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There must be Nazis in the White House. EO 14188 -> 14/88.
There is now a straight line connecting the White House to Nazis. I know: sounds like a conspiracy theory. However, the dots make a straight line. Just read the below. That's all I ask. Here are the dots:
- 47 issues Executive order 14188: "Additional measures to combat *Anti-Semitism". 47 has been co-opting "Anti-Semitism" to mean "Anti-Zionism" for a while now. "Anti-Semitism" means "Anti-Jewish". "Anti-Zionist" != "Anti-Jewish". "Anti-Zionism" is disagreeing with the conservative Israeli equivalent of America's "manifest destiny".
- 1488 is a Nazi dog whistle 1488 is often represented as 14/88.
- This EO doesn't make Jews safer. It makes them targets.. This clearly aligns well with the intent behind 14/88.
- The statistical probability of this as a coincidence , EO14188 being about "Anti-Semitism" and the existence of 14/88? Clearly absurdly low.
- Nazis in the White House.
EDIT: Thank you to the folks who amended the tags.
There's a Toni Morrison quote that I believe applies here:
Dog whistling is a tried and true discrimination tactic. It works for a couple of reasons:
The first is that it's an in-group signal which strengthens group identity and cohesion.
The second, and arguably far more powerful effect, is that it's a distraction in the form that Morrison identifies. It's a way of always creating "one more thing."
Dog whistling gives bad faith actors plausible deniability. This then pits good faith actors against each other and wastes their time and energy.
If you, in good faith, hear the dog whistle for what it is, you look at others who don't with frustration or even outright suspicion. If you, in good faith, don't hear the dog whistle, then the people pointing it out look like they're conspiracy theorists creating alchemical truths out of insignificant information.
That's what's going on in this topic right now at large: a bunch of people are spinning their wheels on this with everyone (from my perspective at least) acting in good faith.
The people doing the dog whistling get a great return on investment with it. It is trivially easy to do and comes with next to no cost. If they're ever worried about being held to account for it, they can retreat behind the safety of their plausible deniability and further exploit trusting people acting in good faith. Here's a nearly perfect recent example. (though I'd argue this was a "failed" dog whistle instead of a "successful" one because he was so brazen about it)
Furthermore, because dog whistles hide behind seemingly normal fronts, a dog whistle will invariably create false positives: something that sounds like a whistle but is genuinely just a product of coincidence or circumstance or whatnot. When this happens, the deniability effect is strengthened, because it's easy to point out that misfire as a counterexample and make anyone calling out the dog whistle look ridiculous.
The reality is that we cannot know whether or not Executive Order 14188 was a deliberate dog whistle or if we're just looking at a false positive. That uncertainty is the whole point. It's a time and energy waster.
If it was intended, Nazis were probably delighted at the response it got. If it wasn't intended, they're probably even MORE delighted that they got their desired result without even trying. That's the reality of dog whistling and why it's such an effective tactic: low risk, high reward.
I put a break here because I want to touch on one more idea.
As I was thinking about this and writing this up, I kept hitting on a discrepancy that I couldn't figure out.
Despite knowing how the tactic works and knowing it's a distraction, I can't deny that the idea that the White House would potentially use Executive Order 14188 as a dog whistle really got under my skin. More than Musk's Hitler salute, if I'm being honest (despite me thinking that was, objectively, worse).
Why?
I think it comes down to tone.
It's one thing if someone's being evil and they're upfront about it. It's another thing if they're being evil and they're cheeky about it. For some reason that feels worse?
If we accept for the moment that the 14188 EO was a deliberate Nazi nod (an unprovable point, but bear with me), then we accept that it was done essentially as flippant ridicule. It's not just that it's discriminatory -- it's outright mocking. I think it's the difference between evil with a straight face, and evil with a sneer. They have the same root, but the one with the sneer feels worse -- more personal.
I think this is probably the emotional core of why people are having a strong response to this situation in the first place -- or at least, that's what I felt about it.
