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At the National Policy Institute’s conference on Saturday (officially titled Become Who We Are / 2016) I met a tweedy, middle-aged journalist I’ll call Charles. Charles was making notes for a political-analysis piece for a certain Newspaper of Record, and struggling to find an insightful angle about the Alt Right.
At the moment his working premise was that this Alt Right thing is essentially a revamping of old-fashioned “white supremacy” from decades past. But he wasn’t really happy with that idea.
Is it really that, or is it something else, he kept musing aloud, or words to that effect. “Is it really just old wine in new skins? New wine in old skins? That’s what I’m trying to work out. And what do they call those haircuts they all have? Is there a name?”
Charles was very much in earnest, honestly seeking to provide a answer with more gravitas than what one reads in The Daily Beast or a Paul Krugman column. So I did my best to help him out with a little background. I suggested he might begin by comparing the stated ethno-nationalism of NPI with the brand of Conservatism served up in the early years of Bill Buckley’s National Review.
At that time and place it was taken for granted that America was a white country with Western European roots and culture. To this “conservative” mindset, racial segregation was merely a sane and necessary thing, and Buckley accordingly supported it. Multiculturalism had never been heard of, as a ideal goal or even a concept. The quotas of the 1924 Immigration Act (favoring moderate immigration from the British Isles and Western Europe, and severely restricting it otherwise) likewise seemed eminently sensible for a society that wished to remain stable and cohesive.
That was the mainstream conservatism of the day, endorsed by such early NR contributors as Prof. Revilo Oliver, and it was not terribly different from the Alt Right today. The only significant difference, and it is a telling one, is that in 1956 such beliefs were not argued about (at least among Conservative folk) while today the mainstream press, and NR itself, deride them as fringe-y, frightening, and darkly subversive. And there is nothing mysterious about this mutation of of “conservatism,” particularly at National Review, which marked its march of progress by simply expelling its contributors and editors (first Oliver, later Joe Sobran, Peter Brimelow, and many others) and marking their ideas non grata.
Anyway, this was my suggestion to Charles. If he was really searching for an “old wine in new skins” angle for the Alt Right, this might be a good place to start. Meantime, I said, it might be best to ignore such ancient, weighted phrases as “white supremacy,” since those were really slurs put out by the Daily Worker . . . and people of that sort.
From his expression, I gathered Charles found my history lesson a little too granular and obscure, and perhaps too smooth an explanation of white nationalism and the Alt Right. Like a lot of political journalists today, Charles seemed to be trapped in a rhetorical bind that makes something like Alt Right difficult to write about. He would like to make an original, cogent analysis of a new, rising phenomenon, but the mainstream understanding of it has been framed by its enemies, and in a very scurrilous way. So if you want to talk about it you have to accept, or at least acknowledge, that the Alt Right is a dark and disreputable thing.
Ironically it’s this dark notoriety that makes Alt Right such an attractive topic in the first place. But if you take that darkness away or try to put the movement into historical context, you risk looking like an apologist for the Alt Right; or someone who pitched one article to the editor and then wrote another.
Alt Right: Villain or Joker?
This journalistic dilemma was much in evidence this past weekend when the NPI Conference convened in the Ronald Reagan Building. Unlike Charles, few of the other journalists had any interest in understanding the ideas or origins of this Alt Right thing. To them, the topic is basically a “pussy grab”—something shocking, sensationalistic, eye-catching, maybe evil, and ideally connected to Donald Trump.
Washington Post led the pack with a whole raft of articles and online slide-shows about the National Policy Institute, and this was not because the reporters were interested in national policy. No, they were interested in chasing a hot topic that showed Donald Trump getting cozy with white nationalism. Reporter Dave Weigel showed up at NPI’s Saturday afternoon press conference, and quickly produced a column that seemed to connect NPI to Jeff Sessions, the new Attorney General nominee:
Richard Spencer, the president of the National Policy Institute and popularizer of the term “alt-right,” told reporters in Washington on Saturday that Donald Trump could achieve some of the white nationalist movement’s goals by making Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) his attorney general.
For “Local News,” a WaPo beat reporter named Cox was supposed to cover the protest mobs that attacked conference attendees. Instead Cox put together a wow just wow piece, advising us (per the Southern Poverty Law Center) that NPI is an “extreme right-wing group” that may have some unspecified connection to Donald Trump’s new chief strategist, Steve Bannon.
