It Could Happen Here - DeSantis’ Fashwave Adventure, Part 3

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Garrison talks to Robert about a new Fashwave video shared by a DeSantis staffer and the campaign’s finance trouble.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Ah, it could happen here. A podcast that is right now happening in your ear. It could happen to ear. That's what we should call it. Garrison, we're changing the name. We're rebranding our valuable, valuable title. Completely moving overnight to a whole new thing

based on a whim, you know? Masterful gambit, sir. Yeah, this has been a fun week. We're all laughing a little bit at Elon Musk, but we have something serious to talk about today. And that is everybody's favorite fascist governor, Ron DeSantis. Garrison,

you and I spent just way too much time last week talking about meatball, Ron. And now, now we're back. Now we're back to, cause he's, he keeps meatballing. Meatball Ron is we're back. Now we're back to, cause he's, he keeps meatballing meatball. Ron is,

is balling and meeting. Yeah. So we wrapped up like a, like a two part episode on Ron DeSantis, his use of fashion aesthetics. And then like two days later, the funniest thing happened where he just decided to basically basically uh post son and rads so we're gonna we're gonna get to that um but first there's a whole bunch of other

information that's come out these these past like really three days that have kind of that are actually giving more context to what's going on at the DeSantis campaign, because stuff doesn't look too good, actually. He kind of looks like he's losing everything as he slowly watches it all crumble. So let's see. Let's start by talking about everyone's favorite topic, campaign finances. I know this is what everyone tunes in to listen to. Yes, we love campaign finances. Yeah. So last week, the public finally got a

glimpse at DeSantis' campaign finances. The financial disclosures showed that DeSantis had about twice as much staff as Donald Trump. And as of last week, you know, Garrison, you just said that. And I, I imagine in my head for a second that you were referring to the amount of staff infections he's had versus Donald Trump. That's not true, no. Trump's definitely had more staph infections. There's almost no way, yeah, that Trump is not leading in the staph infections category. Please, I'm sorry to interrupt.

But as of last week, the Florida governor had already spent about 40% of the $20 million fundraised from April to June of 2023. So the campaign's spending rate was averaging more than $212,000 per day, which is an astronomical cost for a campaign, for someone running for president basically for the first time. This far out too from the season proper. Yeah. This far out too from the season proper. Yeah. It's absolutely absurd.

The inflated number of staff, heavy use of private jets and luxury event venues has his campaign essentially just burning through cash with, with very little seeming to come of it in terms of positive poll numbers. So another thing. They've gained maybe a point or so on Trump over the last year. Yeah. After spending $200,000 per day for the past like four months. Another thing that these financial disclosures exposed is DeSantis' heavy dependence on high contributors.

So just about 15% of fundraising contributions came from donors who gave less than $200. And the vast, vast majority of DeSantis' money has come from donors who gave the legal maximum of $3,300 in the primary, which also means that those who gave that cannot contribute any more money either. So he's running out of people that are actually able to fund his operation. Yeah. And it's worth noting he does have a super PAC. You are not limited in how much you can donate to a super PAC, but super PACs cannot spend money on the same things as general campaign funds, right? Like there are limitations in what you can use that on. So this is actually a logistical problem for him that he has maxed out his donor base. Yeah. And the New York Times has reported that future like large prospective donors have been spooked by DeSantis' sliding poll numbers, and they may be less willing to

invest in what's looking like a losing battle. So to combat these swelling campaign expenses, So to combat these swelling campaign expenses, including $279,000 at the Four Seasons in Miami, DeSantis' Tallahassee-based campaign has began undergoing massive cuts to campaign staff this past week. Previously, DeSantis had upwards of 90 people on payroll, but just this month, they've eliminated 38 jobs in a variety of departments, cutting more than one third of his payroll. DeSantis' cutbacks are nearly equal 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 was their little statement accompanying the news of firing almost 40 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 90 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 non-profit. 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 two 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' internal team here.