I bring this up because I don't want my comment to look like a dismissive "stop caring" or a "you're ackshually helping the racists" shutdown/rebuttal. I didn't come here to chastize anyone for their comments in this topic. Quite the opposite: I hope my comment here honors why we're all busy making these comments in the first place.
The people who are seeing something sinister in this EO have a legitimate emotional cause for that.
Meanwhile, the people who are skeptical also have standing.
The people pointing out the other, far more transparent terrible actions of our current administration are also right, of course.
It can look like those viewpoints are in opposition, when really they're all essentially different faces of the same die.
The alleged needling of EO 14188 wouldn't generate much pain if it weren't happening on a broader backdrop of discriminatory actions. Meanwhile, the fact that something as mundane as an executive order number can even appear to be significantly symbolic is a damning indictment of the current administration's culture at large.
I deliberately took a break from reading Tildes and, particularly, comments on my post as of a couple of days ago.
I'm grateful that this comment is the first one I've read since glancing at Tildes yesterday to see 9 more unread comments on my post. As someone born Jewish in the US, and from the bulk of the comments heretofore, I anticipated these comments to be various flavors of derision that, for me, land very much like gaslighting.
For everyone other than the prior commenter, please bear this in mind. Some of the outright dismissiveness that I encountered here a few days ago resonate as damn near emotional abuse.
I want to say this as calmly and as friendly and with as much care as possible. Please understand that everything I'm saying is from a place of trying to understand, trying to find common ground, and trying to help reach resolution. Everything here is an opinion of mine, and I'm open to debate about it. I don't think that you're wrong or crazy or anything of the sort. We come from a place of similar values.
Almost everyone here is on board with the fact that the people in the white house suck. Almost everyone in this thread accepts that they're doing bad things. Most of us are on board that the things are various flavours of nazi-ish, and that the actions are antisemitic, fascist, and deplorable. Some of us disagreed that the numbering here is important, and to be clear, one of those people is me. I came to the conclusion that at worst, the numbering of this order is a coded message that almost nobody will pick up on. A lot of us who are perennially online know that 14/88 is a coded message, but the vast majority of people do not. You have picked up on this, and as @kfwyre said, whether it is on purpose or not, this is not something that would be damning without all the other damning things that this administration has done.
You have repeatedly asked "what are the odds that this is a coincidence?" so I thought I would try to answer that. Trump has signed orders 14147 through EO 14270. That's 124 different options. There is 1 obviously 14/88 coded option in there, so the odds of this happening are 1/124 - a little under 1%. However, then I considered "how many of these executive orders could be considered Nazi flavoured"? I did a look at the list and maybe one out of every three? That means that there's about a 33% chance of this executive order being some kind of shoutout to Nazis. This is partially why I felt like this was a conspiracy-jerk type post; the odds are not particularly outlandish. This number was certainly going to be used as an executive order - that's not something that has any odds - so the fact that it is Nazi coded when they're doing Nazi shit with alarming frequency doesn't feel compelling to many of us. I understand that from your point of view, the odds feel much more astronomical.
This is the hard part, where I have great concern about voicing this, so please understand again - from a place of love and care. We disagree on the odds, and we disagree about whether this is proof, and we have written things that are in disagreement with each other in this thread. Having these disagreements about things isn't emotionally abusive, and I am concerned that you have parsed it as emotionally abusive. I don't think that there are people in this thread that are trying to gaslight you. I think we just disagree on one of the steps you have in this argument. This comes back to an issue that is deeply concerning to me, and it's usually summed up as "the left eats itself".
We fundamentally agree on what I would term "the important stuff" - the things that are happening are bad. We have a disagreement on what I think of as minutiae - was it on purpose that this specific executive order was numbered like this? To you, I understand that this looks like a smoking gun that says "there are nazis in the White House". To me this just looks like one of the many terrible executive orders that have been made, and the smoking gun lies elsewhere.
