Trump and the Code of 1488


 

The outermost fringes of American right-wing militancy has something in common with early Christianity. They rely on codes.

Neo-Nazis are in a position to understand the below-ground messaging of my president and his supporters.


Political candidates often have a hard time with technology. Crowds have to hear what is being said, and so speeches are made loud enough for those in the back row to pick up every word. And here lies the problem. Public speakers forget that they don’t need to yell. They can let the microphone do the work.

And sometimes they do. When Joe Biden speaks of personal tragedy, his voice softens almost to a whisper. His audiences hear the words, but they also hear the emotion. He may not be able to share their pain, but he can share his own.

It isn’t only Biden. During a campaign speech in Virginia Beach 20 years ago, John McCain’s voice suddenly softened as he spoke about his treatment as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

It is a fact still not widely recognized outside of Vietnam. There was a strong religious component to the war. The leadership of the South Vietnamese government was pretty much all Christian, and they vigorously disapproved of Buddhism. The overwhelmingly Buddhist population was the subject of consistent discrimination. Property rights, respect for religious practices, and even the outlawing of the Buddhist flag reflected that. So Christians in North Vietnam in those days had a special reason for secrecy. Nobody liked them, even a little.

The harshness McCain experienced went way into torture. But one guard showed compassion, secretly loosening ropes that had been intentionally tied past the point of pain.

Every time McCain spoke of that risky kindness, listeners noticed that same softening of voice. Years later, a campaign ad repeated the story, including how he discovered that the guard was a secret Christian.

On Christmas, that same guard approached me and, without saying a word, he drew a cross in the sand. We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas.

Christian tradition has it that secret Christian symbols go back to antiquity. There was a time in ancient Rome when it was extraordinarily dangerous to be a Christian. So a secret way of self-identification became the norm. It was known as the Ichthys. There were different forms. The Latin words for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” became an acronym. The first letter of each word, when combined, formed something similar to the Latin word for “fish.” Peter was a fisherman. Jesus had talked of making followers “fishers of men.”

Ichthys
So a Christian would sort of aimlessly doodle in the sand, forming an arc, slightly hooked on one end. To a non-Christian, it would look like, well, pretty much nothing. But another Christian might draw an overlapping arc, forming a crude outline of a fish. So a fellowship was formed. In writings, a more complex symbol might be a spoked wheel, with the spokes specially arranged to match the pattern formed if each letter of that same acronym was place on top of the next.

It could get complicated, but secrecy made it worthwhile.

Numbers were important in code. Assigning numbers to letters of the alphabet, would make Nero into 666. Rome, the city of seven hills, would be 7.

When you take an isolated Christian, exile him to a cave on the Island of Patmos, and threaten him with torture and death, you might get writings filled with a beast with 7 horns, 666 as the mark of the beast, and all sorts of exciting imagery, ending with deliverance from those evil oppressors, who would themselves vanish in a lake of fire.

Behold, a pale horse!

To the uninitiated, those scribbles were the nightmare visions of a madman, nothing that would implicate the writer or the recipient in anything forbidden. But, He that hath an ear, let him hear.

Not every numerical construct is secret or intended to disguise. One Jewish tradition associates the number 18 with a Hebrew word meaning life. So donors to causes or even those making monetary gifts to friends or relatives will sometimes make it a point to give in multiples of 18.

And those using numerical codes are not always motivated by religious persecution or altruistic numerology.

When Jewish radio host Alan Berg was assassinated by a white nationalist group in 1984, nobody suspected his murder would be celebrated with a simple number. A founding member of the group, who had served as a getaway driver, was open about the motivation for the assassination:

We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.

That sentence happened to contain 14 words. After the driver, a founder of the extremist organization, died in prison, his wife started a publishing group called the 14 Word Press. White Supremacist groups adopted the term “14 Words” to symbolize their hatred of other races as well as hatred for those who did not share their hatred. Eventually this was just shortened again to the number 14.

The number 14 floats around the militant right fringe of America, often combined with 88. The 8 is associated with the letter H and HH, or 8-8, is understood to mean Heil Hitler.

When 1488 is encountered, it is understood by a wide range of white supremacists to refer to that celebration of assassination, followed by a salute to Adolf Hitler.