If you have people who still like you, but they just can't work for you because you're doing such a bad job. So DeSantis' team is now telegraphing a plan to engage with mainstream media in a way that they have not previously done because he's so far kind of scornfully avoided it, as we've talked about previously. And they're calling this new strategy the DeSantis is everywhere approach,

which is a bad name for a strategy. Part of the problem, Garrison, I don't know how to like, I can't like prove this the way that we prove, you know, when we're tracing back the ideological roots of like a lot of our modern fascists. But what I believe in my heart is that so many of these very young people on the extreme right who are driving this campaign, like just want to be villains from a bad late 90s, early 2000s movie. Sure.

They want to be the bad guy in like a fucking superhero movie, right? Like that's, you don't say that about a guy who's good. Like the Biden campaign, if they came to Joe and were like, we want to do a Biden is everywhere thing. He'd be like, no, that sounds kind of creepy, guys.

Like, I already got a little bit of a problem with that. What with the hair sniffing? I don't really want to really want to jump on that train. You know, like it definitely has the vibes of like zoomers who grew up watching like late 90s animated superhero cartoons. Who are trying to like, yes, we're trying to emulate that for some reason. we're trying to like emulate that for some reason. There is one, one really funny quote from the times that,

that I will read because, because it quotes like internal sources that I don't, I don't have access to. But anyway, a quote, one person close to Mr. 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.

So you make me sound like a six year old who's like not quite progressing fast enough in the reading where they're like, maybe we need to try teaching him another way. Like, we'll get out the different colored books like. way like we'll get out the different colored books like yeah so he's he seems to have a rough adjustment period to campaigning in just more than one state um and having an actual like opponent to go up against and also like an opponent who's like actually a good who's like good at being like a politician yeah um so yeah uh a challenging learning curve indeed um i i might i might specify i think actually desantis is a lot better at being a politician than donald trump um but that's not what the competition is yeah desantis is better at being like an effective like governor uh he's

he's better he's better at the machinery of politics yes yes whereas trump is better at the machinery of politics Yes, yes Whereas Trump is better at Holding power within the GOP Yeah, and being like a showman So We will talk more about some Actually relatively breaking news Regarding the DeSantis campaign

Oh, I'm excited for this I just saw this before we got on Shortly after this ad break. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. Presented by iHeart and Sonora.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning

economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building Thank you. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like,

how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15 percent. I'm not saying you're going to get 15 percent every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts okay we are we are back so a lot has happened the past two days a lot's happened

the past two hours actually uh but we're gonna have to work our way there. Um, the, the first bit of news that was kind of both, it was both, um, uh, uh, confirming my suspicions, um, and in very, a very interesting piece of news in the first place is that, um, that Fashwave inspired kind of homophobic pride month video that we talked about in, last DeSantis FashWave episode, it turns out to be slightly more self-inflicted 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 some new information regarding this video. I'm going to quote from this article in the Times, quote, a DeSantis campaign aide 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, unquote. so this video turned out to be actually be made in-house this actually was made by someone who was working for ronda santos as uh as we speculated initially um but we couldn't really like say for sure because it was it was posted first on a third party like account specifically the guy who was the one who shared it is the dude who made it uh no that is that is for this next video we're going to talk about. Yeah. The homophobic one was shared by this pro-DeSantis account called Proud Elephant, who had a corresponding Telegram channel.

This was the guy who posted the first homophobic meme one. But yeah, so we found out Sunday night that it was actually made by someone at the DeSantis campaign, which kind of justified a lot of our suspicions about DeSantis employing a staff of Zoomers who don't actually understand how to win a political election and are more interested in just creating fascist memes. Which seems to be not a very effective strategy for desantis so far so again just uh the day that this news broke that that the video was actually made in-house another fast wave inspired video but with much much more overt nazi imagery was shared online by a DeSantis campaign staffer. Robert, have you seen this video? Yes. The Sonnenrad video? Yes. We don't have to watch it here, but I will

give a description of it for the people listening. Also, we probably shouldn't be sharing these things everywhere on Twitter and stuff anyway. It's not a great idea, but it is. It's not going to make you happy or help you in any way to see this. It's not a great idea, but it is. It's not going to make you happy or help you in any way to see this. It's just like, it's surprising.

I will say that I was surprised to see how fashy it was, to see how explicitly accelerationist mass shooter fashy it was. Yes, absolutely. This is like Christchurch kind of shit. Yeah, so we're not going to share it, but it is useful to know what's in it. So I did write a pretty in-depth description of this video here. So this video was posted on Sunday, July 23rd.