I'm trying to sum up why I think it's important to not use this as a piece of proof, and it was said better than I could above:
I understand and respect that this feels like a compelling piece of evidence for you. Trump has co-opted "antisemitism" to try to stand for anti-Zionism (as have many other politicians) and this executive order is going to create more problems for jewish people. Those points are strong points on their own and any discussion about them should be about those points. It is possible that this order was numbered purposefully and it's possible it wasn't, but either way I think using it as some kind of proof of Nazism makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist and undermines your point. As it was said above, that's the point of dog whistles - they make the people who argue against them sound crazy. And I want to be explicit - I don't think you're crazy, and I think that the thing you think is certainly possible. I just reject the idea that it has the place of fundamental importance that you seem to be placing on it to a broad audience. However, I think it is perfectly valid that this is a piece of evidence that has spoken to you and ignited you to share. This is the perfect sort of thing to share online and raise awareness. But I would be reluctant to share this with people in real life, because for the most part they aren't going to understand why you find it compelling and they are going to question if you're going down some conspiracy rabbit hole. And if the numbering of this order was on purpose, then discrediting you when you talk about it is part of the game plan. Even in a community where people already fundamentally are in agreement with the base premise, many people find it to be uncompelling.
Replying to myself here, because I’m not sure where else to put this, and I don’t want anyone to feel put on the spot by it.
Anyone remember Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill?
That wasn’t its actual name of course, but I bring it up because, as a gay person, it’s utterly terrifying to me. It’s a direct threat on the lives of people like me. It is effectively impossible for me to have a non-emotional response to it. I just searched it in response to this comment only to learn that it was made even worse in 2023. When I read that, I felt it in my own body. I had an actual physical response to it, and not a good one.
The number 14/88 is essentially a “Kill the Jews” sign. If I were Jewish and I saw it, I would likely have a near identical response to the one I had with the Uganda law. And honestly, even though I’m not Jewish, I still have a pretty visceral response to it. The Nazis weren’t exactly kind to people like me.
If your Jewish friend came to you and said “hey, I saw this awful sign on the way to work” and explained that it said 1488 on it, you’d be sympathetic.
If you later learned that your friend was in error, and there was simply a highway called US-1488 on your friend’s way to work, you would likely still be sympathetic to their feelings, even though you now know they were mistaken, because the magnitude of the feeling of facing a reminder of one’s historical cultural genocide far outweighs the magnitude of the error your friend made.
“I know how much that sucks for you” hits more at the core of the issue than “this is how the road-numbering system works.”
What follows is going to sound punchy, but I don’t mean it to be a gotcha or abrasive: if all you focus on is your friend’s error, or your own correctness regarding the situation, then you’re essentially committing an emotional error of your own by denying the specific humanity of this situation. There’s a heavy weight here that isn’t being logged on the scale.
That is to say, even if we believe that the executive order number was sheer coincidence and the mathematical likelihood of it occurring was very high, that information doesn’t counteract the idea we can still feel empathy for the people for whom the actual 14/88 number hurts.
If my Jewish friends were reading this topic, I don’t think they’d be hearing the message “hey, I know it’s fucking terrifying for you to think that your own government might be giving a wink to your genocide.” That is, to me, the core of the issue here — not whether or not we can prove that the numbering was intentional or not. I implore people to consider the emotional truth here as much as the numeric one.
There are plenty of much stronger and more visible signs of fascism in the white house that don't sound like a conspiracy theory. They are black-bagging people into a Salvadoran prison without trial. Musk did a nazi salute on TV. Focus on that. This number-code stuff is only even plausible because there's much stronger pre-existing evidence that they're the kind of people who would do that sort of thing (ie nazis). If this was the sole evidence, it would convince nobody.
Certainly. Signaling Nazis augments that.
Also, potentially, it's a way to reach older people such as my father in law who unabashedly supports Trump. (We'll see if this moves him at all or whether he finally starts to see the monster he voted for.)
I do take issue with the "conspiracy theory" representation. These are facts. Coincidences such as these are highly improbable.
I really, really recommend against this. I don't mean this in a mean way, but arguing to a Trump supporter that the white house is clearly full of Nazis because they put out an executive order on a "Nazi number" (which anybody not frequently online will have no idea exists), which happened to be the next number up, about "combating anti-Semitism" is not going to change any conservative minds about the president. He's going to look at you and say "the executive order is about stopping anti-Semitism, that's the opposite of Nazis" and the discussion will be over.
