AOC Uses Elon’s Nazi Salute to Show How the Left Can Reclaim Patriotism
Photo via PBS News screenshot
We fight Nazis. That’s our thing. Captain America did it. My grandfather did it. Many of yours reading this did too. We’re kinda famous for it. Annoyingly so to the point where we completely erase the far larger Soviet losses dedicated to opposing the Nazi project. If you are not in favor of fighting the Nazis, to the point where you throw up a Nazi salute behind the presidential seal, then your basic American patriotism must be called into question, as someone doing something like that would be considered a literal traitor to the United States of America at this same time 80 years ago.
Elon Musk, God’s answer to what would happen if they utilized their ultimate power to create the ultimate broken human being, is in the news again for being the neediest most internet-poisoned collection of atoms on the planet. He decided to throw up a Nazi salute that Nazis think is a Nazi salute and people whose brains have been totally cooked by bad faith Republican propaganda think is the very normal and well-known grab your heart and throw it to the crowd gesture (do it at your job if it’s so normal and common then folks! Start telling your boss good morning that way! It’s super normal right?! Prove us wrong!)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez then laid out a very simple method for the left to reclaim patriotism from a right-wing currently defending a billionaire Nazi sympathizer whose inner monologue in indiscernible from the most fetid 4chan swamps. Every elected Democrat needs to watch this clip and follow the very simple patriotic message in it going forward to try to reclaim this issue from a party, bankrolled and puppeteered by Elon Musk, who has branded themselves as patriotic without earning it. Drive a wedge in the GOP. Put that image everywhere and force people to choose sides, and firmly place yourself on the side of America, the country that famously fucked up the Nazis.
AOC: I don’t care what Elon Musk is doing behind the presidential seal, but in this country we hate Nazis. Kind of like a foundational defining thing. Two of the foundational things about American history is that we beat the confederates and we beat the Nazis.
My grandfather was on the northern march to Berlin late in the war. He never liked to share his war stories and everything we learned about them came from finding his writings after he passed, but the one he did like to tell that made him laugh was a story about fighting the Nazis for control of a dam. He and several others climbed down a ledge to see if they could flank the Nazis from a platform below on a joint assault with those up top, and they found an area with big boxes they thought provided terrific cover. After opening fire on the unsuspecting Nazis, they realized that the large boxes they had taken cover behind were actually filled with dynamite and other explosives.
Realizing their mistake, and after some harrowing moments of crossfire, they pushed forward, completely exposed, and their brothers up top helped them put the Nazis on their heels, as the Americans eventually overran the bridge they were fighting across. The part of the story he loved to tell was later that night at camp when they met back up with the men who were up top, all incredulous as to why the men below began the assault so quickly, before laughing with each other after being informed as to how close they all came to blowing themselves up and maybe even the dam itself and everyone on top of it. But they didn’t because they were all American badasses who defeated the Nazis.
And Elon Musk sympathizes with the guys who nearly blew up my grandfather. This is unambiguous. No one made him do the Nazi salute that Nazis say is a Nazi salute, and the forces that he and the rest of the Republicans have long associated themselves with have made it clear through their beliefs like the great replacement theory, popularized in America by neo-Nazi David Lane in his 1995 White Genocide Manifesto, that they embrace the kind of Nazi-style thinking and theorizing that Hiter said so inspired him about the confederate legacy in this country. It’s time to make them pay a political price for this 4chan edgelord manchild bullshit that will get people killed.
And it’s very easy to do it now that Elon has provided a stark image of what side of history he stands on. You can stand on the side that mimics Hitler, or on the side of the United States of America, who defeated that side in a war that claimed 418,500 American lives.
But you can’t stand on both.
You have a choice that reflects your own personal conscience right now America: join with the millions of people who like the classic American tradition beloved by partisans of (nearly) all ideologies of fighting the Nazis, or join Elon Musk and oppose everything this country shed our grandfathers and their grandfathers’ blood to defend. History will judge your actions in this moment that will come to define your legacy.