A little later the same day (Saturday, Nov. 19) this same reporter stopped in at the conference and filed another story, this time reminding us that NPI conference speakers not only liked Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions, they approved of (national security advisor nominee) Mike Flynn as well.
As a side note, the scribe added that NPI attendees wore some seriously weird clothes:
Most in the overwhelmingly male gathering wore dark suits, many with the triangle lapel pin of a California-based European identity group. One man was dressed in camouflage, another wore a pony tail and an opera cloak. Dozens of them also wore what’s known as “fashy” (as in fascist) haircuts — a hipster look that features shaved sides with the hair on top swept across. A blond teenage girl wore a Make America Great Again cap.
WaPo’s message about Bannon, Sessions, Flynn, and the Trump Administration is as subtle as a rock-drill. They want you to know the Trump people are in alliance with a “white nationalist” group that wears suits and lapel pins, and holds conferences in the Reagan Building.
The talking-points for this agitprop went down the day before the conference (Nov. 18), in a spicy Opinion column by Paul Waldman:
Donald Trump announced three new appointments Friday: Michael Flynn for national security adviser, Rep. Mike Pompeo for CIA director and Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general. While Sessions is rightfully getting most of the attention, we have to look at Trump’s emerging appointments in context. And that context is this: When you elect a white nationalist president, you get a white nationalist presidency.
What a kicker, that last sentence—can’t get more explicit than that!
The Washington Post, and mainstream press in general, isn’t interested in ideas here. Or history, or whether Alt Right and NPI are old wine in a rabbit skin. No, Alt Right is here used as a convenient stick for whacking Donald Trump. (And maybe other people too, but right now the main target is Donald Trump.)
Other journals with no love of Trump followed WaPo’s lead, though they sometimes gentled their agenda with silliness and humor. Mother Jones showed a Twitter image of YouTube personality Tila Tequila smiling and giving the Bellamy salute to the camera (“Seig Heil!” [sic]). BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray, the closest thing to a veteran of the Alt Right beat, reminded her readers that Alt Right has viewpoints that are naughty and outrageous and despicable, although Richard Spencer himself can be pretty lovable:
A sardonic man with a fondness for three-piece suits, Spencer clearly relishes the attention, and told me afterward how much fun he’d found the press conference to be. He says he’s beginning to be recognized in public; someone came up to him on the T in Boston and told him, “God bless you, Mr. Spencer,” he said.
Why They Don’t “Get” the Alt Right
I want to go back to the problem of Charles (who assiduously took notes all afternoon for his “Week in Review” piece). Charles is a highbrow but very much a normie, and maybe a Luddite as well. He does not have a Twitter account, and I gather he does not even watch much cable-news TV. He therefore comes to something like the NPI Conference very fresh and unspoiled, essentially unaware of Alt Right, white nationalism, race realism, Third Position and the whole panoply of organizations and outlets that have grown up in recent years.
But he will have a hard time taking it all in, and he probably never will. If he seeks a primer to what Alt Right is all about, and he’s lucky, he might find the (rather good) cheat sheet that Dave Weigel did in WaPo last August during “Basket of Deplorables” week, or maybe the chirrupy, overlong “Milo” treatise that the Breitbart crew wrote back in March.
But I don’t think Charles will read very far, actually, because even in those Dummies Guides there’s too much information to take in at once. And few people can wrap their heads around a new political paradigm.
Let me back-and-fill that last remark. What I mean is that, for most Americans anyway, political education is very basic, minimal. Most of what you learn about politics, you acquire long before you start algebra. As a little kid you find out there are Democrats and Republicans (symbolized by a donkey and an elephant). Then you move on to the idea of liberals and conservatives, who vote differently on things involving welfare and taxes. That is pretty much all most voters ever learn, or think they need to learn. They may declare themselves libertarians or ultra-conservatives because they’re against welfare and taxes, or say they’re socialists; but the basic model remains the same.
Alt Right is something new, something that doesn’t fit the model. It is not Liberal Democrat or Conservative Republican, it is not about cutting taxes or furthering Progress and Equality. Furthermore it can seem terribly complicated when you’re first coming at it, because it’s not all about welfare and taxes and equality, and often refers to European political philosophers most people have never heard of.