If you want to change minds about Trump, I recommend reading "How Minds Change" by David McRaney.
How can you take issue? I was using your words:
I agree. It does. You know what doesn't sound like a conspiracy theory? A literal press conference where your leaders admit in their own words that they grabbed an innocent man off the street and sent him to a South American jail by mistake and are now refusing to get him back.
If that doesn't convince someone there's no way some improbable numbers will.
The fact is that the order is numbered 14188. The conspiracy theory is that that numbering was intentionally chosen as a dogwhistle to white supremicists. We don't (and we probably can't) have proof that that the numbering was intentional, thus it's a theory. We know that intentionally numbering an executive order to clandestinely signal white supremacy would require multiple people working in secret together, thus, it would be a conspiracy.
That makes it a conspiracy theory. That doesn't mean it's not true.
Conspiracies are very real and theories about them are often proven to be true. It's still a conspiracy theory though.
You have a theory that a group of people are conspiring against the Jews. Just because you're right doesn't make it not a theory, it's still conjecture.
That's why they say focus on the not one but two Nazi salutes at the inauguration. That is undeniable. Anyone that looks at those photos and denies it, well, there's that old saying about the party's final command.
I haven’t investigated and maybe it’s true, but a problem with many arguments of this sort is that they underestimate how many numerical combinations could be regarded as suspicious if that’s what you’re looking for.
I prefer sharing evidence that’s not so ambiguous.
If there are 14,188 Executive Orders, I'll note, again, the statistical probability of an EO, about "Anti-semitism", being numbered "14188", and when "14/88" exists as a distinctly anti-Jewish dog whistle, a particular permutation of three different states, is highly improbable.
But if it were 14788 or 11488 then wouldn’t that also be suspicious? I bet someone could come up with lots of combinations like that. It changes the odds of a suspicious coincidence, because there are more possible hits.
There are many more non-suspicious combinations than suspicious ones, and you genuinely do not have to give these people the benefit of the doubt. This administration is full of people, from high level appointees down to staffers, who are steeped in far right and neo-nazi influences on and offline.
If Elon Musk and DOGE, given everything you know about him, issued some directive number “69420” and it had to do with, idk, “making drug enforcement more efficient”, would you default to assuming that number was a coincidence?
It’s not about giving people the benefit of the doubt. I don’t like to share things without evidence and at first glance, this isn’t the sort of evidence I find useful.
To be clear, I do think the Trump administration is doing terrible things. But there is plenty of other evidence of that, and I would rather use evidence from more credible sources that don’t make me sound like a conspiracy theorist.
I'd also be suspicious of 4/20, which is Hitler's birthday, and we've already seen Musk do a Nazi salute at the inauguration...
It has more ambiguity than 1488, which is one of the most famous neonazi symbols, but that meaning certainly exists.
I mean, 420 is much more popular in stoner culture as when you should get high, and is everywhere because of it. If you’re going to be suspicious of every 420 your false positive rate will be huge.
If you’re going to be suspicious of specific people doing it, well yeah that’s probably because they’ve already done something outright confirming it, which brings up the question of why bother with the cloak and dagger.
You added two more numbers for a total count of three. I'll ask again: what is the probability of this as coincidence? I'll stand by: absurdly low.
Whatever the probability was, finding two more examples means that it dropped by two-thirds. And we could keep going.
I’m not going to do any more homework on this. I just wanted to explain the general principle behind why numerology isn’t all that credible to people who haven’t bought into it.
Numerology isn't the same as pointing out known hate symbols. It's fine if you don't believe that there's a connection here, it's however entirely unrelated to the belief in occult or divine connections between numbers and events.
14 and 88 are known documented hate symbols. We don't dismiss the use of a swastika as a matter of "symbology" for a reason.
I just don't like the use of a very loaded dismissive term here and that's why I think it's important to point out and not just pedantry.
