DeSantis’ Fashwave Adventure, Part 1

I'm putting Ron, yeah, pudding Ron Old dasanct de aemonious. Now, Garrison, you've got a banger of an episode written out here.

I'm looking at your script right now. It's beautiful. Right before we get into it, I do want to give an update on a past subject of It Could Happen Here, Lord Miles Rutledge, for those of you who may not have caught that episode, Lord Miles is a British Man who went to Afghanistan to hang out and got caught up in the Taliban's you know, victory in that war, and then turned himself into a danger travel influencer, visiting in dangerous place, going to war zones, going to Ukraine

and like making it about him. He went back to Afghanistan because it really was better for his social media following than any of the other places he went, bragged about breaking laws, including faking his visa, and then got arrested and has been radio silent for about the last five months now. A lot of people have wondered is Lord Myles dead that he liked die in custody in the Taliban are trying to keep it a secret, but worry no longer. Friends. Today his account posted this is

a friend of Lord Miles to give an update. Four months in Taliban custody. He's treated very well, has several servants, loads of movies on his laptop, goes on picnics and as tea with the Taliban cabinet government. He still loves Afghanistan. And then there's a photo of him giving the thumbs up doubt. So he's not He's not dead, guys. He's in a nice Taliban farm upstate. He gets to run all he wants, you know, wide open fields. He's super happy.

It's really funny one of his All of these people are so fucking brained, poised, brain poisoned, but like a big part of Miles, he was like trying to also be kind of a right wing influencer. He was doing this like anti woke. The Taliban is awesome and like actually kind of good guys because they they don't like believe in the woke agenda. And one of his friends, after this message got posted, like messaged his account be like, hey, Taliban, if you're the guys that have like captured him, we

really want him back. I'll pay a ransom. I'm like, I know, this is probably just a misunderstanding because you guys are on our side on the anti woke war.

And I'm gonna explain all of these terms here in this episode, but we're seeing kind of a resurgence of a political meme style that was popular years ago. It's kind of laid dormant the past year or so for reasons that we will very soon discuss. But a whole bunch of both conservatives and liberals are kind of not really sure how to take this ad shared by the DeSantis campaign and are ill equipped to understand what the

fuck is going on. But luckily I am equipped because I spent my teen years in telegram chats watching this meme style develop.

traits of fash wave. And we've seen this be adopted by multiple politicians in the past, and most people probably like don't know what the fuck this is? Like, is this like a Superman thing? Like, what the fuck is this? So laser eye memes started in the early twenty tens, originally referencing video games like Mass Effect two and other like sci fi and superhero media people like Superman or anyone with like laser eyes. Is also like a it's like a cultural touch stone for this sort of thing.

The laser eyes usually represent like a figure growing in power, So when when someone has laser eyes and a meme, it's like they are they are They're gaining power, the gaining security. The The original caption for the early laser eye memes was assuming direct Control, which was also just a video game reference. So again I would have someone with like glowing, glowing laser eyes and text that says

like assuming control or assuming direct control. So this was this was this was this was popping off in like

the early twenty tens. Around the same time, synth wave and vapor wave were gaining traction as both like nostalgic musical microgenres and a memetic visual style featuring neon glitchy kind of eighties retro computer athetics mixed with traditional Greco Roman sculpture for a variety of reasons which we'll touch on, but vapor wave had influences from video games, cyberpunk, anime, and it was it was relatively popular as in mycer genre in like the twenty teens and through the twenty teens,

both the laser eye memes were steadily growing in popularity on places like Reddit and four chun, alongside the rise of a vapor wave and its kind of surrealist, nostalgia laden aesthetics focused on highlighting the comfort and unfulfilled promises of the Internet of yester year. And this like nostalgic surrealist aesthetic was prime bait for easy co option into the reactionary meme variant dubbed fash wave, which soon became kind of the de facto esthetic of the then burgeoning

alt right. Glowing laser eyes on various fascistic political figures became a staple of fash wave during the rise of the alt right around twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen. I actually kind of like vapor wave. I think it's maybe a bit overplayed now, and it certainly is frustrating how much it was kind of taken over by reaction because actual vapor wave is almost actually like anti capitalistic in

a few ways. It's it's kind of it's kind of criticizing the disposableness of like modern consumerist culture, using like forgotten eighties technology and like software and that kind of stuff.