It's about 70 seconds long. It plays over a Meg Meyers cover of the song Running Up the Hill. Which was made, you know, wait, isn't that the one? That was the one that um the the new season of stranger things a while back like it brought back to to the main possibly it's it is a it is a kate bush original this one is a more like electronic cover of the song yes um it's talking about like you know like a like a uh trying to like ask god to help you with certain things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it starts with the Doomer Wojak sitting at a computer looking at headlines

about the ineffectiveness of Trump's border wall, unfulfilled anti-immigration policies, and Trump's pro-COVID vaccine statements. So I guess we should probably talk about what a Wojak 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 human faces and heads. These are called Wojack memes. They're very popular in political spheres. They kind of rose to prominence on 4chan and spread out from there. Everyone kind of uses to prominence on 4chan and spread out from there. Everyone kind of uses them nowadays. They're pretty common,

but there's a few specific Wojak characters. The Chad is one. One of the more popular ones is the Doomer Wojak, which is someone who's taken the black pill, so to speak. They've looked at modern society and have decided that it's not worth engaging in. Now, there's doomers on the right, there's doomers on the left, there's doomers who

look at climate change and the acceleration of capitalism and just decide, hey, this is too far gone. So they become a doomer and they're on the left. There's also doomers on the right who are looking at gay marriage and the acceptance of trans people to be like, oh, this is so socially degenerate. It's the society's too far gone. Um, and then they become a Doomer and, but they're on the right. So it, it, it, it happens on, it happens on both sides when both, both sides use Doomer memes. Uh, this one is, uh, because we're talking about it in this context of fashion wave, this is obviously a fascist Doomer meme. Uh, but that's, that's kind of're talking about it in this context of fashion wave, this was obviously a fascist to do more meme. Uh, but that's, that's kind of what I mean when I say there's, there's a doomer Wojak

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, um, as, as these kind of headlines about Trump's not conservative enough, NIS are flashing on this computer, the Doomer Wojak is looking increasingly 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 2018 criminal justice reform bill. Then headlines flash about violent criminals being released into the streets, that sort of thing. So the Doomer Wojak 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 Wojak 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 like glitchy silhouettes of Ron DeSantis

looming above coastal, oceanside cities that are lit up by a sunset uh a don't tread on florida alligator flag spins onto screen like it's a fucking like ms paint like edit um and uh then the the video flashes more clips of desantis wearing sunglasses standing in front of American flags as the sunset happy Wojak fades in. So this is another Wojak meme of somebody almost like teary-eyed with like contentment staring into the horizon as like a sunset is behind their head. It kind of reminds me of like that guy who stole that plane in Seattle and crashed it? Yeah, very sad story.

If you're not aware of it, a man hijacked, I believe it was an Alaska Airs flight a couple of years back. It was empty. Like, he worked at the airport. He just took the plane, and he got up into the sky. And then, like, he was just kind of a dude who was sort of suicidal. There's very sad audio of him talking to, because he gets on with air traffic control and he makes sure that he's not going to hurt anyone else. And like, then the plane goes down, you know,

he goes down in it and it's very bleak. He was not a man who wanted to hurt anybody. It's just this kind of like, I've heard, I've found it set to a lot of vaporwave tracks, actually, like the audio, the conversation between them. Yeah, 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. Yeah, it's someone who's dealing with like postmodern absurdity, but in a way that like he doesn't want to hurt anybody about it, but he just doesn't know what to do with existence.

Yeah, he had part of he had like the the 10 10 of what a mass shooter has which is exactly go out and i want to do something but thankfully he was also a good person and didn't want to like murder strangers so this became very popular on the internet including on reddit and 4chan this he was he was dubbed sky king um and there's there's footage of him basically crashing this plane as the sun is um and there's there's footage of him basically crashing this plane as the sun is setting and there's there's footage of like him flying around in sunset played often played with vaporwave with his conversation with air traffic control now this is very popular um the the sunset happy rojack is is very similar i i've i've seen people post

this image in threads about Sky King before. And I think a lot of people don't understand. It's like this act, this Sky King thing, this has more in common with accelerationist terrorism than what most people can really understand. Between shooting

a random person for violent crime and 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, he like explicitly didn't want to hurt anybody. He, he, he, he explicitly didn't want to try to land the plane at the airport. Cause he thought he might hurt somebody. Yeah. And presumably since the plane at the airport because he thought he might hurt somebody.

