Thread by @JuliusGoat

This is the United States refusing its Nazi vaccinations. Nazis will notice.

cbsnews.com/news/us-votes-…

It's from 2016, right after Trump's election, so I'd modify this to say "Nazis noticed."

And they've noticed other things, too.

They notice when Trump says he's a nationalist. When he calls immigration "an invasion." When he speaks of "shithole countries."

These are their words, their memes, their issues.

They notice when he broadcasts their messages on Twitter, quotes their heroes.

They notice the crowds, the cheers.

They notice how mainstream it is again, to believe as they do.

That this crowd resented the things they couldn't say for a time, things they now feel free to say again.

Things neo Nazis have been saying all along, from the shadows.

They notice the social cost has lessened for believing as they do, notice the media products geared toward flattering their beliefs, defending outraged reactions against them as free speech issues.

They notice how they get this defense, and the groups they would oppress don't.

They notice how much of the the rest of media, fearful of being accused of political bias, plays along with the narrative they're just another marginalized group, includes their views as worthy of consideration, where for a time at least, they would have been rejected outright.

They see journalists attacked at rallies, the lack of consequence.

They notice they can call journalists "lugenpresse" again, and the president will nod and call them "the enemy of the people."

They know which people he means when he says it. The press *has* been their enemy.

They see the president's eagerness to harshly condemn even peaceful demonstrations, against violence committed against minorities, by a police force they've infiltrated.

They see his reluctance to speak even rote prepared remarks against white nationalist murderers.

They see a country that draws down investigation of their terrorist activities even as their terrorist activities rise.

They see a leader who uses the language of their ideas of supremacy even at conferences called to discuss the latest mass killing inspired by such ideas.

They notice courts removing the protections that held them in check for fear of legal cost, the claims from the bench that the issues of bigotry have been solved.

They notice the idea taking hold in mainstream consciousness, that bigotry is only a matter of individual mental furniture, that the most important thing to do with hateful ideas is to give them a stage and a platform, that a marketplace of ideas will self-regulate.

The thing about white supremacy and Nazism is, it's not a foreign thing to American consciousness.

It's very mainstream.

It needs a constant fight to hold it back, and we've stopped fighting.

Nazis ideology about genetic purity, white supremacy, and master races weren't unique to Germany 1930—they've been mainstream in U.S. cultural & political thought since our founding. Ours inspired Germany's.

We all know somebody who believes the things the NZ shooter believed.

These believers didn't go away. They hid.

Being public carried a price they were unwilling to pay. That was the vaccine.

Hiding marginalized them—their rightful place.

It's a virus. It needs constant fighting.

We—the large collective we—stopped.

Start.

This is true; it's why the vaccine analogy occurred to me.

I don't think this started with Trump. I think he's the result. The first major outbreak of measles on our local playground.

https://twitter.com/kwhitesays/status/1107249004109275136?s=20

To carry the analogy this far (and no farther) I'd say our weakened herd immunity is why a lot of people think they can support somebody who is overtly working toward a white ethnostate, as long as they come up with some other reason for their support.