has only said
a few words on the subject, quote, Nate Hawkman is
no longer with the campaign and we will not be
commenting on him further.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Not that easy, guys, But other.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Anonymous sources have confirmed to news outlets that it was
Hawkman who was making these videos. So this is weird
because like this hasn't been a great move for DeSantis
hiring Hawkman, having Hawkman do all this like behind the
scenes like Scooby Doo shit of like you're posting fasci
fascist videos on sock pupons to then get reboosted by
d Santa's campaign like it's it's all. It's all very
(30:01):
like dark but like comical, like it's it's silly, like uh,
similar to the Descentus video we talked about in the
Last Adventures in fash d episode. This video it was
not meant to like convince older Trump supporters to vote
for dissenttis right, like that that's not the intention of
posting this video.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
No, this new video drives they are first off, going
for the zoomer vote always a mixed bag.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
An.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah, anytime you're going for the youth vote, this is
like famously a difficult thing. It kind of sometimes works
for the dims because the youth tend to be pretty
progressive and the Republicans are terrifying. Yeah, but going for
the trying to base your campaign as a Republican presidential
candidate on the youths is uh quite a move. Yeah,
(30:49):
Like it's let's see how it pays off for him gotten.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, because like this new video is almost more chronically
online than the last one. Like, not even considering the
Nazi imagery, it's it's heavy use of BoJack memes is
just like cartoonish to the median voter. What this video
is trying to do is signal to self describe fascists
that Dysantis is their guy, and trying extremely desperately to
(31:15):
create another like meme magic moment like we had in
twenty sixteen, to recruit a slew of teenage Nazis to
try and meme another based president into office, which isn't
gonna work this time around, because it's not twenty sixteen anymore.
Like we we've we've already been We've already been inoculated
to some degree to this, to this style of of
(31:37):
campaign tactics, all of all of the all the people,
and like like four chan isn't the thing that it
used to be. It is it is, it is a
shell of its of its former self. But like what
we have here on like the DeSantis side is like
in terms of hiring people like cockmen, right, these are
like seasoned gropers who grew up and are now like
(31:59):
getting into their twenties. Uh, you know, they're taking jobs
at National Review and as and as campaign staffers. But
due to their isolated, niche political upbringing, they have deluded
themselves into thinking that there's like a mythical far right
youth voting block that just like quite simply doesn't exist.
So you can spend all day making and retweeting these
(32:20):
meme heavy videos with Nazi imagery that really only succeed
in turning off the reliable boomer Republican voters. Now, like
there's a few other you know, future scenarios here. If
these if these like up and coming gropers continue to
like grow up, polish their act, take more jobs as
staffers or on Capitol Hill, and like slowly grow in
(32:41):
numbers as they learn to like hide their power level
like hea like hide their amount of racism. Then we
might have a problem if they like actually like put
like intentionality into a long term strategy to like put
more of these young freaks into positions in Washington. But
we're simply not there yet. Like in the case of Hawkman,
(33:02):
he kind of just like he blew up the spot
right like he went like he went too hard, too fast,
and then he got fired because they don't want that shit.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yeah, the olds are going to watch this and go like,
what the fuck is this? This does not look serious,
This is not speaking to my issues. This is just
like off putting in strange, and most young people are like, oh,
it's some brain poisoned four channer. That's who this guy
is running as the four chan candidate. Yep, all right now.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Like so the other fear is that they'll shift from
like this electoral focus and try to just use this
type of video propaganda to initiate another wave of like
Nazi mass shootings, like in twenty eighteen the halo effect
around DeSantis's head is certainly cause for concern, but there's
a lot of other factors that go into that sort
(33:53):
of thing, and that is kind of just more of
like an ever present fear that anti fascists have, and
you know, people do a lot of work into trying
to catch these guys before they actually do mass shootings
and try to try to isolate the spread of this
style of propaganda for that very reason. So yeah, I mean,
it's it's certainly an interesting trajectory. When I started, like
(34:16):
finishing this episode earlier today, I had no idea that
Hawkman was going to get fired, had no idea that
it was going to be confirmed that Hawkman was the
one making making these videos. So that's kind of some
breaking news on our side. It's it's been a few days.
If you're if you're listening to this, at the end
of the week, I'm going to read out one tweet
from this guy a double doink you, who is a stupid,
(34:38):
stupid handle no offense, but he made a made a
made a made a pretty good point here I quote.
I think DeSantis's real problem isn't just that he's racist,
it's that his campaign is racist in the same way
a really annoying teenager is your average xenophobic suburbanite dad
looks at a son and rad Wojack ad like his
(35:00):
son crashed his car. A lot of people are arguing
that your average fifty six year old Trump supporter isn't
as racist as your average DeSantis supporting zoomer. But that's
not the point. Putting weird blood and soil shit in
your ads smells it's deeply uncool to the exact people
that you want to impress unquote, and I'll add it's
it's it's deeply uncool to the exact people you want
(35:22):
to impress if you want to win at being president
and like are trying to move over Trump voters. It's
just it's just it's just not going to play. So
this is this is the state of the d Santa's campaign.
Now they've they've shed almost forty people from their staff.
The guy that was supposed to lead their television ads
has left. They seemingly just have no idea what the
(35:45):
fuck to do. They they tried to have this guy
do this like backdoor Nazi video sock puppet strategy that
has also resulted in not very good things for this
for the Desanta's campaign. So I guess we'll we'll see
how their how their campaign develops, if they if they
continue this is sort of like fash wave rhetoric and style.
