DeSantis’ Fashwave Adventure, Part 3

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 about everyone's favorite topic, campaign finances. I know this is what what everyone tunes in to listen to.

that can cannot contribute any more money either. So he's running out of people that are actually able to fund his operation.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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. 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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

the first homophobic mean one. But yeah, so we found out Sunday night that it was actually made by someone 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 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?

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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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.

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 sense of like I don't really know why I was ever here. I don't really know.

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 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 didn't want to try to land the plane at the airport because he thought he might hurt somebody.

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 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, 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 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 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 was a pretty upsetting thing to see on Twitter.

by at least one campaign staffer. It's a very short video, but it plays into a strain of like accelerationist propaganda 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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. All right, we are back and in a much better position currently than twenty five year old Nate Hawkman.

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 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 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 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 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, 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.

d Santa's campaign like it's it's all. It's all very 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.

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 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 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

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 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 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, 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.

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 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, 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

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 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 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. 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.

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, 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.

to Fast way of taking a big body blow. Now, 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, 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 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. 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 legibility by sharing laser I memes in August to twenty twenty two.

That was certainly not accidental.

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 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.

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.