Lots of discussion points here, but let me address two or three in particular:

blatant Nazism hurts their legitimacy in the eyes of the public

Nope. No, it really doesn’t. Trump was never a legitimate contender from his opponents’ perspective (due to dirty foreign money) and his true believers would stand buy him as he ate a live baby on TV.

Take a look at some approval polls that show he still has significant support from Americans. (Likewise with Musk, likewise with DOGE.)

Second point: It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t NEED legitimacy or approval any more. He’s in power, Musk is at his right hand, and the two of them are acting with complete impunity. Seriously, they should both be hauled off in chains and tried for treason, not to mention hate crimes and hundreds of less-sexy crimes. But they’re not, and so it just doesn’t fucking matter.

Thirdly, where did it come from? We’re discovering now that the Christian hard-right has been carefully staging this for HALF A CENTURY! Since not long after Roe v. Wade, they have been laying the groundwork for what Project 2025 is carrying out right now: A ruthless coup backed by religious extremists and foreign opponents. The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973. PNAC was founded in 1997. And there are more.

Fundamentally, Trump’s first term was to see how much they could get away with. When they lost the 2020 election, the Nazis spent four years purging the party of unfaithful (i.e. people with either thoughts or morals, or maybe even both), then won last year, and were finally able to remove their veil: The government no longer needs the will of the people to execute their extremist plans.

It has always been there, but until Trump’s first term the Nazis were at least cautious about things. They were afraid to openly and publicly spout their BS, unless they were in large groups. Because they knew that if they held up swastika signs on the street corner, that they’d very quickly get punched in the mouth.

But Trump changed that. Depending on how old you are, you may remember the “he tells it like it is/he’s not afraid to say what’s really on his mind” types of support for Trump during his first term. What a lot of those people were really saying is “he makes me feel empowered to say what’s is on my mind.” And what was on their mind was white supremacy and nazism. When the highest office in the land is tacitly (and sometimes directly) supporting white supremacists, they feel emboldened. And when they feel emboldened, they escalate.

What used to be whispered racist jokes escalated into passive racism. What used to be passive racism escalated into active racism. What used to be active racism escalated into openly hostile racism. And what used to be openly hostile racism escalated into nazism.

And the issue is that Trump/Musk have given Nazis a forum to meet other Nazis. Before, being a Nazi was a fairly lonely hobby. Finding other Nazis carried a lot of risk, because it meant potentially exposing yourself and getting your life ruined. But with Musk buying Xitter, Trump building Truth Social, etc… Yeah, suddenly the Nazis felt empowered to actually start talking to each other. The same way flat earthers used to just be your crazy uncle who smoked too much in his garage. But now that crazy uncle is part of a Flat Earth Society that regularly does large “experiments” to try and prove the earth is flat. By finding a forum to connect with other like-minded individuals, people feel emboldened as their views feel more normalized.

Genuinely, 4chan (Elon uses 4chan terms a lot), then instagram, facebook, discord, and foreign influence campaigns. I barely use social media, seems harmful.

I know people who fall into these rabbit holes. Super sad.

There have always been Nazis in America, even during WW2. Listen to Rachel Maddow’s podcast “ultra” to hear about how close they came to a takeover of the US way back then. They never went away, they just went low profile for a while.

In the 1930’s the robber Barron legacy wall street families got together and hatched a plot. A fascist coup attempt to overthrow FDR and install a fascist wall street /Military industry controlled regime that was modeled after hitler’s Germany. Wall street mostly unanimously supported the third reich. They funneled money to him, as well as equipment, put him in the cover of tine magazine as 1938 person of the year and held a rally for him at Madison square garden. The usa didn’t want anything to do with the great war till it became evident that Germany was likely to lose so they allowed pearl harbor to happen to give the US carte Blanche via public support to enter the global theater then we pillaged their military secrets and gave asylum to many war criminals we deemed useful like werner von braun and many others (project paperclip) But anyway Prescott bush was one of these new money wall street people who spearheaded this coup attempt. They propositioned one of the most highly decorated generals in us history- smedly butler, author of the short autobiographical/ social critique war is a racket, to head this coup and take the white house by storm with several thousand military veterans. Butler played along until the last minute when he blew the whistle and testified to congress and the house un-American activities committee/ HUAC who deemed his testimony credible but were very likely paid off and did nothing to hold those responsible accountable. Now fast forward 90 or so years to today and the main architect of this coup’s son and grandson were both sitting presidents (one was cia director and very likely involved in the JFK assassination and was in Dallas on November 22, 1963) and all branches if the us government are now obviously controlled by the intersection of wall street and industrial military power whom also simultaneously control the press and use it to disseminate propaganda that the general public are easily swayed by in major part due to nixon and Reagan cutting education standards at the recommendation of their mutual advisor roger a freeman who said an educated proletariat was a major threat to their movement. Those two administrations were some of the most damaging to the American proletariat and did so much to dismantle the progress that the civil rights and labor rights movement did in conjunction with the new deal policies of fdr that allowed the middle class yo thrive for 3 decades until hyper inflation reared its ugly head and gave way to the modern age of austerity in America our government and their mouthpiece puppets are lying about. They intentionally devalued the us dollar while adequately adjusting corporate executive pay to compensate for this reduction in value to eradicate the workers and civil rights progress of the 40’s 50’s and 60’s and sent a majority of us manufacturing jobs to the third world to cut labor costs by 90-95%+

