Can someone explain this to me, because I don’t get it.
It’s from a right-wing Christian site, which explains how they don’t understand the words patriotism, socialism, and racism, but why is there a woman in a bikini pointing out the big stupid sign? And do they really think their critics confuse racism and patriotism?
What sign ?
I’m guessing the woman and the beach are clip art. I wonder what she’d think of her work being used in that context.
This is a just the result of rw propaganda: “socialism” is equated with everything under the sun, from BLM to M4A, raising the minimum wage, Biden, but also Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar and AOC, and there’s the disproportionate number of bipoc who vote dem rather than gop.
I mean, even what passes for “socialist” policies in the US would of course benefit minorities, so yes unbridled capitalism is also racist, but the terms don’t necessarily overlap (there are racist leftwingers and most people support capitalism, irrespective of racial group).
As for the woman in bikini? I think they just stole that meme format, cos a white lady in red bikini goes is the aesthetic of their “not at all racist” patriotism.
=8)-DX
What’s the title of the photo? Tourist photo of seagull in Florida?
“Is not Racism” is larger than the rest so it’s there to catch your eye. Discard that and you get “Rejecting Socialism, It’s Patriotism”. The implications being, socialists are unpatriotic and call patriots racists.
Back here in the real world, socialists can be just as patriotic as anyone else and we call racist people racist. It’s not our fault most racists are also very patriotic. Maybe the “patriots” should work on that.
You can buy tee shirts and bumper stickers (at least) with that rubbish text on them.
One example I saw the seller explicitly said they were pro-hair furor; another example explicitly said the product was anti-Obama.
It’s the “conservative women are objectively hotter than liberal women” stick. I could write a lot on that subject, but I’ll leave it be.
“And do they really think their critics confuse racism and patriotism?”
It’s propaganda reductio ad absurdum. It’s pretty much the only tool the right uses anymore. Red meat to the spittle flecked faithful, while simultaneously trolling the left–or trying to anyway.
I don’t doubt that beach bunny appeals to the same idiots who voted for McCain because Palin was hot celeb material.
It’s not an exaggeration to say they’ve all lost their minds.
@7. Someone already has:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeautyEqualsGoodness
“Or to put it another way, every hero worth his salt must be physically attractive, or at the very least, better-looking than half of other people his or her age. This standard is more relaxed for side characters who can be truly ordinary-looking or even literal aliens, but expect the lead character to be pleasing to look at, even if he is the alien.”
The meme is combating the right’s straw man image of their ideological opponents. Just as, according to them, being a “patriot” means being a gun-owning, Bible-believing, BBQ-eating red-blooded, native-born, capitalist American, being a socialist means being a hysterical, godless, pink-haired, SJW who constantly accuses everyone they disagree with with “racism” no matter what the topic.
Meanwhile, the woman in the bikini is there because despite their public prudery, even the Right knows that sex sells.
@7 Giliell
I’m pretty sure that’s all a product of Fox News and it’s endless parade of blonde Aryan spokes-folk. I hesitate to call them journalists or correspondents. The real conservatives are what we saw on January 6th. Old, obese, white and rotten to the core.
@10 The conservatives have no problems with boobies so long as the owner of said boobies makes to attempt at asserting control over them.
Nah, it all makes perfect sense. It just needs a bit of unpacking:
1) All government programs designed to help poor people are socialism. (Aside from the ones that benefit me personally, which are Keeping America Great!)
2) Many Black people are poor, and thus support these programs.
3) Hating socialism = patriotism.
4) So the more I hate Black people, the more I love AMERICA!
@13
Yep.
They forgot to Photoshop in the tiki torches.
@10 Akira
“Strawman” is the exact word for it. This is what you get when you want to strawman in as few words as possible. They want to imply that the left believes the right to be 100% racists. In reality only about 60%-70% are racist and we know that. 100% is absurd, 60%-70% is unfortunate reality.
Susan Montgomery @12: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlondeRepublicanSexKitten
@16 MR
“BlondRepublicanSexKitten” says it all. I did not know there was actually such a deprecating slang term for that phenomenon. I’m going to have to use that one.
@16 that too :)
I prefer “The Girls From Brazil” or “Lebensborn Barbie.”
@19 Akira
That kind of makes it sound like post war NAZI infiltration. The problem is the White Right has been here the whole time. “Tiki-Trophy-Wives” would be more contemporary.
That IS some confusing artwork (for some definitions of art.) What’s with the tiny blue woman under her left arm? On another note it seems to me that the word “socialism” has become a keyword* and/or as a blanket label for “everything we don’t like.”