(36:08):
I kind of doubt it now that now that now
that Hawkman is out. But yeah, it's been a certainly
certainly an interesting interesting few months here or a few
weeks here rather in terms of in fashwave videos resurfacing
again for the first time in quite a while. In
terms of like mainstream of political use.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, I'm kind of suspecting that this might be the
death knell of that as a at least for a spell,
as a as a relevant form of propaganda.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, I mean it's it's been in some ways like
internally rejected at the Disanta's campaign, and he is arguably
the most fascist mainstream candidate that they that we like
have right now.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Nothing puts a stink on stuff like this like failure, right,
you know, these guys, these guys are not anarchists, and
the anarchs are we nearly always lose. So there's this
like because things fail, you know that, Like there's a
lot of Spanish Civil War, you know, iconography and stuff,
that's still very relevant on that chunk of the left,
(37:13):
But with the right, it is all about power, and
when something like this fails, when it actually weakens a campaign,
when it weakens the insurgent right, when it makes them
less able to exert power. Yeah, I kind of feel
like we may have seen the last of this as
a thing that matters, right.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah, I'll definitely be watching these next few months. But
I think that's that's definitely a very a very fair
assessment at this point. Lastly, I just want to clarify
one thing about our last episode due to some viewer feedback.
So last time we were talking about how the Biden
administration's use of dark branded memes had like inadvertently led
to Fast way of taking a big body blow. Now,
(37:56):
I think some people misinterpreted our discussion as downplaying and
fascists and leftists attempt to disrupt Dark Mega and fash
wave in general by like proliferating the satirical dark branded memes.
So in the episode, we talked about the methodology behind this,
this this strategy of like normies seizing onto memes and aesthetics,
(38:17):
thus making them cringe and unattractive to the niche groups.
That they that that once enjoyed using them with Dark Brand,
and there were certainly an attempt from anti fascists and
leftist posters to appropriate fash waves aesthetics with the hope
that if spread widely enough, it would disarm some of
fashwaves more dangerous and inspirational aspects. But you can't really
(38:38):
force mainstream like virality. This kind of thing works best
when it appears natural, and for the majority of dark
branded posters, they were just doing this shit for like
shits and giggles like that. That was the primary factor,
is that it was funny, and no effort to damage
fash waves legibility would really be successful without mainstream liberal spread.
(39:02):
A small group of leftists could mean like eternally, but
until it breaks through that bubble, it would have little
to no effect. Now, because of how Twitter's algorithm worked
during the summer of last year, after a few months,
Dark Branded did in fact break through to the liberal mainstream.
But I've seen nothing to suggest that the White House
staff had any intention of trying to damage fash Wave's
(39:25):
legibility by sharing laser I memes in August to twenty
twenty two.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
I think the key here is that you were not
saying this was purely the result of liberals accidentally like
jumping on to this, but that the primary like success
was achieved. Like, the part of the success that was
achieved as a result of this going like mainstream among
Biden supporters was accidental. Yeah, it was the part that
(39:50):
was key, not saying that the people who recognize this
and we're putting in the background work to try to
push this stuff and make it, you know, eventually go viral.
That was certainly not accidental.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
But correct.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
The part that the liberals played was an accidental part
in killing this.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
That's that's the point, yes, Because what I mean by
accidental is that when Dark Brandon started in March of
twenty twenty two, there was no way to guarantee that
four months later the white and like the White House
and Blue Wave liberals would be sharing these memes on
mass Like I remember conversations I had like last August
when liberals were seemingly like ruining the funny dark branded memes.
(40:30):
But like me, like myself and research colleagues during this time,
like that was when we realized that if, like, if
liberals keep sharing these cringy memes, we might actually have
a shot at killing off a fash wave. So yes,
this was to not discount the efforts at anti fascists
or others who pioneered the spread of Dark Brandon and
their attempts to insert it into greater public consciousness. But
(40:51):
I think to frame this as like a meticulously planned
siop from the very start is also kind of inaccurate,
in like a very like spotlight like this was. This
was a collaborative effort with the with the liberals not
realizing the degree that their collaboration played in this larger
game of trying to disarm fascist aesthetics and like meme styles.
(41:13):
So yeah, that's one one clarifying note as we hopefully
wrap up this dysantis fashwave sega for the time being,
because I definitely did not plan on making this episode
when I finished recording last week with you.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
So here we are cool all right, that's the episode.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
That's the episode. It could happen here as a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia 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 cool zonemedia dot com Slash sources.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Thanks for listening.
Ah, it could happen here. A podcast that is right
now happening in your year. It could happen a year.
That's what we should call it, Garrison. We're changing the name.
We're rebranding our valuable valuable titles, uh, completely moving, moving
overnight to a whole new thing based on a whim you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Know, gambitzer.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Uh yeah, this is a This has been a fun week.
We're all laughing a little bit at Elon Musk, but
we have something serious to talk about today, and that
is everybody's favorite fascist governor, Ron DeSantis. Garrison, you and
I spent just way too much time last week talking
about meetball Ron, and now now we're back. Now we're
(00:52):
back to because he keeps meatballing meetball ron Is ballin
and meeting.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah. So we wrapped up like a like a two
part episode on Ron Desanis's use of Fashi rave asthetics,
and then like two days later, the funniest thing happened,
uh where he just decided to basically basically post Son
and Rads. So we're gonna we're gonna get to that.