In short, Alt Right has a high knowledge-barrier. One easy option is to ignore it entirely, the way you don’t think about a strange religion. Alternatively you can be like the Hillary Clinton campaign and deride it as a dank fad among basement-dwelling racists. If you’re a journalist, you might have only Option 2. I very much look forward to what Charles comes up with.
And Now About Those Conference Speakers
The speakers at Become Who We Are / 2016 were, besides Richard Spencer: Jared Taylor, Peter Brimelow, Matthew Tait, Jason Jorjani, Kevin MacDonald, F. Roger Devlin, Sam Dickson, and a young Scotsman who travels under his YouTube moniker of Millennial Woes. (Ramzpaul was supposed to provide comic relief during the evening, but he cancelled late and we instead got a few thrilling minutes Saturday night from surprise guest Mike Enoch of The Right Stuff.)
Many, or most, of those names need no introduction here, just as most people who show up at a conference like this are already familiar with the speakers and/or their work. This familiarity is one reason why the Trump election was the central focus of the conference. We’re going through a national game-change, and we want to know what our favorite experts have to say.
But many—most?—media people don’t have this familiarity, and find any sort of identitarian or Alt Right discussion very hard to follow. It’s that high knowledge-barrier again. Hence the naïve, nonsensical questions they asked at the afternoon press conference (see below). And hence the incomprehension of Charles (who did not ask a question).
NPI chairman Richard Spencer was an extremely entertaining emcee, and took the stage as a speaker and panelist many times throughout the day. My favorite bit was his morning opening, when he announced he’d had a headache all week, and he didn’t think it was from drinking. “I think it’s the Winning. It’s Too Much Winning! Could someone please just stop the Winning? I don’t want to Win anymore.”
Waving a copy of USA Today, “the official USA newspaper of hotels,” Spencer said he felt like a fugitive in a scene from a movie, suddenly seeing “the Alt-Right” and himself on the front page.
“This is hugely new and if someone had told me that this was going to be a regular occurrence a year and a half ago, I wouldn’t have believed them. But at this point I’m almost used to it.” (Note: Most of the conference is viewable or at least hearable on YouTube, thanks to Red Ice Radio.)
The best part of the conference, apart from eating and drinking, was arguably the press conference, featuring Spencer, MacDonald, Jorjani, and Taylor answering a queue of journos from DW, ABC News, Mother Jones, BuzzFeed, and others.
The archetypal question asked whether “Alt Right” was merely a rebranding of discredited and “white supremacist” agenda from the past. When one reporter posed it, Spencer dismissed it as a silly question, whereupon Jared Taylor lifted his microphone and refuted it with impromptu eloquence:
The suggestion in your question is that this is some kind of attempt to hide the ball, to pretend that we are not who we are. No one is guilty of that. We are as straightforward as any movement that I can imagine.
And Alt Right of course includes an entire panoply of egalitarian orthodoxies that we reject. It’s not just race. It has to do with the idea that every culture is equal to every other; all religions are equally sane, and valid . . . The sexes are basically equivalent . . . All of these orthodoxies. There are many many views within the Alt Right. It cannot be summarized as simply a racial conception.
So I reject completely the implication that we are somehow trying to pretend that we are something other than what we are. We are exactly what we say we are.
A couple of “undercard” talks in late afternoon were standouts, because they were original and compelling in themselves, and did not directly address the conference’s main themes of Trump’s election and the ascent of the Alt Right. The first of these was from the vlogger Millennial Woes, who gave an unusual, rather transcendentalist refutation against contemporary individualistic nihilism (a scourge among millennials, one gathers).
MW’s argument is rooted in one’s need for loyalty to one’s own forebears, descendants and culture. “Everything you have, you have because other people had exactly the exact opposite to your attitude,” he quoted himself as advising a nihilistic girl. “Endure the pain, make the sacrifice . . .”
Your race and culture are important because they belong to you and you to them . . . because of the historical thread maintained by your ancestors. Nobody else is going to look after your race and culture. They are your responsibility and yours alone. And you don’t have the right, you don’t have the option to abandon them.