Seems to me this little sign is just more of the misdirection the right wing propaganda mill is so fond of. Don’t bother asking how a particular idea, campaign, or policy from the left is in any way “socialist”, it is enough for you to understand that since we labelled it “socialist” that it is in fact “socialist” and so you, as a patriot can and should reject it.
*Is keyword the right word?
@21 DU
I think you were looking for “buzzword” or “dog whistle”. I know how you feel. I hate not having the exact right word ready to go.
You know, I would swear that conservatives have never caught on to the idea that words actually have meanings. I think they just say words because they like the way they sound or they repeat what they’ve heard elsewhere like a fricking Mina Bird.
It’s an obvious (bad) Photoshop job, done by someone of limited intellect. Or, it’s brilliant satire.
“Rejecting socialism, is not racism, it’s patriotism”
I agree with the vague “socialism” that is used as a scary label. I would ask a person posting it to show me the socialism.
The choice of “racism” is interesting. If there is an actual thing they are labeling “socialism” then what racism could get twisted into “socialism”?
Another option is there may be no actual “socialism”. It could be about attacking claims of racism with the label “socialism” and letting them imply whatever they want is “patriotism”. Cheerleading totally empty of content with gratuitous sexuality.
snarkrates@23, laughs… Yea, it’s like — and this is just one example — how some use Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA at rallies, etc., ignoring both Mr Springsteen’s displeasure at such usage and the actual, you know, words (lyrics). Speculating, they just seem to like the sound and some superficial self-imagined “meaning” of the chorus / title.
DU @ #21 — “Socialism” has been a scare word in American politics since the 1930s at least, along with “Communism.” Many Americans don’t have a clue about what they mean, just that they represent an evil other and media outlets (a la Murdoch) can slather on the labels to convince a lot of people that something is bad, like anything from Democrats.
@19 Alex Baldwin once called Sarah Palin ,Bible Spice .
@27 Same over here in good old GB ,some wackaloon called in to James O’Brian’s show on LBC ,and went on about
Cultural Marxism ,when asked to explain what he meant by that term ,the caller didn’t have a clue .
I like JOB ,he gets right under the britshiters skin ,many the times he has asked them to name one good thing about not being in the EU ,and they tie themselves in knots trying to answer .
robro@27:
The First Red Scare, pre-McCarthy, started in 1918 as a result of the nationalism from World War I and the panic over the Russian Revolution of 1917. So I’d date the ‘socialism==evil’ idea at least back that far.
The fact that this was almost exactly a generation after the ‘end’ of the Gilded Age, and there had been a lot of growth in worker’s rights movements in the interim, meant the Red Scare took advantage of the reactionary pushback there as well.
Of course, a lot of it also owes to the general description of poor Americans as ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’. When people believe that hard work will inevitably grant them the success that you crave, they don’t support anything that might reduce that success, even if it would actually help them now.
@28, “name one good thing about not being in the EU”: The EU doesn’t have to put up with “U”K obstructionist tactics?
</snark>(At the moment I cannot actually think of a clear-cut example where teh “U”K’s stomping off in a huff should, will, or has unjam a progressive sensible sustainable idea.)Margaret Thatcher supposedly once (approx.) said “There is no society. There are individuals and families.”
jenorafeuer @29: Not coincidentally, it was also a point when conservatives pushed a lot of union-busting measures through. Red Scares have always been used in order to destroy workers’ rights.
David Utidjian@21
Darn, you beat me to it. I hope her elbow is glued on well to the edge of that sign. It’s quite a drop.
I know, I know. Perspective. Or world’s most subtle photobomb.
Wull, at a glance I’d say: someone found a pic of a rather personable lady presenting a sign with “welcome to this scenic beach” or similar and then crudely pasted that nonsense on the original signage, see how flat and shadowless it looks? The rest of the scene looks more or less normal 3D, the sign (and only that) is postcard-like 2D.
As for the text: by idiots, for idiots. Not going to get depressed trying to parse it.
I should mention that the guy I got this from is on a streak of posting total right-wing gibberish every day. I’m kind of disgusted with him, but I keep watching the train wreck to figure out what is going on in his brain.
Near as I can tell, the gerbils have been spinning so furiously that the wheel has flown off it’s axle and is careening around, turning everything in his cranium into soup. It’s sad.