I was using “numerology” loosely. I meant finding hidden meaning in numbers. Looking at the dictionary definition, you are right that it’s probably the wrong term.
But this is nothing like finding a swastika, because the numbers 14 and 88 also have common, ordinary uses, like to number documents. Yes, it sometimes allows trolling with plausible deniability. Nonetheless, I don’t want to touch it and I discourage others from doing so.
I think you’re quite drastically underestimating how much the plausible deniability is part of the playbook.
The whole concept of a dog whistle is based on it, and that’s a known and frequently used racist tactic. It’s also a deliberate foundation for gaslighting (actual, dictionary definition gaslighting - not the misuse of the term that seems fairly prevalent), because yeah, we sound crazy for having confidence that this was intentional. I am literally questioning whether I’m chasing shadows here, worrying that I’m seeing things that aren’t there thanks to the constant stream of more provable abhorrent shit seeping into my brain. The more I assert confidence, the more I sound crazy to you and to myself.
But the fact of the matter is that 1488 is a nazi symbol just the same as a swastika is - it’s not even a particularly obscure one anymore, the entire page of search results for the term are links explaining its meaning. This is a party that has already publicly embraced nazi symbolism. And it’s a group of people who actively delight in smirking and feigning ignorance as the rest of us are “triggered” by their latest round of cruelty.
I couldn’t tell you whether it was meant as some deep nod to neo-nazi ideology or whether it’s 4chan style shock value trolling, and if I had to guess I’d say it’s the latter, but I would be fucking amazed if this specific group of people put this specific order in this specific position on the stack completely coincidentally.
Maybe, but if as you say, we don't know what it really means, why dwell on it? It's at best a hint of ... something bad. But we already knew there were trolls. The vibes were already bad.
Who benefits from sharing such hints? They might lead some investigator to something more important, but in themselves, I don't think they're useful to those of us following along at home.
Yeah, you’re probably right about that, there isn’t much for us to gain by focusing on this in particular amongst everything else they’re doing. I don’t really know why I am dwelling on it, to be honest, I’m already exhausted from hearing updates on all the more direct acts of destruction they’re pushing through each day.
Sometimes talking about the stupid shit keeps you from focusing on the awful shit. At least that's how I feel.
I try to remember that people have survived a lot worse than what we're going through. Not everyone, but people as a whole. We can too!.
Yes. And it can also get worse. The concentration camps in El Salvador are a move in that direction. Trump today talked about soon renditioning "homegrown" Americans, US citizens, as he implied today talking to the Salvadoran president in front of press when he may have thought he was off mic.
Yeah he's been open about wanting that lately.
I don't know what to do.
Why do it? Because these kinds of people are part of their base. And they can't speak to their base directly in public. Trump can tell the Proud Boys to ambiguously "stand back and standby". He can't talk directly to avowed Neo-Nazis the same way.
Not what I was asking - I meant, why should we give it attention? But that seems like a plausible explanation.
Swastikas also have alternative usage in certain faiths which is why I used it.
Sure, I know. But that’s a rare use rather than a common one. In modern times, it’s reasonable to expect people to avoid swastikas.
Although some buildings do skip the 13th floor, it’s mostly unreasonable to expect people to avoid certain numbers, so coincidences involving numbers are going to happen a lot more often.
Not before the Nazis co-opted it.
It's about 1/41. That's far from, at the very least, a mathematician or statisticians definition of absurdly low. I don't know what yours is, but hanging the entire argument on something you haven't clearly defined, when it could be, doesn't really help.
I wrote a bit above about the stats (and I am a mathematician, at least by training). I started off looking at the odds that this one specific executive order could be on this one specific number, and they're 1/124, which is a bit under 1%. That's not particularly outlandish odds just by itself.
However, I think a better question is actually "what are the odds that whatever executive order happened to be 14188 is nazi coded". I think that's actually the more interesting question, since 14188 was guaranteed to come up. To do that, I just looked at all of the executive orders, and did a quick count of which ones were at least nazi adjacent. I came to a bit over 40, which made the odds about one in three.