F. Roger Devlin’s short talk had two distinct and unrelated topics on rather discomfiting matters. The first had to do with the social anthropology of Norwegian communities in recent years, where a number of “Muslim” (Pakistani) arrivals had been allowed to settle. The Muslim boys bully the Norwegian lads, but the school officials forbid the latter to fight back, because the the Muslims are seen as victims whose disturbed behavior is a product of their backgrounds. Norwegian girls seek out the bad Muslim boys as lovers and reject their fellow Norwegians, a phenomenon Devlin ascribes to the limbic system, or “lizard brain”: a female reflexively seeks a dominant, victorious male. The Muslim boys call the girls “Norwegian whores” and eventually reject them, seeking a Paki girl when it is time to settle down.
Then, like most exogamous women in the West, these racially disloyal Norwegian women “end up alone once they hit their thirties.” Drawing a paraIlel between those exogamous Norwegians and the sort of anti-white Caucasian female who supported Hillary, Devlin advised the young men in the audience: “If you didn’t take pity on those bimbos on those bimbos weeping over Hillary Clinton’s defeat last week, you certainly don’t need to take pity on women who come crawling to you as their last resort.”
The second part of Devlin’s homily was a dismaying recollection of the Reagan presidency. He recalled that Ronald Reagan’s election and agenda in 1980-81 were very similar to Donald Trump’s. Yet what a failure his administration really was. He did not cut the budget, eliminate the Education or Transportation departments, and he gave amnesty to 3-4 million illegals.
Devlin quotes Joe Sobran’s judgment of the Reagan years as an “historic failure of nerve.” But “to True Believers, Reagan’s presidency was like an eight-year Inaugural Ball.”
Reagan’s failure shows us “the necessity of prompt and decisive action, especially on immigration-related issues,” Devlin said, noting that he closed with this to provide a “brief cautionary tale about the consequences of delaying action on those fleeting occasions when all the political stars align perfectly.”
29 comments
“And what do they call those haircuts”
What haircuts; am I out of fashion?
It’s called the “undercut ” – one of the latest “movement” fads. I’m surprised no one has made a “Pepe with an undercut” meme yet. That’s real important, no doubt.
To make clear from yesterday’s comment: I do not think that Spencer’s (apparently drunken) hailing of victory was in any way acceptable at this public meeting, attended by journalists. My point is, and remains, that the Alt Wrong faction is in no position to criticize. Brimelow? He gives a forum to Derbyshire, a child porn apologist and proponent of race-mixing. Roissy is another race-mixer and a hedonist and nihilist (all documented at my blogs). That to my mind is far worse than anything Spencer did.
Child porn apologist? Whoa man….. let us know when you’re back on Earth.
“Struggle to Misunderstand” is a wonderfully apt phrase to describe the press conference segment.
I agree.
In Millenial Woes speech, there is a point (at some min 8-10) that I find important and worth highlighting because it is rarely addressed. When answering various questions of a 19 y/o girl, he says at some point: there is no reason. He says it in some specific context that isn´t important here (beastiality) but it refers to the general argumentation of the kind “why should I care… if my race goes extinct”, “why should I care about race-mixing”, etc. And I find it important to point out that you cannot beat an argumentation of “why would that matter, I don´t care”, and Millenial Woes is right when he admits: there is no reason. This is important because it forces to find the real argument. And the real argument is IMO: BECAUSE I FEEL IT ! There is no “reason” why my race, the White Race, should persist. I just want it that way: THAT´S my argumentation!
That´s relevant on various levels but I´ll leave it it with that for the moment: it provides the argumentation that is IMO correct and consistent, it is the real reason for the racial position. This is not an insufficient position. “What I want” is an entirely valid position (if no harms to others, of-course; Molyneux´ and the libertarians´ ethic is valid IMO if incomplete with everything that is “groups”).
And if asked “Well, what about the others, your feelings only address yourself”: it does not deny The Other, they are encouraged to do the very same thing. This enables true diversity instead of the non-diversity which results from equality. It allows for the forming of groups, and then for interaction between groups, and there is nothing wrong with distinct groups, and distinct identities.
It is important to provide valid argumentation to white racialists so that everybody can stand his ground in discussions.
We are the souvereign. We have freedom to self-determination. We do not have to justify our wishes.
“…There is no “reason” why my race, the White Race, should persist. I just want it that way: THAT´S my argumentation..!”
