From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:
I get that CPAC is about right-wing signifying, but the CPAC stage being laid out to resemble the Odal rune once used by the SS Waffen and preferred by some neo-Nazis over the swastika is a little bit….much, right? I mean, surely it’s a dumb coincidence.
Nope, we’ve been here before. The argument over “accident” vs. “on purpose” is partially about fucking with the libs, partially about letting the white supremacists (who would know what it looks like, even if regular folks don’t) feel included. The way some fash or fash-adjacent person might flash white power hand gestures and then pretend they are just feeling A-OK. At some point, there is no benefit of the doubt left.
I mean, when Josh Hawley explicitly says he is paraphrasing a quote by Daniel Webster (“Union now, union forever”) but changes it to “America now, America first, America forever”, it’s that little detail of three clauses that might make you hear echoes of George Wallace at first, but the insertion of “America first” is what drives it home for people with long memories.