Yeah, and presumably since he worked at an airport, he had some knowledge of how easily that could go wrong. Yeah. So anyway, these two images are kind of linked often on the internet. So anyway, we see the video getting more hopeful with desantis you know having stupid fast wave having stupid fast wave imagery is this sunset happy wojack fades in as like as the doomer is now has like contentment and then this this then this is followed by very quick flashes of desantis and more more more beach imagery there's a lot of beach in this video yeah um there's like this like rotating sheet of stickers that read make america florida um 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 wojak 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 DeSantis 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 cancellation 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 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 DeSantis 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 DeSantis' head, and then the seal creates this almost like halo effect around DeSantis's head. And then the seal turns into a spinning Sonnenrad as we zoom into the symbol as troops march into center and then the video ends. The Sonnenrad is on screen for about 10 seconds. So this was a

pretty upsetting thing to see on Twitter. Yes, upsetting is one way to phrase it, yeah. And again, the Sanin Rad has a long history. It's kind of a specifically a cultic version of the swastika. It reached, it has been around for quite a while, but it's most recent. The kind of thing that brought it into modern prominence was the Christchurch shooter chose it as the cover of his manifesto and also wore a sawn and rat. I believe it was on the chest of his plate carrier when he carried out his massacre. He also had a couple on his gun, I think. Yeah.

So it's very clearly a Nazi symbol. I know there's some people make jokes about how this must have just been an Azov battalion reference, deeply unserious. No, you can see some of these on Azov. Some people make jokes about how this must have just been an Azov battalion reference. Deeply unserious. No, you can see some of these on Azov. I mean, again, if you want to make the case that this is a Nazi thing, they wear this too. Azov uses it. There's people trying to excuse the use of the Sonnenrad by saying, oh, it's just an Azov symbol.

It's not a Nazi thing. No, they're bad and this is bad. Which is a deeply unserious thing to say um so yeah this video was shared 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 the previous fashion video didn't didn't even really have in many of the same ways uh like like all of all of like the doomer wojack slowly becoming like happy and content than putting on military fatigues to go fight for ron desantis who's now in the center of like a haloed son and rad like 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 males to channel their depression into like fascism it's it's it has a whole bunch of tropes like it's it's it's really just like playing by the playbook um so the video was first posted on the twitter account Ron DeSantis Fan Cams, 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. 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 desantis as fascist edited together

with clips of desantis deploying national guard and calling for a civilian state military force under his control all sliced together next to footage of nazis and mussolini played over an upbeat edM track. So it's all explicitly fascist stuff. It's people proudly embracing the fascist label. So this style of video is almost identical to the homophobic Pride Month video that we discussed last week. And considering the recent news that the other video shared by the DeSantis War Room account was secretly made by a campaign staffer,

that led myself and others to assume that this Slawn and Red video was most likely made by the same person inside DeSantis' campaign and was operating this DeSantis fan cam account as a sock puppet. But, you know, I could not prove this myself, really. It's just, it's a hard thing to kind of backtrack. This account was pretty clean in terms of, like, I tried to, like, you know, do pretty basic OSINT on this account, but it was, I could not find out much about it. But the campaign staff member that first shared this Saanenrad video to his own Twitter account

was former National Review writer Nate Hockman. We will talk about Nate Hockman's exploits shortly after this hat break. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and

want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%.

I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We are back and in a much better position currently than 25-year-old Nate Hockman. Yes. Really was a, tragically was a promising career. You know what? Let's give

him another chance. Garrison reach out to Nate. We can bring him on the team, you know, have him start making some videos for us. Yeah. I'll, uh, I'll bill an invoice to Nate Hockman's address.