The desire for your genetic group to continue to exist is simply the survival instinct on a collective level. Just like a healthy individual doesn’t want to die, so a healthy genetic group does not want to die either. Unfortunately the white race is not entirely healthy. There are many white persons who don’t care about the survival of their own race, or even see the promotion of its dissolution into the rest of humanity as a moral imperative. Healthy persons don’t need “arguments” for survival, unhealthy persons cannot be convinced by whatever arguments. The unhealthy part of the white race will become irrevocably lost into miscegenation or sterility and only the healthy part will survive. Perhaps we should be glad about that.
First of all I just want to say that this is an excellent piece and a tribute to alternative journalism.
Secondly the fact that Charles from the mainstream media outlet didn’t even bother to ask questions is more evidence that the media is almost like a non governmental Pravda, having no concern with actual truth. I think in the long run this will hurt them because one must “know thine enemy” to defeat him and if they’re too stupid to try to get to know us then they’re not going to combat us as well as they otherwise could.
A very thoughtful article was written on Counter Currents a while back about a book Bill Ayers wrote. It sincerely tried to explore his motivations and his viewpoints while of course disagreeing adamantly with him. This is a stark contrast with how Megyn Kelly was when she interviewed him. She was basically scolding him like a mother scolds a child and she never tried to understand him better.
I think the mainstream media in general is oriented toward manipulating normies and average intelligence people with catchphrases and basically banking off of their exposure to previous information. You have to go to sites like counter currents to get the real story.
The best part of the conference, apart from eating and drinking…
I don’t doubt it. It was hard not to see, with a couple of young attendees being interviewed right after the meeting adjourned while slugging on Scotch whisky. Indeed, one of them claimed he didn’t know why anyone would drink anything else.
After leaving the podium for a second, Spencer returned to say there was only one thing left to do: “Why don’t you all just go and get drunk!”
Such Spartan self-discipline. That’s our people. Can’t do a damn thing without getting pissed.
This was an informative piece. I note that Spencer is being harshly critiqued by some commentator’s at Roissy’s blog, and more mildly critiqued by Brimelow at VDARE, for “juvenile bravado” and “extremism” that threatens the work of “the great man” (i.e., the Negro-loving, Jewish family-connected Trump).
I’m wondering what the author of this piece, or anyone else who attended, think about that. From my perspective, Spencer is a moderate, and, further, it’s his meeting. If Brimelow and the “game” crowd want to promote an even more mild form of Alt-Rightism then they can organize their own conferences to do so.
It is also claimed that Spencer was asked if he had any connections to the Trump people and gave an indirect, coy response (I assume there are no such connections) – if that is correct, I’d agree with the critics on that one point – he just should have said no.
Another point to ponder: once Trump is President, will leftist thugs still have the right to attack NPI conferences with impunity? If he is for “law and order” perhaps some of his supporters can hold a meeting without being hit in the face or “sprayed with a fecal-smelling liquid?”
Meanwhile, Spencer seems to believe it was actually HIM who won the election. He is basically drunk on megalomania and losing his mind. Doing the “Heil Trump” and “Hail Victory” thing in front of, I don’t know, 150 mainstream journalists was about the dumbest thing he could have done. SPLC is jerking off to this. Apart from being ridiculous, framing the WN cause as a Nazi thing is absolutely damaging. Talking about “new” skins, huh?
It was cringe-inducingly horrible. But Spencer did not do the Roman salute. He simply raised his empty liquor glass. I think it was just a drunken lapse in judgment. Cernovich’s claim that Spencer is controlled opposition is just outrageous attention whoring and chutzpah given it comes from a Jewish Alt Right entryist.
Anyone who followed his twitter feed on election night knows that Spencer is an alcoholic. He’s enjoying his 15 minutes of fame with the mainstream media and the alt right has sort of given him his own little fandom of “fashy” haircut wearing millenials. I heard a media report that his personal life is falling apart and if that’s the case then his friends – his real friends – should be there to confront him with a dose of reality.
Richard is a really smart and engaging thinker, but his stunt at the NPI Conference is never going to be undone. The MSM got exactly what they wanted from that conference, and that was the definitive proof that the alt right is just a dressed up Neo -Nazi Show. We all know it’s false but that footage will live on in eternity.
Cernovich is not Jewish. That was an enormous troll he engaged it, but the fact is he is a Illinois country boy born to and raised by Christians. He has “come clean” in various podcasts that he was trolling about the Jew thing, and I believe he also released his 23andme results on Twitter at some point.