(01:21):
But first there's a whole bunch of other information that's
come out these these past like really three days that
have kind of that are actually giving more context to
what's going on at the Dasantas campaign because stuff doesn't
look too good. Actually, you know, he he kind of
looks like he's losing everything as he slowly watches it
all crumble. So let's see. Let's let's start by talking
(01:44):
about everyone's favorite topic, campaign finances. I know this is
what what everyone tunes in to listen to.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yes, we love campaign finances.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, so last week the public finally got a glimpse
at DeSantis's campaign finances. The financial disclosures that DeSantis had
about twice as much staff as Donald Trump and as
of last week.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, Garrison, you just said that, and I imagine in
my head for a second that you were referring to
the amount of staff infections he's had versus Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
That's not true. No, Trump's definitely had more staff.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
There's almost no way, Yeah, that Trump is not leading
in the staff infections category. Please, I'm sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
But as of last week, the Florida governor had already
spent about forty percent of the twenty million dollars fundraised
from April to June of twenty twenty three. So the
campaign's suspending rate was averaging more than two hundred and
twelve thousand dollars per day, which is an astronomical cost
(02:46):
for a campaign for someone like running for president, basically
for the first.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Time this far out too from the season proper hit.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, it's absolutely absurd. The inflated number of staff have
use of private jets and luxury event venues has his
campaign essentially just burning through cash and with very little
seeming to come of it in terms of positive poll numbers.
So another thing that they've.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Gained maybe a point or so on Trump over the
last year.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, after spending two hundred thousand dollars per day for
the past like four months. Another thing that these financial
disclosures exposed is DeSantis's heavy dependence on high contributors. So
just about fifteen percent of fundraising contributions came from donors
who gave less than two hundred dollars, and the vast,
(03:38):
vast majority of DeSantis's money has come from donors who
gave the legal maximum of three thy three hundred dollars
in the primary, which also means that those who gave
that can cannot contribute any more money either. So he's
running out of people that are actually able to fund
his operation.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, and it's worth noting he does have a super pack.
You are not limited in how much you can donate
to a super pack, but super packs cannot spend money
on the same things as general campaign funds, right, Like,
there are limitations in what you can use that on.
So this is actually a logistical problem for him that
he has maxed out his donor base.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, and The New York Times has reported that future
like large prospective donors have been spooked by DeSantis's sliding
poll numbers, and they may be less willing to invest
in what's looking like a losing battle. So to combat
these swelling campaign expenses, including two hundred and seventy nine
thousand dollars at the four seasons in Miami, DeSantis's Tallahassee
(04:40):
based campaign has began undercoing massive cuts to campaign staff
this past week. Previously, Desanta's had upwards of ninety people
on payroll, but just this month they've eliminated thirty eight
jobs in a variety of departments, cutting more than one
third of his payroll. DeSantis's cutbacks are nearly quill to
(05:00):
the size of Trump's entire twenty twenty four campaign staff.
Dessentis's campaign manager, Grenera Peck said in a statement, I
believe late last week quote, following a top to bottom
review of our organization, we have taken additional aggressive steps
to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest
position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden. So
(05:23):
that that was their little statement accompanying the news of
firing almost forty people from their campaign. According to The
New York Times, advertisers are quote promising to reorient the
DeSantis candidacy as a quote unquote insurgent run and remake
it into a quote unquote leaner, meaner operation. So this
(05:44):
is the new strategy that they're trying to do, is
instead of having ninety people on staff in a largely
ineffectual strategy, have a more insurgent run with a smaller
number of people. But in addition to the dozens of
staff members who've been let go this July, two senior
advisors have also departed this month to work for an
outside pro DeSantis nonprofit. One of these senior advisors, who
(06:08):
was supposed to oversee the campaign's television messaging, voluntarily left
quote as the reality of a disappearing advertising budget set in.
So these these two more more kind of seasoned Republican
advisors saw what was happening in the campaign, and they're
still pro DeSantis, but they believe they can be more
(06:29):
effective by working from outside of the actual campaign. That's
so funny, which is not a great sign for DeSantis's
internal internal team here if you have people like who
still like you, but they just can't work for you
because you're doing such a bad job. So Desatus's team
is now telegraphing a plan to engage with mainstream media
(06:53):
that in the way that they have not previously done
because they've he's so far kind of scornfully avoided it,
as we've talked about obviously. And they're calling this new
strategy the Dysantis is Everywhere approach, which is a good
Jesus Christ bad name for strategy.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
The part of the problem, Garrison, I don't know how
to like I can't like prove this the way that
we prove, you know, when we're when we're tracing back
the ideological roots of like a lot of our modern fascists.
But what I what I believe in my heart is
that so many of these very young people on the
extreme right who are who are driving this campaign like
(07:32):
just want to be villains from a bad late nineties
early two thousands movie. They want to be they want
to be the bad guy in like the fucking supervill
hero movie, right Like that that's you don't You don't
say that about a guy who's good like this, You
wouldn't like the Biden campaign if they came to Joe
and we're like, we want to do a Biden is
everywhere thing, he'd be like, now that sounds kind of creepy.