I'll, I'll see where he lives. So 25 year old Nate Hockman has been working as a speech writer for DeSantis's campaign after rising to prominence among young conservatives for his online references and willingness to entertain ideas outside the Overton window. Hockman hosted a Twitter space late last year centered around the question of

if white supremacists like Nick Fuentes should have a place in the modern conservative movement. Fuentes himself appeared in the Twitter space, and Hockman 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. Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservative, unquote. So, Hockman has retweeted the DeSantis fan cam account at least six times before he shared this on and around video this past Sunday, but he's not the only DeSantis-linked account to share

these videos. The campaign's War Room Twitter account and the pro-DeSantis Never Back Down superpack have also shared videos from this Ron DeSantis 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 DeSantis campaign can get to just doing explicit Nazi shit. And considering the New York Times, who Hockman has written for, by the way, basically confirming that the person who made the Pride Month video was secretly employed by DeSantis and posted via third party to get some distance from the official campaign, this led many to suspect that Hockman was secretly the person behind this fan cam account due to the similarities in video styles and his frequent boosting of the account. The Sonnenreit video was deleted the same day it was posted, and the fancam account has not posted since then. of time of recording news dropped that nick hochman has been fired from the desantis campaign and the sources at axios confirmed that he has in fact secretly been making these fashway videos

so it was it was hochman on all along uh this is this is what happens when you hire a 25 year old grope where to work on your to work on your presidential bid your very serious presidential campaign yeah so the descendants campaign officially has only said a few words on the subject quote nate hockman is no longer with the campaign and we will not be commenting on him further not that easy guys but other anonymous sources have confirmed to news outlets that it was hockman who was making these videos so this is weird because like this hasn't been a great move for desantis hiring hockman having hockman do all this like behind the scenes like scooby-doo shit of like posting fascist videos on sock puppins to then get reboosted by the

campaign. Like it's, it's all, it's all very like dark, but like comical, like it's, it's silly. Like, um, uh, similar to the dissenters video we talked about in the last adventures in fashion episode, this video, it was not meant to like convince older Trump supporters to vote for DeSantis, right? That's not the intention of posting this video. No. This new video is- First off, going for the Zoomer vote, always a mixed bag.

Oh, it's a bad call! Yeah, anytime you're going for the youth vote, this is famously a difficult thing. It kind of sometimes works for the Dems because the youth tend to be pretty progressive and the Republicans are terrifying. Yeah. But going for the trying to base your campaign as a Republican presidential candidate on the youths is quite a move. Yeah.

Like, let's see how it pays off for him. Gotten. Yeah, because like this new video is almost more chronically online than the last one. This new video is almost more chronically online than the last one. Not even considering the Nazi imagery, its heavy use of BoJack memes is just cartoonish to the median voter. What this video is trying to do is signal to self-described fascists that DeSantis is their guy. And trying extremely desperately to create another meme magic moment like we had in 2016 to recruit a slew of teenage Nazis to try and like like 4chan isn't the thing that it used to be it is it is it is a shell of its of its former self um but like what we have here on like the desantis side is like in terms of hiring people like hawkman right these are like seasoned groipers who grew up and are now like getting into their 20s.

You know, they're taking jobs at National Review and as campaign staffers. But due to their isolated niche political upbringing, they have deluded themselves into thinking that there is like a mythical far right youth voting bloc 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 groipers continue to like grow up, polish their act, take more jobs as staffers or on Capitol Hill, and slowly grow in numbers as they learn to hide their power level, a.k.a. hide their amount of racism, then we might have a problem. If they actually put intentionality into a long-term strategy to put more of these young freaks into positions in Washington. But we're simply not there yet like in the case of hockman he kind of just like he blew up the spot right like he yeah he he went

like he went too hard too fast and then he got fired because they don't want that shit yeah the olds are going to watch this and go like what the fuck is this this does not look serious this is not speaking to my issues this is just like off-putting and strange and most young people are really like oh it's some brain poisoned 4chan or that's who this guy is running as the 4chan candidate yeah all right no like so the other fear is that they'll shift from like this electoral focus and try to just use this type of video propaganda to initiate another wave of like Nazi mass shootings like in 2018. The the halo effect around DeSantis's head is certainly cause for concern. But there's a lot of other factors that go into that sort of thing. And that is kind of just more of like an ever present fear that anti-fascists have. And, you know, people do a lot of work into trying 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 Hockman was going to get fired. I had no idea that it was going to be confirmed that Hockman was the one making these videos. So that's kind of some breaking news on our side. It's been a few days if you're listening to this at the end of the week. the week. I'm going to read out one tweet from this guy, Double Doink, who is a stupid handle, no offense, but he made a pretty good point here. I am, quote, I think DeSantis' 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 Sonnenrad Wojak ad like his son crashed his car. A lot of people are arguing that your average 56-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 deeply uncool to the exact people that you want to impress. Unquote. And I'll add, it's deeply uncool to the exact people you want to impress. If you want to win at being president and are trying to move over Trump voters, it's just not going to play. So,