Perhaps you are also discounting that 47, when it comes to courting extremists, has consistently made "winks" to White Nationalists and Nazis in his speeches. What's new is that this is in writing. It's a White House EO. That there can be a fraction of room for doubt? This is the court that 47 has been playing in for over a decade.
I'm not particularly convinced. For one, I feel like this is trying to have its cake and eat it too w.r.g to Jews. So Nazi's are in favor of zionism now? Special relationship with Israel or not, that seems like a stretch.
Secondly, what exactly is the point? What is the intention of doing all this Davinci Code-esque numerology?
You know that Musk did a nazi salute in public, right?
Ok. Let me again cite the Axios article (see above):
Trump centering his crackdowns on civil liberties on "anti-semitism" scapegoats Jews. This has all happened before. See also: Hitler's Germany.
Nazis don't support Zionism. They support making Jews into targets. Leveraging one begets the other.
Incidents of (real) anti-semitism, in the USA, have been increasing in frequency since 2015. What else happened in 2015? A certain election with a certain demagogue.
Like I said, having your cake and eating it. The first bullet point you write is
So the EO is "anti-zionism", because conservatives are pro-israel. But also it's actually a hidden false flag to implicate jews?
And again, what is the point supposed to be? Someone on his team was just bored? I think if Trump's administration wanted to signal to white supremacists or neo-nazis in America, they'd just do it at this point, not concoct some bizarre numerological puzzle with a vague or confusing message.
I also don't think you need solve DaVinci's Code to figure out if there are "nazis" in the white house. Again, Musk did a nazi salute. On air.
This doesn't pass occam's razor. And even if it were true it doesn't give any new information.
Do you believe that Trump could literally just randomly shoot someone in the street without consequence? How about that he could come out publicly as a Neo-Nazi and that the GOP and everyone who voted for him would just shrug their shoulders and go on with life as usual?
There are some lines that I don't see even him being able to cross without extreme consequences.
No. Again, I'll repeat and paraphrase myself from above but with more bluntness for clarity: his whole modus operandi throughout his political career has been to imply without ever explicitly holding the position. Like a mob boss.
I think he could say "Stand back and stand by" directly to proud boys without consequence. Because he did.
But moreover, I still haven't heard what exactly the point of this is supposed to be? Is he talking to neo nazis? What message is he supposed to be saying? Why is making a number puzzle the best avenue rather than, idk, signal? They seem to like that app.
I agree that it's possible this is a coincidence, but 1488 isn't "a number puzzle" -- it is a very well-known white supremicist symbol. They are included in the "General identification features of right-wing extremists" chapter of the German government's book Ring wing extremism: Signs, symbols and banned organizations. This is a right-wing extremist symbol that anyone with more than a passing knowledge of right-wing extremist symbols would be familiar with. While it's still possible it's a coincidence, in that case it's a hell of a coincidence, and it comes across as extremely blasé to call a very well-documented white supremicist symbol "a number puzzle."
It's not a number puzzle, it's a very recognizable wink and a nod to other Nazis that is just plausibly deniable enough that they can claim it's innocent. It allows them to publicly show support for a white supremacist belief system without stating it outright, and allows them to sneakily "get one over" on everyone else.
This sort of thing has been going on for years and is nothing new, it's just never gone this far into the White House before. I doubt Trump himself had anything to do with it directly, but his administration is full of white supremacists/nazis who absolutely recognize this for what it is, and love when people defend it as "maybe not a Nazi thing somehow".
Yes. That was the legal framework handed to him by the Supreme Court. So long as he says "As an official duty, I'm executing this person." He'll be good.
Actually, yeah. I really do. Trump seems to think so too, he bragged about it during his last campaign.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters
The entire conservative apperatus has been captured by Trump in a way that it hasn't been ever before in the last century. Entire industries exist solely to justify his actions, to the point that he can do literally whatever he wants without losing his base now. He's completely destroyed the economy in three months despite running primarily on the economy, and he hasn't lost any support among his base. He has carte blanche for the next four years.
Yeah we know, that's what we're upset about.