(07:54):
Guys Like I already got a little bit of a
problem with that, what with a hair sniff, and I
don't really want to really want to jump on.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That, right you know, Like it definitely has the vibes
of like zoomers who grew up watching like late nineties
animated superhero cartoons who are trying to like it. Yes,
we're trying to emulate that for some reason. There is
one one really funny quote from the Times that I
will read because it quotes like internal sources that that
(08:21):
I don't have access to, but anyway, quote one person
close to mister DeSantis, who requested anonymity to speak candidly
about a candidate whom the person still supports, said the
governor had experienced quote unquote a challenging learning curve that
has left him quote unquote a little bit jarred.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
So it doesn't sound like a six year old who's
like not quite progressing fast enough in the reading where
they're like, maybe we need to try teaching him another way,
like we'll get out the different colored books.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Like, yeah, so he seems to have a rough adjustment
period to campaigning in just more than one state and
having an actual like opponent to go up against, and
also like an opponent who's like actually a good who's
like good at being like a politician. Yeah. So yeah,
(09:12):
a challenging learning curve.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Indeed, I might I might specify, I think actually DeSantis
is a lot better as being a politician than Donald Trump,
but that's not what the competition is.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, DeSantis is better at being like an effective like governor. Uh,
he's better.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
He's better at the machinery of politics, yes, whereas Trump
is better at holding power within the GOP.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, and being like a showman. So we will we
will talk more about some uh some actually relatively breaking
news regarding the DeSantis campaign.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Shortly cited for this. I just saw this before we
got on.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Short shortly after this at break. Okay, we are we
are back. So a lot has happened in the past
two days, a lot has happened in the past two hours actually,
(10:12):
but we're We're gonna have to work our way there.
The first bit of news that was kind of both
it was both confirming my suspicions and in very a
very interesting piece of news in the first place, is
that that fast Wave inspired kind of homophobic Pride Month
(10:32):
video that we talked about in our last Dysantis fash
Wave episode. It turns out to be slightly more self
inflicted than what than what at least I said in
the episode, because I didn't want to make claims that
I couldn't back up. Because we have we have some
new new information regarding this video, I'm gonna I'm gonna
(10:54):
quote from this this article in the Times quote a
DeSantis campaign had originally produced the video internally, passing it
off to an outside supporter to post it first and
making it appear as if it was generated independently, according
to a person with knowledge of the incident, So this
(11:14):
video turned out to be actually be made in house.
This actually was made by someone who was working for
Rondasantis as we speculated it initially, but we couldn't really
like say for sure because it was it was posted
first on a third party account.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Specifically, the guy who was the one who shared it
is the dude who made it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
No, that is for this next video we're going to
talk about. Yeah, the the homophobic one was shared by
this this this Protosantas account called Proud Elephant, who had
a corresponding telegram channel. This was the guy who posted
the first homophobic mean one. But yeah, so we found
out Sunday night that it was actually made by someone
(11:56):
at the DeSantis campaign, which kind of just to find
a lot of our suspicions about DeSantis employing staff of
zoomers who don't actually understand how to win a political
election and are more interested in just creating fascist memes,
which is seems to be not a very effective strategy
for DeSantis so far. So again, just the day that
(12:20):
this news broke that that the video was actually made
in house, another fash wave of inspired video, but with
much much more overt Nazi imagery, was shared online by
a Dysantis campaign staffer. I'm Robert. Have you seen this video?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yes? Okay, so I'm the son in rad video.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yes, So we don't have to watch it here, but
I will I will give a description of it for
for the people listening, because also we should probably souldn't
be sharing these things like everywhere on on like Twitter
and stuff anyway, Like it's not it's not a great idea, but.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
It's not going to make you happier help you in
any way. To see this, it's just like it's surprising.
I will say that I was surprised to see how
fascy it was, to see how like explicitly accelerationist mass
shooter fascy it was. Yes, this is like christ Church
kind of Yes.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, so we're not gonna share it, but but it
is useful to know what's in it. So I did
write a pretty in depth description of this video here.
So this video was posted on Sunday, July twenty third.
It's about seventy seconds long. It plays over a Meg
Myers cover of the song Running Up the Hill.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Which was made you know recent Wait, isn't that the
one that was the one that the new season of
Stranger Things? A while back like it brought back to.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
The main Possibly it's it is it is a Kate
Bush original. This one is is a more like electronic
cover of the song. Yes, it's talking about like you know,
like a like a trying to like ask God to
help you with certain things. Blah blah bla blah blah
blah blah. Anyway, it starts with the Doomer wo Jack
sitting at a computer looking at headlines about the ineffectiveness
(14:03):
of Trump's border wall, unfulfilled anti immigration policies, and Trump's
pro COVID vaccine statements. So I guess we should probably
talk about what a wojack is in case someone is unfamiliar.
If you've ever spent any amount of time on the Internet,
you've probably seen memes with kind of crudely drawn like
human faces and heads. These are called wojack memes. They're
(14:26):
they're they're very popular in like political spheres. They kind
of kind of rose to prominence on four Chat and
spread spread out from there. Everyone kind of uses them nowadays.
They're pretty common, but there's a few specific like wojack characters,
like the chad is one. One of the more popular
ones is the Doomer wojack, which is someone who's taken
(14:50):
the black pill, so to speak. They've they've they've looked
at modern society and have decided that it's not worth
engaging in. Now there's this. There's doomers on the right.