So they encode into their messages 14 or 88 or 1488.

A repentant former Nazi shows his tattoos to an interviewer.

But you know you can still see the ‘WP’ for the white power underneath.

Oh my God, yeah.

These little black lines right here the 14 …

the 1488.

David Beiwert received the National Press Club Award for Distinguished Online Journalism for his research into domestic terrorism.

They call themselves the 1488ers, the Daily Stormer, and the really very radical Neo-Nazi types.

Vixen Strangely is a name too cute to be real. Regardless of her real name, she is a blogger who serves as an endless fount of insight. She points out our reluctance to engage in wanton numerology. It is tainted by association with those same fringe groups who adopt it for themselves.

I am reminded of a famous photo of a young woman holding a sign that blames COVID-19 on Barack Obama. She totals the letters in his name. Barack = 6, Hussein = 7, and Obama = 5. Which all total up to 19, as in COVID-19.

In fact, scientists tell us that 6 + 7 + 5 do not actually add up to 19. (Let’s see six plus seven, carry the one, plus five. Sure enough 18, not 19).

Dumb conservatives!

Fake News Exposed by Snopes
Of course, the image has been photoshopped. There never was a right wing demonstrator with that sign. It shows the creativity of some leftist like me, although perhaps a less ethical leftist. And it demonstrates the reluctance of rational folks, which is to say me, to seek out numerical coincidence as proof of much of anything.

But the volume of coincidence does mount. It means something only if it is deliberate. For example, a message to the hardest of hard core. Do not despair. You have an ally here. We are all brothers and sisters on this side of the skin.

Strangely Blogged points to just of few examples of weird coincidence.

A Trump baseball that is sold online for exactly 88 dollars. Kind of an unusual price. 90 dollars was not an unavailable listing? Or 89 dollars?

A government agency prints the number of illegal immigrants who were arrested, then eventually released after it was determined that they are actually US citizens. Oops.

There is no accompanying list, no breakdown of numbers, no way of counting. The number is not shown as nearly, or just under, 1500 wrongly imprisoned citizens.

The number released is shown with unusual precision as exactly 1488. Really?

She points to other coincidences, non-numerical accidents of chance. A tee shirt is sold with an eagle that is nearly identical in design to the official symbol of Hitler’s Nazi Party.

Another Nazi symbol that was used in 1930s Germany to identify political prisoners to be sent to concentration camps is shown in a Trump campaign ad. It takes the form of an inverted red triangle that each identified enemy in those days was forced to wear before being shipped off. The Trump ad applies it to those they call antifa.

That ad, as it turns out, was taken down by Facebook. The decision was controversial. The Trump folks are still outraged. They insist the use of the symbol was unrelated to its history. The resemblance to the sign that was applied in Germany to victims of Nazi concentration camps was purely coincidental. The ad was not suggesting that those protesters accused of being associated with antifa should be exterminated. They were not sending an underhanded violent instruction to hardcore Nazi fringe groups.

Not emphasized, at the time of the controversy, were two other coincidences that involved 1488. The first sentence of the ad contained 14 words. And 88 spots had been purchased to run the ad.

Coincidence.

He that hath an ear, let him hear.


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3 thoughts on “Trump and the Code of 1488”

  1. This is not meant as criticism. The point is trivial and doesn’t in any way affect the message, but “ichthys” is the Greek word for fish, while the Latin is “piscis”. The plural is “pisces”, thus the constellation name. I could never discern two fish up there, but there are supposed to be two.

    1. Thank you for the correction, Glen, and your gentle way of putting it.

      Even at my advanced age, I appreciate the small bits of education I can still absorb.

  2. Coincidence or not, another hand signal of the racist hate groups is what used to be the sign for “OK”.

    It now stands for “White Power” and is flashed by Trump every time he speaks at rallies. Hmm.

    It is also been seen displayed by cops as the club and gas non-violent protesters.

    Infiltration of law enforcement by hate groups is a reality that we’ve yet to confront:

    https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/the-fbi-has-quietly-investigated-white-supremacist-infiltration-of-law-enforcement/

    THE FBI HAS QUIETLY INVESTIGATED WHITE SUPREMACIST INFILTRATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT

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