I think @anon61221983’s point is the important one, but I also think we are at a moment where the “quality” actually reduces credibility.
I was recently with a group watching an informal-style interview of an expert on something or other. The first comments afterwards were that they didn’t trust the expert because he knew to change which camera he was looking at (while talking to the interviewer) when the live camera changed.
They had a bunch of points like that. Basically, he’s presented as an expert, but his obvious media training undercut his claim to expertise. (Or makes him seem more like a shill. Media training ain’t free.)
In case you didn’t know, that’s the point of those scam emails: they want to find the suckers, so they purposely do things to weed out the skeptical as quickly as possible until all that’s left is those who blindly believe their story.
I guess maybe you mean the quality of the scam? But honestly, I see it as just a thin covering for the violent fascism they’re promoting… it’s what their supporters want.
Hmmm… I don’t think the quality actually matters and never really did - they are credible enough in the eyes of their target audience that the seemingly poor quality doesn’t matter. The nature of propaganda has changed in the modern era. Fascists were relatively early adopters of online discourse (going back to the 90s with the founding of stormfront and the work that R. Derek Black was doing as a kid under their father’s direction). The right wing took over locales like 4-chan, etc, and embraced the whole weird meme aesthetic.
Yeah, maybe it is the early adopter aspect, rather than quality itself?
The modern-ness of the nazi iconography and their use of technology was exciting in its time, as the technology/aesthetic/genres of 4chan (and the Internet in general) have been exciting recently?
But I’m overthinking it. As you say, “we’re the in group and can push everyone else around” is just an irresistible message to some people, no matter how it is delivered. Sigh.
But like other things (ie, their racial policies) they took from the US… While it certainly alluded to German specific culture, the technology and mode of messaging was highly influenced by the various uses of propaganda by the US government from the first world war on…
I don’t think that “excitement” is the point, though? I think it’s reinforcing and being shit-posting edgelords. They think they’re giving themselves an out by pretending like it’s “ironic”… but it’s a poorly done cover for their real agenda - violent bullying on a massive scale.
But given that the backbone of MAGA tend to be older people, it might be exciting, because they didn’t grow up with meme-culture and aren’t familiar with it.
Yeah, that part. Some people like bullies and like strongmen. Some people believe in authoritarianism and want to see it enacted, because they are very keen to hurt those of us that they don’t like.
I’m beginning to think it’s like the Bible: even if it isn’t your own religious text, you need to read it to understand references in so many other texts and speeches.
I was watching a video the other day where the interviewee was asked a question relating to a complex issue and the fact they took a couple of seconds to marshal their thoughts rather than blurt out the first thing that entered their mind was taken by commenters as “inauthenticity” which automatically invalidated what they said.
“They”, I believe. Otherwise… yeah, they read it so we don’t have to.
Not all heroes wear capes.
Also going back explicitly to Classical Rome, not just accidentally via the Fascisti. The whole Third Reich thing… the Second Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, as the (German Aryan, natch) continuation of the First Reich, being Imperial Rome.
They were deliberately modernising something ancient in order to claim it as not just being theirs, but being them.