For the first 172 years of the us dollar as a standardized currency the price of gold only fluctuated 95% from $18 to $35 when FDR temporarily suspended the gold standard made it illegal for the rich to hoard gold and bought up the majority of the supply then revalued it from $19 to $35 an ounce so he could double the money supply and repair the damage done by the great depression. But since nixon permanently ended the gold standard in 1971 the price of gold has increased 8400% from $35 to $2900 today. This is directly in tandem with the increase in the national debt from $400 billion in 1971 to 36 trillion and change today or toughly 9200% meanwhile wall street uses the IMF/ world bank inflation figures to lie to us about the extent that the working class has been looted right before our eyes. the inflation statistics they parrot are based on consumer price index which is an inadequate and inaccurate measure of inflation since it does not account for the devaluation of a currency due to the increase in circulating currency supply which the price of gold does by design. So that means the minimum wage in the US has lost between 84-93% of its value in 54 years which in 1968-71 earned the equivalent value of 95 ounces of gold a year which would be $130/hr or $270,000 annually at a 40 hour a week salary of $1.60/hr even in 1950 75¢/hr was 60/hr today or 125,000 and in 1956 it was $1/hr or $82/hr/$168,000 today. This is why one adult working a full time job at any time from 1945-1975 could supply a family of four with enough left to save for their two kids college, their retirement (if they weren’t part of the 50% of workers with a pension) own 2 or 3 used cars or one new car(which cost under $1000 at the time) and go on a modest family vacation once a year, today it would take both parents working 80 hours a week with overtime (which the current fascist regime wants to eradicate) at a base pay of$30 an hour to come close to the same quality of life. The American working class were turned to wage slaves and most were so poorly educated they didn’t have the intellectual capacity to understand this reality. Today 2/3 of workers live paycheck to paycheck with insufficient savings to cover a $500-1000 emergency expense. Most millennials and gen z will never own a home and have to work till they are too sick to do so or worse while hoping that social security, medicaid and food stamps are not destroyed/ defunded and or privatized so we can survive the end of our lives. This is the sad reality of america and anyone disagreeing with my assessment is choosing to believe the words of career liars who commit fraud regularly and with impunity and have fleeced the American people countless times while our tax dollars have gone to their tax breaks and bailouts so they can enjoy lifestyles of opulent luxury at our expense. Its time to MaGGA- make guillotines great again.

It’s always been there. Trump just told them it’s ok to be nazi in public? He’ll protect them. Because he is a damn nazi.

an important historical note is that the Nazis drew a lot of their ideology and argumentation from the American eugenics movement, which has been a major undercurrent in America since the early 1900s and never went away

They have more power than ever.

Even Pence wasn’t this stupid, but Vance certainly is.

It’s been fairly blatant for a while now. The seig heil is coming out now that they feel they’ve won. The goal is for the US to fall this time.

It’s always been there; they just stopped even attempting to hide it (even though they never had it very well to begin with).

They’re looking for yes-men, who will be loyal to them in even the worst possible situations. Heiling is just a test to weed out anyone else.

Also, the heiling gesture came a little too natural to them.

MAGA has always been run by nazis; the blatancy came from winning the last election.

It’s always been there, it’s just now coming to the surface.

Like shingles

it’s a combo of trolling and attention seeking. “there’s no such thing as bad press” and all that.

we should point it out, condemn it, but not engage in arguments with them about what is and isn’t a sig heil.

and when they pop up in other places trying to talk about other stuff, just bring up the fact that they threw a Nazi salute from time to time.

the most important thing is to focus on their evil policies and actions. but we can’t forget their performative evil.

It begins by realizing that economics is also politics. The US ran out of indigenous peoples and lands to exploit, so it is turning inwards.

There are many books one could recommend. But an easy one to understand is: Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror, this book was published in 2012. Whatever an empire perfects to crush other people, always sooner or later is used internally.