There's dumers on the left. There's doomers who look at
like climate change and the acceleration of like of of
capitalism and just decide, hey, this is this is too
far gone. So they become a doomer, and they're on
(15:11):
the left. There's also duomers on the right who are
like looking at gay marriage and the acceptance of trans
people to being like, oh, this is so socially degenerate.
It's the society's too far gone, and then they become
a doomer. But they're on the right. So it's it.
It happens on It happens on both sides, and both
both sides use doomer memes. Uh yeah, this one is
(15:32):
because we're talking about it in this context of fash wave.
This is obviously a fascist doomer meme. But that's that's
kind of what I mean when I say there's there's
a doomer wojack sitting sitting at a computer. It's like
it's like a guy with a beanie, like a scruffy beard.
He looks like very depressed and tired, that sort of thing.
So as as these kind of headlines about Trump's not
(15:54):
conservative enoughness are flashing on this computer, the dumer rojack
is looking increasing lead disillusioned and apathetic. Then there's the
clip of Trump holding up a Pride flag that plays
right before we see Trump signing the First Step Act,
the twenty eighteen Criminal Justice Reform Bill. Then headlines flash
about violent criminals being released into the streets, that sort
(16:17):
of thing. So the doumer BoJack is looking at all
these things about Trump looking more and more depressed, when
suddenly a doorway appears with an almost angelic light pouring
in from behind, and as the door opens, we see
a silhouette of Ron DeSantis. More short clips of Ron play,
and now the wojack is looking happy, almost like exuberant,
(16:39):
seemingly kind of random images of outer space, volcanoes, rocket launches, surfing,
and the beach flash quickly on screen with with like
glitchy silhouettes of Ronda Santis looming above coastal ocean side
cities that are lit up by a sunset. A don't
tread on Florida Alligator flag spins onto screen like it's
(17:02):
a fucking like ms paint like edit and h. Then
the the video flashes more clips of DeSantis wearing sunglasses
standing in front of American flags as the sunset, Happy
Woejack fades in. So this is another woshack meme of
somebody almost like tearied eyed with like contentment, staring into
(17:24):
the horizon as like a sunset is behind their head.
It kind of it kind of reminds me of like
the that guy who who stole that plane in Seattle
and yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, very sad story if you're not aware of it.
A man hijacked I believe it was an Alaska Airs
flight a couple of years back. It was empty, like
he he worked at the airport. He just took the
plane and he got up into the sky and then
like he was just kind of a dude who was
sort of suicidal. There's very sad audio of him talking too,
because he gets on with air traffic control and he
(17:59):
makes sure that he's not going to hurt anyone else
and like then the plane goes down, you know, he
goes down in it and it's it's very bleak. He
was not a man who wanted to hurt anybody. It's
just this kind of like exist I've heard. I found
it set to a lot of vapor wave tracks. Actually,
like the audio the conversation between them, because he's kind
of I think a lot of people identify with his
(18:19):
sense of like I don't really know why I was
ever here. I don't really know.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, it's someone who's dealing with like postmodern absurdity, but
in a way that like he doesn't want to hurt
anybody about it, but he just doesn't know what to
do with existence.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, he had part of he had like the the
ten percent of what a mass shooter has, which is
exactly go out and I want to do something. But
thankfully he was also a good person and didn't want
to like murder strangers.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So this became very popular on the Internet, including on
redda and four Chan. This he was he was dubbed
sky King, and there's there's footage of him basically crashing
this plane as the sun is setting, and there's there's
fut of which like him flying around in sunset. Played
often played with vapor wave with his conversation with attackt
for control. Now this is very popular. The sunset happy
(19:10):
Rojack is very similar. I've seen people post this image
in threads about sky King before, and I think a
lot a lot of people to understand it's like this
this act that this this skyking thing, that this has
more in common with like accelerationist like terrorism than what
most people can like really understand about like between like
(19:30):
shooting a random person for like violent crime and this
like this, this is more this, This is closer to
why people do accelerationist like terroristic acts. But this guy
was like not actually a monster, so he didn't do that.
He like explicitly didn't want to hurt anybody. He explicitly
(19:51):
didn't want to try to land the plane at the
airport because he thought he might hurt somebody.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, and presumably since he worked at an airport, he
had some knowledge of how easily that could go wrong.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah. So this anyway, these two images are kind of
linked often on the Internet. So anyway, we we we
see we see the video getting like more hopeful with
with with Ron de Santis, you know, having stupid fash wave,
having stupid fash wave imagery. Is this sunset happy Wojack
(20:22):
fades in as like as the doomer is now has
like contentment, and then this this, then this is followed
by very quick flashes of DeSantis and more more, more
beach imagery. There's a lot of beach in this video. Yeah,
there's like this like rotating sheet of stickers that read
make America Florida. Then we get this shot of a
(20:44):
small yacht zooming through the water with DeSantis campaign events
played over top of the water. And during this shot
we have another Wojack holding a rifle, wearing Camo military
fatigues that slides onto screen. He has a patch of
the flag of Florida on his plate carrier and his helmet.