The Roman salute is not the issue regarding to Spencer, it’s the “Hail Trump, Hail Victory”. I don’t see Cernovich as entryist. He repeatedly said explicitly that he is neither Altright nor WN and that he has his own shtick. To cast doubt whether something’s fishy going on here seems entirely legit to me, though I think it was rather stupidity that made Spencer do it than anything else.
A decade of rebranding work… all to become NSMUSA. Welp!
I see that Jew Mike Cernovich is spreading the rumor Richard Spencer is “controlled opposition.” Anyone know anyone who did the apparent sieg heiling that MSM keeps looping? Real attendees or plants?
At least one real attendee.
Just curious. I doubt anyone cares outside the MSM media complex/outrage bubble.
Taylor was also quite effective in pointing out that the Demon Trump from whom everyone is shaking in fear is, in fact, a _creation_ of the media. The Demon Trump, who hates black people, wants to encamp minorities and Muslims, and revels in the thought of violence being done against all non-whites, does not exist, never existed, and is in fact a mirage who has been created by the very media that now asks the Alt Right “what are you going to do about this monster?”
Excellent write up Margot. While I am not a great fan of Spencer, I found his Hail Victory to be quite funny and in keeping with his premise that everything was feeling surreal, like throwing candy to the clowns. They scrambled to pick it up. They would have called him a Nazi anyway. Never apologize for your exuberance.
Have watched most of the conference on Red Ice. It was inspiring, profound stuff with intelligent questions from the audience. Spencer’s speech on Trump was brilliant but for the peroration. The Heil Trump was of course just a flamboyant, bohemian gesture but it’s played right into the enemies hands. I was planning to send the link to a number of friends but now it’s just so much more difficult and our message is lost.Why do we have a unique capacity to keep crapping in our nest?
Reminds me of the BNP after winning two seats in the European Parliament, then leading a delegation to the Kyoto shrine. Did they think there were votes in Japan? Just made certain their alienation from their constituency and the loss of both seats at the next election. Not hard to fathom as thousands of Yorkshire servicemen slaved and died on the death railway.
It invites the question of whether we are just plain stupid or as Revilo Oliver remarked years ago, just doomed to obsolescence?
Typo: our enemies’ hands
It has to be true that 10s of millions of people must not be listening to the MSM any more, or Trump never would have made it this far. Perhaps, too, the apathy and general ignorance of the average American will redound to our benefit here, as many people, especially the young, may not even have a clear idea who the Nazis are outside of movie villains. Hollywood’s product, most likely, can’t have a lot of credibility among Trump normies either. They’re being made fun of and ridiculed constantly by trash like John Oliver and his imitators.
Furthermore, there has been a clear weakening of the racism taboo across the culture, as evidenced, again, by Trump winning the presidency. So, perhaps it is wishful thinking, but I think there is reason to believe that there will minimal damage amount “normies” — the casual white Trump supporter who doesn’t live plugged into the 24/7 MSM outrage cycle — arising from Spencer’s egregious mistake.
Cultivating attention and a high profile with our worst enemies, while claiming to be a leader of Trump’s intellectual vanguard, and then embarrassing us like that is a mistake that can’t happen ever.
The real danger here is further cucking by Trump. Trump has powerful enemies ready to pounce. Now that the MSM has drawn blood, in effect, like a bull fighting opening his first tear that he eventually can turn to a fatal wound, they’re going to become even more relentless in their demands.
You are right the MSM will push us right out of the Trump camp. One flamboyant, idiotic gesture has eliminated any chance of our influencing the new administration when, as Kevin MacDonald said, we had a very good chance of doing just that.( If of course we didn’t scream if from the house tops.) Have watched Spencer’s apologetics and they will solace only true believers.No one else will be interested. Charm just won’t do it. The press barrage has worked like a blitz kreig.
What is so inexplicable is that Spencer was an ideal public face for the Alt Right and had spent years developing positive image that totally flummoxed the MSM. Standing down and working behind the scenes might help but it will take years to recover from this “egregious mistake.” I am still fuming… such a waste, such a waste.
The Nazi salute is a copied form of the Bellamy salute.
Search the Web for the Bellamy salute. Americans were right arm-raising to the flag of the US as part of the Pledge of Allegiance long before the Nazis came to power. When FDR was campaigning in 1933, some people were doing the Bellamy salute to him – you can see the picture on the Web.
It seems to be a Socialist thing.
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