this is the state of the DeSantis campaign now. They've shed almost 40 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 tried to have this guy do this, like, backdoor Nazi video sock puppet strategy that has also resulted in not very good things for the DeSantis campaign. So I guess we'll see how their campaign develops.

If they continue this sort of like FashWave rhetoric and style, I kind of doubt it now that Hockman is out. But yeah, it's been certainly an interesting few months here, or a few weeks here, rather, in terms of Flashwave videos resurfacing again for the first time in quite a while in terms of mainstream political use. Yeah, I'm kind of suspecting that this might be the death knell of that, at least for a spell, as a relevant form of, uh, propaganda.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been in some ways like internally rejected at the DeSantis campaign. And he is arguably the most fascist mainstream candidate that they, that we like have right now. Nothing puts a stink on stuff like this, like failure,

right? You know, these guys, these guys are not anarchists and the anarchists 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. Um, yeah, I kind of feel like we may have seen the last of, uh, this as a thing that matters, right? as a thing that matters, right?

Yeah, I'll definitely be watching these next few months, but I think that's definitely a very fair assessment at this point. Lastly, I just want to clarify one thing about our last episode due to some viewer feedback. So last time we were talking about how the Biden administration's use of dark branded memes had inadvertently led to Fashwave taking a big body blow. Now, I think some people misinterpreted our discussion as downplaying anti-fascists and

leftists' attempt to disrupt Dark Mega and Fashwave in general by proliferating the satirical dark branded memes. So in the episode, we talked about the methodology behind this strategy of normies seizing onto memes and aesthetics, thus making them cringe and unattractive to the niche groups that once enjoyed using them. With Dark Brandon, there was certainly an attempt from anti-fascists and leftist posters to appropriate Fashwaves' aesthetics with the hope that if spread widely enough, it would disarm some of Fashwave's more dangerous and inspirational aspects. But you can't really force mainstream virality. This kind of thing works best when it appears natural. And for the majority of dark Brandon posters, they were just doing this shit for

shits and giggles. That was the primary factor, is that it was funny. And no effort to damage Fashwave's legibility would really be successful without mainstream liberal spread. A small group of leftists could meme 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, a breakthrough to the, to the liberal mainstream, but I've seen nothing to suggest that the white house staff had any intention of trying to damage fast waves legibility by sharing laser eye memes in August of 2022. I think the key here

is that you were not saying, uh, this was purely the result of liberals accidentally like jumping onto this, but that the primary, like success was achieved, like the part of the success that was achieved as a result of this going like mainstream among Biden supporters was accidental. Yeah. That was the part that was key. Not,

not saying that the people who recognize this and we're putting in the background work to try to push this stuff and make it, you know, eventually go viral. That was certainly not accidental. Correct. But the part that the liberals played was an accidental part in killing this. That's the point. Yes, because what I mean by accidental is that when Dark Brandon started in March of 2022, there was no way to guarantee that four months later the white and uh like the white house and blue wave liberals would be sharing these memes en masse like i i remember conversations i had

like last august when liberals were seemingly like ruining the the funny dark branded memes uh but like me uh like myself and research colleagues during this time like that was when like we realized that if that if liberals keep sharing these cringy memes, we might actually have a shot at killing off a fasc wave. So yes, this was to not discount the efforts of 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 a meticulously planned psy-op from the very start is also kind of inaccurate in a very like a very like spotlighted way like this was this was a collaborative effort with uh with the with the liberals not realizing the degree that their collaboration played in this like larger game of trying to disarm fascist um aesthetics and like meme styles so yeah that's one one clarifying

note as we hopefully wrap up this desantis flashwave sega for the time being because i definitely did not plan on making this episode when i when i finished recording last week with you so here we are cool all right that's the episode that's the episode. That's the episode. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com.

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