We get more shots of beachfront cities and rocket launches,
(21:06):
followed by headlines about Dysantis on a variety of topics,
including his anti immigration actions, his use of Florida's National
Guard in other states, DeSantis's anti diversity initiatives, his anti
education bills, his anti drag bills, the cancelation of pride
parades in Florida, and in general just kind of how
DeSantis has been pushing Florida further right. So, after this
(21:29):
barrage of headlines. We get to the most mask off
from a moment of the video. The flag of Florida
fills the screen with two lines of armed troops at
either side marching towards the flag. A still photo of
Dysantis is center frame, with his head right in the
middle of the seal of Florida, which is on the
(21:49):
center of their state flag. The head in front of
the seal creates this almost like halo effect around Dusantas's head,
and then the seal turns into a spinning son and
Rad as we zoom into the symbol as troops march
into center, and then the video ends. The Sun and
Rad is on screen for about ten seconds. So this
(22:11):
was a pretty upsetting thing to see on Twitter.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yes, upsetting is one way to phrase it. Yeah, and again.
The Sun and Rad has a long history. It's kind
of a specifically a cultic version of the swastika it reached.
It has been around for quite a while, but it's
most recent. The kind of thing that brought it into
modern prominence was the christ Church shooter chose it as
(22:36):
the cover of his manifesto and also wore a Son
and Rad. I believe it was on the chest of
his plate carrier. When he carried out his massacre. He
also had a couple on his gun.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I think, yeah, so it's very clearly Nazi symbol. I
know there's some people make jokes about how this must
have just been an Azov battalion reference. Deeply unserious.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
No, you can see some of these on Azam again,
this is a Nazi thing. They wear this too. Yes,
Azof uses it.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
There's people trying to excuse the use of the sun
and rad by saying, oh, it's justin Azof simple it's
not a Hoatzia thing is bad, which is a deeply
unserious thing to say. So, yeah, this video was shared
by at least one campaign staffer. It's a very short video,
but it plays into a strain of like accelerationist propaganda
(23:29):
tropes that even the previous Fashionay video didn't didn't even
really have in many of the same ways, like like
all of all of like the dooomer Wojack slowly becoming
like happy and content than putting on military fatigues to
go fight for Ron Decantis, who's now in the center
of like a haloed sun and rad like it's it's
(23:49):
it is emulating a type of meme that both gained
popular in order to specifically like inspire mass shootings to happen,
and also to like to get young depressed male to
channel their depression into like fascism. It has a whole
bunch of tropes like it's it's it's really just like
playing by the playbook. So the video was first posted
(24:12):
on the Twitter account ron DeSantis fancams, which is a
horrible sentence. Yeah, the account is a few months old,
but its visible posts only go back to June. They
post a lot of videos, all in a very similar style,
which leads you to believe that whoever operates the account
(24:34):
must be making the videos themselves. One video from the
account plays clips of people describing Dasantis as fascist, edited
together with clips of DeSantis deploying National Guard and calling
for civilian state military force under his control, all sliced
together next to footage of Nazis and Mussolini played over
(24:54):
an upbeat to EDM track. So it's all like explicitly
fascist stuff like like like it's people like rev like
it's like uh, proud proudly embracing the fascist label. So
this style of video is almost identical to the homophobic
pride Mones video that we discussed last week, and considering
(25:14):
the recent news that the other video shared by the
dasantas Warm account was secretly made by a campaign staffer,
that led myself and others to assume that this Saun
and Red video was most likely made by the same
person inside DeSantis's campaign and was operating this DeSantis Fancam
account as a sock puppet. But you know, I could
(25:37):
not prove this myself, really, I it's just it's it's
a it's a hard thing to kind of backtrack this.
This account was pretty clean in terms of like I
tried to, like, you know, do do pretty pretty basic
osen on this account, but it's it was, it was
I could not find out much about it. But uh.
The the campaign staff member that first shared this saun
(25:58):
and Red video to his own Twitter account was former
National Review writer Nate Hawkman. We will we will talk
about Nate Hawkman's exploits shortly shortly after this this hat break.
(26:24):
All right, we are back and in a much better
position currently than twenty five year old Nate Hawkman.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yes, so really was a tragically was a promising career.
