"The Trump campaign also published on Facebook an ad with images of a red triangle that mirrored the patches Nazis used to mark political prisoners in concentration camps. The ads apparently ran 88 times—88 is code for Heil Hitler-- and Facebook later removed the ads for promoting “organized hate.”
Parker Molloy, editor at Media Matters, noted that this sort of dog whistle is designed to attract like-minded racists, but also to make opponents seem “paranoid, easily offended, and see Nazis everywhere they look.” She also suggested that this was a deliberate attempt to avoid having to pay for more ads because media would pick up the story and run with it. “It’s expensive to run ads,” she wrote, “but media coverage is free.” She noted that it’s far cheaper to run something offensive, get banned, and then cry “censorship--” which feeds the right-wing’s existing narrative-- than it is to pay for ads.
So it was a chaotic day, and a confusing one, but the fact that the Trump campaign is openly sharing Nazi symbols suggests that the lines of the election are becoming very clear indeed."
I heard about this on PBS news hour last night. this quote is from Heather Cox Richardson, history prof, letter to America. http://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-18-2020 |
