I want to comment on why appearances matter.
At issue is the shape of the stage at the recently concluded 2021 CPAC or Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida.
Most of the attention was on ex-President Donald Trump’s speech asserting the Republican Party remains HIS party.
But a number of observers criticized the shape of the stage for the event.
An Ancient Symbol
They say it was shaped like a Nazi Othala Rune. A what?
The Othala Rune or Odal Rune is an ancient symbol the Nazis appropriated to symbolize the ethnic purity of the Aryan or white race.
It became a symbol of the Nazi SS, or Schutzstaffel and was worn as a lapel patch.
The Nazi Othala Rune permeated German life, such as when the SS officiated at baptisms to ensure ethnically pure Aryan babies.
The SS with their Othala Rune symbolism of white supremacy also oversaw the concentration camps where six million Jews died in the Holocaust.
CPAC, as you’d expect, denies its stage was a dog-whistle signal to American neo-Nazis, calling such accusations an outrageous and slanderous conspiracy theory.
These are the same people who refuse to censure or criticize Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia who spews antisemitic conspiracy drivel such as the California wildfires were ignited by a Jewish space laser.
The huffy denials of mimicking the shape of the Othala Rune don’t explain why did CPAC chose such an unusual stage configuration. They didn’t have high-kicking dancers or similar entertainers who needed stage wings to do their kicks and moves.
Why not a standard rectangular stage for what was essentially a parade of White Supremacy talking heads with Donald Trump as the final act?
American Nazis Show Themselves
The Othala Rune or Ordal Rune has been showing up frequently in recent years at White Supremacy events.
The New York Times took note of it at the deadly confrontation between Left and Right demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Here’s part of what the Times reported:
“Neo-Nazi and neo-fascists groups were also present at Saturday’s rally. Their symbols include the Othala rune, a European letter from a pre-Roman alphabet that in the 20th century that was used by Hitler’s SS, as well as by others who supported white rule.”
Was the CPAC stage meant to resemble the Nazi Othala or Ordal Rune? You figure it out.
I’ve called out the rise of White Supremacy and neo-Naziism in the Republican Party in half a dozen commentaries in the past year.
This is not America’s first flirtation with Naziism.
We’ve been here before, in the 1930s when thousands of discouraged and frustrated Americans bought the Nazi Big Lie of white racial superiority.
And like before, it poses a threat to our democratic republic.
If you want to literally save America as we’ve known it, you need to get active in local elections and fumigate the neo-Nazi Trumpers from our cities and states.
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