Secret Nazi Handshake?

The white right loves trolling, performing some racist (or sexist or homophobic) action to elicit protests, but maintaining just enough deniability to laugh off the whole thing. The technique works by attracting attention, by entertaining the racist base, and by sending coded hate speech.

This week Donald Trump's political campaign ran ads featuring an inverted red triangle, a symbol the Nazis used to designate political prisoners. Is this a coded Nazi message?

I hate putting myself in a conspiracy-mongering mode, but there are lots of reasons to be suspicious in this case. To begin, this kind of communication is standard on the racist right. But let's establish a broader context.

• Earlier this week I wrote about the signs that Trump plans to go all-in on racism as a reelection strategy. I chose not to advertise the post, but now it's all the more relevant.
• Isn't it odd that Trump chooses to go after Antifa, when the evidence for Antifa involvement in recent national protests is scant? Antifa means "anti-fascist," and plenty of experts identify fascist tendencies on Trump's part.
• During his election campaign Trump and since his inauguration, it's been frequently pointed out that Trump uses symbols, metaphors, and social media posts that originate in Nazi-adjacent circles. Trump also tweeted content he'd received from Russian media, as national security expert Clint Watts told Congress.
• The Jerusalem Post just noticed that Trump referred to the Secret Service as the "S.S." Maybe Trump was just saving characters?
• Recently Trump told Ford employees their company had "good bloodlines." Henry Ford conducted business with Nazis during World War II, was a noted anti-Semite, and was very much into eugenics. So was Donald Trump, Senior.
• Trump issued a 2020 campaign logo that clearly depended on an image developed in fascist circles.
• Calling protesters "thugs," a racially coded term if ever there was one, Trump tweeted, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." The quote comes from a segregationist Miami police chief in 1967 and was picked up by George Wallace. 
• Trump tweeted that four Democratic Congresswomen, all persons of color, "should go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." All of them are US citizens, and three were born in this country.
• Don't forget that Ivana Trump said her ex-husband kept of book of Hitler's speeches by the bed. One clear reason to be suspicious: there's little evidence Trump would read anything.

We could go on, but that's a whole lot of potential racist trolling. The level of trolling we're talking about requires some effort and sophistication. Neo-Nazis and the like are fond of high-level symbolism. For example, it's common to find the number 1488 among such groups. The number refers to literature produces by the white supremacist David Lane. You can look it up here.

It's entirely possible Donald Trump doesn't come up with this stuff on his own. He's either a willing or an unwitting vehicle of it. One of his chief political and communications strategists, Stephen Miller, has a known affinity for white supremacist literature and--get this--has been tasked with writing Trump's planned speech on race.

In addition to coded communication, white supremacists are extremely fond of symbolic allusions, particularly to dates. A guy like Stephen Miller, with support from a whole world of racists, could certainly come up with a plan for Trump to hold a rally during a period of heightened racial tension on Juneteenth, the day we celebrate the end of the Confederacy and the freedom of enslaved persons, and in Tulsa, site of the greatest massacre of black Americans. Sure he could.