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[–]Soup_Navy_Admiral 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Magnum, P.I.: Rocket Nazi

I'm not even kidding about that. From the original article:

While it’s not uncommon to see heavily armed white men toting military-grade gear on American streets, the addition of the Hawaiian shirt is a new twist. It turned up in February at gun rights rallies in Virginia and Kentucky, then in late April at coronavirus lockdown protests in Michigan and Texas.

Nathan Taylor Pemberton is building guilt-by-association on a bunch of unrelated groups using the fact that sometimes people in all these groups wear Hawaiian shirts plus some random bit of wordplay:

The joke, for the uninitiated, involves a farrago of convoluted references to the 1984 film “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo” and sound-alike terms like “big igloo” and “big luau.”

Amazing that with the choice between "big igloo" and "big luau" everyone has been increasingly taking the summerwear option as the temperature raises. If we were in the southern hemisphere right now you can bet he'd be pushing the igloo side of that equation. Damn it, even the aliens-built-the-pyramids crackpot theory has a more solid backing than this. That he only has one example of an "American flag patch decorated with a floral pattern and an igloo" is telling. How hard would it be to find examples of say, a black bloc dress code?

Each is a reference to the movement’s insurrectionary appetites, which range from civil libertarian rebellion against the American government to full-fledged race war instigated by white nationalists, as reported by investigative journalism site Bellingcat.

So two sets of "investigative journalists", at Bellingcat - whatever that is - and whoever at the NYT is supposed to doublecheck freelancer Pemberton's asspulls completely missed the obvious. First, his logic is moral panic conspiracy theory at a level we haven't seen since we demolished preschools looking for Satanic sacrifice tunnels; second, we are witnessing rebellion against the American government and people pushing for race war right now FROM THE LEFT. Or did CHAZ 1.0 get reclassified as Ancapistan after it failed?

Amazing, when you can demonize a guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt as desiring to commit the crimes your faction is out there committing right now. How is it even possible to project this hard? After some point shouldn't the effort be so much you spontaneously vomit up organs like a scared sea cucumber?