Anyway, it’s not really hard to parse. First “It makes us cry when you point out our racism, so please don’t call us racists.” That’s the main point because it’s in big red letters. Second: “We don’t know what ‘socialism’ means but we just love teasing you with it. Socialist! Socialist! Socialist! Hahahahaha… so funny!” Third: “Patriotism™”
Without comment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_socialism#History
Reminds me of the women used as bait by Moses David and his Christion cult, The Family in the 1980’s. Here is a sample of his work.
https://www.xfamily.org/index.php?title=File:Little_Flirty_Fishy-TK-04.jpg&filetimestamp=20050407234810&
well it is hard to understand what racism is when you think that other “races” are inherently different from you and the “founders” , when you see “civil rights” as demanded by those others as a demand at making them better then you. Any complaint is a threat to order and basically unpatriotic. Patriotism is for those with the rights to be here and deserving them others are bad and all bad is socialism which wants to change the existing order
. i can’t go on the logic falls apart and becomes so contradictory as to become gibberish
it boils down to the old us v them and them being at best only vaguely defined but understood.
the sexism helps to illustrate the superficial nature of the thinking at least to me.
uncle frogy
unclefrogy@39 Funny you mention founders. I was trying to figure out what socialism has to do with patriotism, given that the founding documents say absolutely nothing against it, even as a general concept. Start with the Declaration of Independence, though it predates the existence of the US, it still serves as a statement of founding principles: governments are instituted to secure “unalienable Rights” but nothing in particular about promoting free enterprise or private ownership.
By the time you get to the Constitution, you have the “People” establishing a government to “promote the general Welfare” among other things. That sounds positively communist to me. Some sort of People’s Republic? And they even used the W-word. Oh my!
Now racism, actually, we see a bit more on this front. From the Declaration:
and from the Constitution, this coy reference
So it’s safe to say that the founders were more aware of racism as an issue than socialism, or some might say they weren’t aware at all, because it just came naturally to them.
FWIW, I do consider myself a patriotic American, or at least not the kind of despicable traitor who thinks you can overturn an election by attacking Congress. I have no idea what these “patriots” believe that even makes them identifiably American. Opposition to socialism is irrelevant. They could make a better case for themselves by claiming racism is an American value, because there’s documentary support for this claim.
Because when you define socialism as “anything I don’t like” and you’re not actually anti-racist, you have to repackage the racism.
microraptor@32:
Of course it wasn’t coincidental. I put the bit about reactionary pushback a generation after the Gilded Age (i.e., enough time to get people growing up who don’t remember why it was a problem) in there for a reason…
@28, “name one good thing about not being in the EU”
Well, apart from looking like it’s going to prove politically – and ultimately economically – beneficial to the EU, the rapacity and corruption of the instigators of brexit may
=> Scottish independence, and also
=> Irish reunification, subject obviously to the decision of the Irish,
and maybe, maybe eventually even => Welsh independence, though that would clearly be on a different timescale.
(These in turn might eventually => constitutional reform and structural changes in England, but probably not for a hell of a long time if indeed ever.)
@43 I meant good for England ,i know Scotland mainly voted to remain .
Regarding your last paragraph ,the Guardian had a article by an ex lib-dem mp about how betty windsor gets to
meddle in laws to her and the rest of the firms benefit .
@44 davidc1, absolutely nothing good for England about not being in the EU, no :-\
nor for the UK (except indirectly/by very unintended consequences for Sc and NI as I was saying)
for England it makes everything worse.
Hey, maybe an independent Scotland will decide to drop Brenda! Or at least, the Windsors’ legal privileges. One can but hope.
@45 At least we can now reply to britshitters who whinge about how things are no going well for them by saying ,”You Won ,Get Over It”
Personally, I think it would be fitting, and very funny, if Irish reunification resulted from all this, though I don’t know how popular or feasible it is. I was surprised to find out I had ancestors from County Antrim, since they’re all Catholic, but I suspect that’s a big part of the reason my great great great grandmother left over two centuries ago.
@46, 47
”You Won ,Get Over It”
Yes! And yet they don’t seem to be very happy about it… :-s Perhaps they’re already tired of all that winning.
re Ireland, I don’t know nearly enough. But you certainly see a lot of people suggesting that it’s getting more feasible now – increasingly so with every border-in-the-Irish-Sea cock-up.
But does the red of the bikini represent socialism (bad) or the Republican Party (good)? Maybe the Democrats should claim that the Republicans, having taken red as their colour, are in fact socialists. After all, few if any Republican voters actually know anything about socialism, except that its bad.
Giliell (#7) –
Conversely, rightwing media chooses “liberals” who are least ‘conventionally attractive’ (see: Alan Colmes). Master race media at its worst.