You know what, Let's give them another chance, Garrison, reach
out to Nate. We can bring him on the team,
you know, have him start making some videos for us.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, I'll I'll build an invoice to Nate Hawkman's address. Yeah,
I'll see where he lives. So, twenty five year old
Nate Hawkman has been working as a speech writer for
de Santis's campaign after rising to prominence among young conservatives
for his online references and willingness to entertain ideas outside
the Overton window. Uh. Hawkman hosted a Twitter space late
(27:08):
last year centered around the question of if white supremacists
like a Nick Fuentes should have a place in the
modern conservative movement. Funtes himself appeared in the Twitter space,
and Hawkman thanked him for radicalizing children by saying, quote,
You've gotten a lot of kids based and we respect
you for that. And he also said that Fuentes quote
(27:30):
is probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young
men who might otherwise be conservative unquote. So Hawkman has
retweeted the Dysantis fancam account at least six times before
he shared this Son and Rata video this past Sunday,
But he's not the only Dysantis linked account to share
(27:52):
these videos. The campaign's war room Twitter account and the
pro DeSantis Never Back Down super pac have also shared
video from this Rondissantis fancam Twitter account. By using this
fancam account to post videos and then by retweeting on
Nate's account, someone was certainly testing the waters to see
(28:12):
how close the Dysantas campaign can get to like just
doing explicit Nazi shit, and considering the New York Times,
who Hawkman has written for, by the way, basically confirming
that the person who made the Pride Month video was
secretly employed by Dysantis and posted the a third party
to get some distance from the official campaign. This led
(28:33):
many to suspect that Hawkman was secretly the person behind
this fancam account due to the similarities in video styles
and his frequent boosting of the account. The sun and
Ride video was deleted the same day was posted, and
the fancam account has not posted since then. But then suddenly,
just a few hours ago as of time of recording,
(28:54):
news dropped that Nick Hachman has been fired from the
Dasantis campaign, and the sources at Axiom confirmed that he
has in fact secretly been making these Fashway videos. So
it was it was Hawkman on all along. This is
what happens when you hire a twenty five year old
gropewer to work on your to work on your presidential bid, your.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Very serious presidential campaign.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah so uh. The Dessentant's campaign officially has only said
a few words on the subject, quote, Nate Hawkman is
no longer with the campaign and we will not be
commenting on him further.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Not that easy, guys, But other.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Anonymous sources have confirmed to news outlets that it was
Hawkman who was making these videos. So this is weird
because like this hasn't been a great move for DeSantis
hiring Hawkman, having Hawkman do all this like behind the
scenes like Scooby Doo shit of like you're posting fasci
fascist videos on sock pupons to then get reboosted by
d Santa's campaign like it's it's all. It's all very
(30:01):
like dark but like comical, like it's it's silly, like uh,
similar to the Descentus video we talked about in the
Last Adventures in fash d episode. This video it was
not meant to like convince older Trump supporters to vote
for dissenttis right, like that that's not the intention of
posting this video.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
No, this new video drives they are first off, going
for the zoomer vote always a mixed bag.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
An.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah, anytime you're going for the youth vote, this is
like famously a difficult thing. It kind of sometimes works
for the dims because the youth tend to be pretty
progressive and the Republicans are terrifying. Yeah, but going for
the trying to base your campaign as a Republican presidential
candidate on the youths is uh quite a move. Yeah,
(30:49):
Like it's let's see how it pays off for him gotten.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, because like this new video is almost more chronically
online than the last one. Like, not even considering the
Nazi imagery, it's it's heavy use of BoJack memes is
just like cartoonish to the median voter. What this video
is trying to do is signal to self describe fascists
that Dysantis is their guy, and trying extremely desperately to
(31:15):
create another like meme magic moment like we had in
twenty sixteen, to recruit a slew of teenage Nazis to
try and meme another based president into office, which isn't
gonna work this time around, because it's not twenty sixteen anymore.
Like we we've we've already been We've already been inoculated
to some degree to this, to this style of of
(31:37):
campaign tactics, all of all of the all the people,
and like like four chan isn't the thing that it
used to be. It is it is, it is a
shell of its of its former self. But like what
we have here on like the DeSantis side is like
in terms of hiring people like cockmen, right, these are
like seasoned gropers who grew up and are now like
(31:59):
getting into their twenties. Uh, you know, they're taking jobs
at National Review and as and as campaign staffers. But
due to their isolated, niche political upbringing, they have deluded
themselves into thinking that there's like a mythical far right
youth voting block that just like quite simply doesn't exist.
So you can spend all day making and retweeting these
(32:20):
meme heavy videos with Nazi imagery that really only succeed
in turning off the reliable boomer Republican voters. Now, like
there's a few other you know, future scenarios here. If
these if these like up and coming gropers continue to
like grow up, polish their act, take more jobs as
staffers or on Capitol Hill, and like slowly grow in
(32:41):
numbers as they learn to like hide their power level
like hea like hide their amount of racism. Then we
might have a problem if they like actually like put
like intentionality into a long term strategy to like put
more of these young freaks into positions in Washington. But
we're simply not there yet. Like in the case of Hawkman,
(33:02):
he kind of just like he blew up the spot
right like he went like he went too hard, too fast,
and then he got fired because they don't want that shit.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yeah, the olds are going to watch this and go like,
what the fuck is this? This does not look serious,
This is not speaking to my issues. This is just
like off putting in strange, and most young people are like, oh,
it's some brain poisoned four channer. That's who this guy
is running as the four chan candidate. Yep, all right now.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Like so the other fear is that they'll shift from
like this electoral focus and try to just use this
type of video propaganda to initiate another wave of like
Nazi mass shootings, like in twenty eighteen the halo effect
around DeSantis's head is certainly cause for concern, but there's
a lot of other factors that go into that sort
(33:53):
of thing, and that is kind of just more of
like an ever present fear that anti fascists have, and
you know, people do a lot of work into trying
to catch these guys before they actually do mass shootings
and try to try to isolate the spread of this
style of propaganda for that very reason. So yeah, I mean,
it's it's certainly an interesting trajectory. When I started, like
(34:16):
finishing this episode earlier today, I had no idea that
Hawkman was going to get fired, had no idea that
it was going to be confirmed that Hawkman was the
one making making these videos. So that's kind of some
breaking news on our side. It's it's been a few days.
If you're if you're listening to this, at the end
of the week, I'm going to read out one tweet
from this guy a double doink you, who is a stupid,
(34:38):
stupid handle no offense, but he made a made a
made a made a pretty good point here I quote.
