Anti-Trump Group Wrongly Claims Campaign Shirt Contains Nazi Symbols
For some anti-Trump outfits, there must be no such thing as bad publicity.
A D-list progressive group founded by Alex Soros, son of liberal financier George Soros, launched a social media attack Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign by branding one of the symbols it uses as a recycled Nazi Party emblem.
It got it plenty of attention, but there was a problem for the anti-Trumpers: It’s an American bald eagle they are attacking.
A Twitter post published by the political action committee called “Bend the Arc: Jewish Action” (established in 2015, according to a Politico report from the time, but appearing only sporadically in the news since) tried to make the case that a perfectly normal red, white and blue eagle is somehow a reincarnation of a Third Reich image:
The President of the United States is campaigning for reelection with a Nazi symbol. Again.
On the left: an official Trump/Pence “America First” tee.
On the right; the Iron Eagle, the official symbol of the Nazi party.
⁰It’s not an accident. Bigotry is their entire brand. pic.twitter.com/mSOBxwf7Wa— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) July 1, 2020
It might somehow have escaped the notice of the Bend the Arc brain trust (and the liberals who responded to its tweet), but the bald eagle has been the national symbol of the United States since the Second Continental Congress in 1782, a gathering that predated Hitler’s rise to power in Germany by 150 years.
It might also have somehow slipped by that the eagle is a fairly common image in the American government, appearing as it does on, among other things, the Great Seal of the United States, the Seal of the President, the ceremonial Mace of the House of Representatives (so Nancy Pelosi is a Nazi, too?) and even — if anyone at Bend the Arc wanted to look — on the back of the $1 bill (where both sides of the Great Seal are displayed).
So, unless there are time-traveling Nazis even more insidious than the current “hiding-under-every-bed” white supremacists who liberals are so dead set on exterminating in the United States, this looks like a dry hole for even the most zealous anti-Trump activists.
But since it’s a good chance that even the most ignorant Black Lives Matter looter shattering a display window is at least dimly aware that an eagle might have a vague connection to United States history, it’s a virtual certainty that the brilliant minds at Bend the Arc know it, too.
So while it’s possible Bend the Arc meant every empty-headed word of the Twitter post, it’s also possible there was an ulterior motive here, one that would put it things in a more sensible light.
If the goal here was for Bend the Arc to get some attention by hitching its name to a particular brand of mental illness that makes the coronavirus look tame, the group had some success.
Bend the Arc’s Twitter account showed what a storm of mockery its Twitter post stirred, but there are doubtless more people aware of them than there were, say, yesterday.
Unfortunately for Bend the Arc, it wasn’t a terribly good impression. Even in an era when Trump Derangement Syndrome runs wild in academia, Hollywood and the mainstream media, outright lunacy is rarely good look:
Oh come on. You can’t possible be this dumb.
— Brian Cates //Flynn & Breitbart’s Army! (@drawandstrike) July 1, 2020
Ah yes, nobody has ever associated the eagle with the united states before
— scansion goo (@anosognosically) July 1, 2020
Someone else used an eagle symbol for his seal: pic.twitter.com/p2JHM6rfgB
— D. Moore – CHOP Minister of Lupin Redistribution (@Crapplefratz) July 1, 2020
If you truly believe those are the same because both of them feature eagles in similar poses, boy do I have a surprise for you! pic.twitter.com/B6jaVA6Irq
— Aldous Huxley’s Ghost™ (@AF632) July 1, 2020
And some reached even further back than the founding of the United States to mock the idea:
You could just as well as complained that he’s attempting to use the iconography of Imperial Rome… why didn’t you use THIS one? pic.twitter.com/Himq9hAVCN
— TheRazorOccam (non-flying) (@Tomaspain2) July 1, 2020
Naturally, there were the typical Trump haters who show up on any social media occasion slamming the administration on even the most ludicrous grounds. Like this one — which found a Trump tweet replete with hidden white supremacist symbols:
This sentence is 14 words.
The character count for the entire tweet including spaces and the hashtag is 88 characters.
And notice the H(eritage) H(istory) featured as well.https://t.co/rKdn0RgpcK
— Leah McElrath ?️? (@leahmcelrath) July 1, 2020
(If you don’t have a Nazi secrets decoder ring, search Goole for “88” and “14 words.”)
Some also brought up the incident in mid-June, when Facebook banned a Trump campaign ad because it contained an image of an inverted red triangle.
To Trump haters, it was proof of a Nazi tie because political prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were forced to wear similar triangles.
To sane people, it was proof that the Trump campaign was attacking the “anti-fascist” group known as antifa, which uses the inverted triangle as a symbol.
Even that exercise in Facebook’s malicious caprice might look like the height of political philosophy compared to the crassness of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, but the Wednesday tweet had an undeniable effect.
By early evening, it had gathered almost 22,000 likes and more than 13,000 retweets.
That’s probably 35,000 more people than had ever heard of the group 24 hours earlier. So as embarrassingly incoherent as it was, the tweet had one benefit.
And for some anti-Trump outfits, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
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