So I'm looking at two of my little vapor wave images here in the script, and it does some of some of the little like ways that the images are broken up makes it look kind of like like old Internet pop up ads back when they had like clearly defined borders and x's and weren't just like overtaking your entire screen and you had no way to close them. But you know what does kind of overtake your entire

viewing experience via an ad? It's it's podcast advertising. Because it's going to go straight into your ears, and there's no way to X out. You have to you have to suffer through the ad unless you unless you figure it out that you can press a button that makes you go forward thirty seconds. Anyway, anyway, here is Here is our beloved are beloved sponsors who fund such vital research that I'm doing for this episode. Anyway, the rise

of the Alright. This is kind of where fashwave is, both like getting the name fashwave and also you know, it's becoming a larger problem because there's more Nazis walking around. So after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the Alright went through a sort of split between the more Trumpian adherents who made up large parts of the then dubbed all to Light, a term we don't really

use it very much anymore. And then this this kind of other section which had more of the accelerationist to neo Nazis who were starting to congregate on the messaging app Telegram. And then we have groups kind of like the Proud Boys that are like in between. They're kind of Trumpian. They're also also like more fascy, but they're not like really full skull ask. Usually some would adopt that esthetic later on, but that's kind of due to

this cultic milieu that's starting to develop on Telegram. So a fast wave largely followed the self proclaimed fascists, so it too became the central visual style of the of the burgeoning network of militant accelerationist Telegram channels, which would

eventually be dubbed terror Gram Terror as in terrorist. And this was combining with a whole bunch of weird factors around twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, including the Boogloo Boys, which Robert has written about at length before It's and it was also influenced by the Iron March Forums, and like the skull Mask network with groups like Adam Waffen and the Bass, they were all kind of the.

They kind of like haunt us in hoontology is a big reason why liminal spaces got popular because of early nineties and uh and two thousands, like aesthetics of like big office buildings that are now left empty.

It's like the sun wheel version of the swastika essentially, But a lot of these are like remember tradition, embrace your race with like Nazi figures in like this monochrome style over over like scan lines like you would see on like a like an old like arcade video game that has like that has like a horizon, but you know, all like neon colors kind of kind of like glitchy type stuff. There's there's one Trump one here from from like twenty eighteen where he has a glowing yellow eyes,

also in the fashwave style. So this was kind of the the aesthetic around around twenty nineteen here, and like fashwave was definitely still common on imageboards like four chan, eight chan, and eight kune, but the but the ever pressened kind of hitler particles and poor web design on those sites drove away most of the mega conservatives who might try to stumble on to four chan or or

to eight chan to like watch qan on stuff. It was it was just the site was too hostile to them and then circled like twenty twenty among waves of Twitter and Facebook suspensions Trump supporters and high profile far right figures started congregating on other platforms. A few Twitter clones popped off, like Parlor and eventually Trump's Own Truth Social but a number of mega conservatives also ended up on Telegram, in part due to Telegram's largely hands off

approach to moderation. So around this twenty twenty and like just post twenty twenty time period is when Telegram began functioning as the far right's very own cultic milieu, a sort of like shared online space where various memes, ideologies, conspiracy theories, and propaganda could all intermingle with each other and spread. Now, part of this is how Telegram operates

as a platform. I'm going to quote from an article about Telegram and the cultic milieu from logically quote, Telegram offers features that straddle the line in between social media and messaging app. Users can create channels, which function as one way message channels that allow someone to send a feed of messages available to all of their subscribers. Public channels and group chats are searchable by name, allowing anyone to subscribe to a public channel or join a public group.

Channels and groups are uniquely connected on Telegram when a message is forwarded from a public channel into another channel or group, it links back to the original group, creating a chain in between different channels and groups. Another common feature is for users to advertise for channels and groups in other channels and groups, with some users creating directories of these channels and these big group chats that have extremest content. So this kind of interconnected nature that allows

this chain link of being able toward a message. Like you have a Telegram channel with like three thousand people in it, and you post fashay memes. You can make some fashave memes in the style of like Trump, and then you can forward this message to a Trump channel that has forty five thousand members in it. They see this meme, they might like it, they click the meme, it sends them back into your three thousand person channel. So now they're going to get exposed to all of

the other weird shit you have going on. So it became a really easy way to kind of make a rabbit hole and like a pipeline for people to get exposed to new aesthetics, new ideologies, and especially conspiracy theories. I think we should have an ad break now and we will return to talk about the increased Trumpian focus on fash wave that happened as a result of this kind of telegram cross proliferation.

Dark Mega promoted a form of dystopian inspired overt authoritarianism, with the assumed direct control laser eyes front and center, and for emphasizing militaristic domestic connotations, dimlylit images were usually edited in red or blue monocro. Dramatic images of Trump are fairly prominent, as is the presence of weapons and the occasional Nazi symbol I have a two examples of

fashwave here for for for the for the gallery. James, what do you what do you think of this of these of these two pictures.

springfield long rifle or something like that. I couldn't tell you the exact type, but that does I am now thinking about like So if you've ever loaded black powder, you tend to like have you know, like a wrapped you know cartridge that's got the ball and the powder and you rip it in half in your mouth and you pour the powder and then you like expect the Anyway, Trump is such a germophobe, I just desperately want to see him try to like manage a black powder rifle.