I think DeSantis's real problem isn't just that he's racist,
it's that his campaign is racist in the same way
a really annoying teenager is your average xenophobic suburbanite dad
looks at a son and rad Wojack ad like his
(35:00):
son crashed his car. A lot of people are arguing
that your average fifty six year old Trump supporter isn't
as racist as your average DeSantis supporting zoomer. But that's
not the point. Putting weird blood and soil shit in
your ads smells it's deeply uncool to the exact people
that you want to impress unquote, and I'll add it's
it's it's deeply uncool to the exact people you want
(35:22):
to impress if you want to win at being president
and like are trying to move over Trump voters. It's
just it's just it's just not going to play. So
this is this is the state of the d Santa's campaign.
Now they've they've shed almost forty people from their staff.
The guy that was supposed to lead their television ads
has left. They seemingly just have no idea what the
(35:45):
fuck to do. They they tried to have this guy
do this like backdoor Nazi video sock puppet strategy that
has also resulted in not very good things for this
for the Desanta's campaign. So I guess we'll we'll see
how their how their campaign develops, if they if they
continue this is sort of like fash wave rhetoric and style.
(36:08):
I kind of doubt it now that now that now
that Hawkman is out. But yeah, it's been a certainly
certainly an interesting interesting few months here or a few
weeks here rather in terms of in fashwave videos resurfacing
again for the first time in quite a while. In
terms of like mainstream of political use.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, I'm kind of suspecting that this might be the
death knell of that as a at least for a spell,
as a as a relevant form of propaganda.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, I mean it's it's been in some ways like
internally rejected at the Disanta's campaign, and he is arguably
the most fascist mainstream candidate that they that we like
have right now.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Nothing puts a stink on stuff like this like failure, right,
you know, these guys, these guys are not anarchists, and
the anarchs are we nearly always lose. So there's this
like because things fail, you know that, Like there's a
lot of Spanish Civil War, you know, iconography and stuff,
that's still very relevant on that chunk of the left,
(37:13):
But with the right, it is all about power, and
when something like this fails, when it actually weakens a campaign,
when it weakens the insurgent right, when it makes them
less able to exert power. Yeah, I kind of feel
like we may have seen the last of this as
a thing that matters, right.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah, I'll definitely be watching these next few months. But
I think that's that's definitely a very a very fair
assessment at this point. Lastly, I just want to clarify
one thing about our last episode due to some viewer feedback.
So last time we were talking about how the Biden
administration's use of dark branded memes had like inadvertently led
to Fast way of taking a big body blow. Now,
(37:56):
I think some people misinterpreted our discussion as downplaying and
fascists and leftists attempt to disrupt Dark Mega and fash
wave in general by like proliferating the satirical dark branded memes.
So in the episode, we talked about the methodology behind this,
this this strategy of like normies seizing onto memes and aesthetics,
(38:17):
thus making them cringe and unattractive to the niche groups.
That they that that once enjoyed using them with Dark Brand,
and there were certainly an attempt from anti fascists and
leftist posters to appropriate fash waves aesthetics with the hope
that if spread widely enough, it would disarm some of
fashwaves more dangerous and inspirational aspects. But you can't really
(38:38):
force mainstream like virality. This kind of thing works best
when it appears natural, and for the majority of dark
branded posters, they were just doing this shit for like
shits and giggles like that. That was the primary factor,
is that it was funny, and no effort to damage
fash waves legibility would really be successful without mainstream liberal spread.
(39:02):
A small group of leftists could mean like eternally, but
until it breaks through that bubble, it would have little
to no effect. Now, because of how Twitter's algorithm worked
during the summer of last year, after a few months,
Dark Branded did in fact break through to the liberal mainstream.
But I've seen nothing to suggest that the White House
staff had any intention of trying to damage fash Wave's
(39:25):
legibility by sharing laser I memes in August to twenty
twenty two.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
I think the key here is that you were not
saying this was purely the result of liberals accidentally like
jumping on to this, but that the primary like success
was achieved. Like, the part of the success that was
achieved as a result of this going like mainstream among
Biden supporters was accidental. Yeah, it was the part that
(39:50):
was key, not saying that the people who recognize this
and we're putting in the background work to try to
push this stuff and make it, you know, eventually go viral.
That was certainly not accidental.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
But correct.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
The part that the liberals played was an accidental part
in killing this.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
That's that's the point, yes, Because what I mean by
accidental is that when Dark Brandon started in March of
twenty twenty two, there was no way to guarantee that
four months later the white and like the White House
and Blue Wave liberals would be sharing these memes on
mass Like I remember conversations I had like last August
when liberals were seemingly like ruining the funny dark branded memes.
(40:30):
But like me, like myself and research colleagues during this time,
like that was when we realized that if, like, if
liberals keep sharing these cringy memes, we might actually have
a shot at killing off a fash wave. So yes,
this was to not discount the efforts at anti fascists
or others who pioneered the spread of Dark Brandon and
their attempts to insert it into greater public consciousness. But
(40:51):
I think to frame this as like a meticulously planned
siop from the very start is also kind of inaccurate,
in like a very like spotlight like this was. This
was a collaborative effort with the with the liberals not
realizing the degree that their collaboration played in this larger
game of trying to disarm fascist aesthetics and like meme styles.
(41:13):
So yeah, that's one one clarifying note as we hopefully
wrap up this dysantis fashwave sega for the time being,
because I definitely did not plan on making this episode
when I finished recording last week with you.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
So here we are cool all right, that's the episode.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
That's the episode. It could happen here as a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia 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 cool zonemedia dot com Slash sources.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Thanks for listening.
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Garrison Davis
James Stout
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