I would, I would really deeply enjoy that. It's as good as a Tucker Carlson shooting. They like the sec fire rifle was a very funny moment. Yeah, guys who pretend to light guns.

over the course of researching this episode. So one pro trumpan neo Nazi, described dark Mega as such, quote dark Mega is the aesthetic demand that Trump embrace a harder and more focused approach in the role only he can fill. He was too kind hearted, too forgiving Dark Mega demands

he learned from his mistakes. Another another Dark Mega propelled It just described, uh, described the intentionality behind the movement of being quote, if you want to win, if you don't want to repeat the past, you have to get mean. You have to almost embrace the villain role that they're bringing you with. So that's fun. But uh, but like dark Mega's ambitions were to be more than just a meme but instead kind of be the first real attempt at a coherent post all right aesthetic that was being

pushed by mainstream of political actors. And included in this push was kind of a pressuring back toward militant posturing after the failed pseudo coup on January sixth, because in those first few months after j six everyone was like, oh, you know, we probably shouldn't be doing super overt like violent propaganda if we're if we're like on the right, and then over over time, and I think Dark Mega was part of this, was the right realizing that maybe

they should just keep going and like go back to that much more kind of like militant posturing that they were doing beforehand. I have, I've I have a few other a few other dark, dark mega images here, one with Trump and a skull mask and uh and pit vipers holding a bible in front of a vipers.

this episode. And I guess the one other meme style we have here is red and dark blue monochrome with Trump with these blue leys, and this is kind of the this is like the main dark mega aesthetic here is this one that's just like red with with with with like a dark dark blue as like the accent

and then these little laser eye things. So dark megas had the goal of serving as both a rebrand and an attempt to reunify the various disparate factions of the online right into using attention grabbing authoritarian propaganda to push Trump and his supporters even further into the extreme while holding on the legitimacy that is lacking in the contemporary sketchiness of like the Proud Boy groups or like Patriot Front, which, especially after J six, the Proud Boys legitimacy took a

big hit. And all of these fucking dark Mega guys think that Patriot fronts like a fed op. So it's it's it's it's it's a it's a way to kind of like push a new version of the alt right that still relies on the legitimacy of Trump. To quote

the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, quote. The secondary aim of Dark Mega is to launder more extreme narratives and aesthetics into the mainstream Trumpist movement, an attempt to introduce mainstream conservatives to more extreme parts of the right through melding Trump memes with these different aesthetics. So, like we kind of mentioned before, the previous attempt at this was the White Boy Summer trend from twenty twenty one, which I

and Robert have already wrote about before. And White Boy Summer was influenced by very similar kind of fash wave telegram aesthetics, but it was only really successful in leaking through to one or two Republican politicians, namely Paul Gosar.

and content creators. Among the Dark Mega proponents were Republican candidates like Tim Swain, a former strategist now Blazed TV employee Logan Hall, Andrew McCarthy, far right propagandist Jack sobiec now former Congressman Madison Cawthorne, and former White House lawyer Andrew Closter, and was even boosted by the father of accelerationism,

Nick Land was a brief Dark Mega proponent himself. Famously, Marjorie Taylor Green joined in on the action in May of twenty twenty two under the hashtag Ultra Mega, but with the same like red monochrome images with the with the big glowing eyes. Probably the most upsetting bit of dark Mega lore was a post that Madison Cawthorne wrote on Instagram. He he he had this post full of like here's the list of America First conservatives. Look how small the list actually is the people who are truly

America First. And attached to this little image of this list, he wrote an extremely unhinged Dark Mega post. This was also in May of twenty twenty two. Quote, the time for genteel politics as usual has come to an end. It's time for the rise of the new Right. It's time for Dark Mega to truly take command. We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We

are coming unquote. So this this rhetoric did not secure Vess and cawthorne continued employment in the House of Representatives.

which played a crucial role in twenty sixteen election. So dark Mega peaked as an online search topic back in May of twenty twenty two, and it may have reached like peak popularity in actual like spread of memes as early as March of twenty twenty two. I think I think it peaked in May because there was a few news articles about it, so more kind of normies were like googling what it was. But it actually the actual peak was only in March of twenty twenty two. It

only lasted like three months. You can you can still find some dark Mega bubbling under the surface, but only by like random Nazis and like that doesn't that doesn't that that's not signifying any kind of like political movement.

And the reason why dark Mega kind of stopped being effective in between between March and May of twenty twenty two is that there was there was there was something that happened that summer and that spring that effectively killed dark Mega while also dealing a pretty big body blow to fast Wave in general. And we will learn more about about Brandon's special secret operation in part two. That's right, this is going to be a surprise two parter because I wrote get too many words?