What would be the utility of producing that correlation? Also, would highlighting that correlation make the government look any more Nazi than it already is?
This is where everything kind of falls down for me with this. Making this order 14188 is such a nothingburger compared to all the obnoxiously moustache twirlingly evil things that the administration is doing that at most this is the work of some back room troll who managed to sneak this into an executive order. The fact that the current administration has:
and so much more are all way worse than any kerfluffle with numbering. They don't need to hide messaging for people to figure out numerically that they're nazis. They're just doing the awful nazi shit out loud.
Like many others in this thread, I don't think this is a smoking gun, nor do I think it compares to the many Nazi-like policies that the Trump Admin has enacted. I mean shit, they just arrested another lawful resident for the crime of protesting genocide. Having said that, the utility of producing that specific correlation is that it's a dog whistle to the anti-Semitic white nationalists who support the president. It's like saying, "Don't worry, you're still very fine people. This won't be used against you." Normal folks won't think much of it, but the iconography-obsessed Neo-Nazis will.
Fwiw, this executive order was signed back on January 29 as Trump was signing them left and right. He had already signed 40 up until that point, so it's not totally crazy to assume they specifically chose that one to be 14188.
They do have an iconography obsession. I keep finding myself circling this and I don’t understand why. What is it about that particular ideology that compels people to sneak hidden messages and secret handshakes into everyday things?
Why do Elon, et al., go out of their way to do the salute when it doesn’t even contextually make sense? A while back there was all that hullabaloo about the OK hand gesture, and these types thought it was super cool to try to sneak it into innocuous photos. The very fact that the “14 words” is a meme and “HH” is a meme and that “88” is a meta-meme, and “14/88” is a meta-meta-meme… just… why??
It’s juvenile edgelord shit. It’s like carving swastikas into bathroom stalls. I get it, neo-nazis are alive and well, but WTF does any of this wink-wink-nudge-nudge idiocy have to do with any of it? Why is it so important to them? Who cares?
I like Natalie Wynn's breakdown in this comment on her longer video about the topic. Innuendo Studios' series on the Alt-Right is also illuminating. Wasting people's time ("is this thing a dog whistle or isn't it?" ad infinitum) controls the conversation.
Long story short, it builds community and it confuses the enemy.
It's one thing when Elon Musk throws HHs. It's another when the WH itself is signaling Nazis.
I don't think those are separate things. Musk Nazi saluting is the white house signaling Nazis. He is as close as you can get to the white house. The only reason I think we don't see him in the white house more is because he is annoying the authoritarians currently occupying it.
See my comment to the Exemplary.
Not responding other than to say that skimming this comment reads enough like gaslighting that I will not engage.
Yo homie my comment wasn't an attack on you. It was more just an observation or an add on so no offense intended.
Hate to tell all of you, but Presidential Executive Orders are sequentially numbered.
Given the amount of advance planning it would take to ensure that the "combat anti-Semitism" order fell on number 14188, I'm going to attribute this to stupidity rather than malice aforethought.
Given the number of executive orders signed, and given the number that Biden left us off on (EO14146), some order was guaranteed to land on 14188. The likelihood that any particular order landing on that number would be authoritarian is also quite high, since the ratio of authoritarian to non-authoritarian orders is quite high.
Yeah, but... he gets to decide what order he puts them out in. Trump's certainly got enough pseudo-royal decrees coming out that it would be very easy to take the "antisemitism" one and wait until the number 14188 came up for it. Which is why I think it's very possible that one of his wannabe Nazi-staff actually did notice this opportunity and thought it would be hilarious to shuffle the stack to make this happen.
I do not however think it's any kind of winking, high-level show of support for the Nazi contingent of Trump's base, like Musk's salute definitely was, and I don't think it deserves much notice alongside the much more concrete, American fascism being done by the government right now.
It'd be a lot less sus if it was just like a routine executive order, and not the latest in a gigantic stream of them.
Not exactly the latest in a string of them, it was signed on January 29 after 40 others. The idea that this was intentional is certainly plausible, if not probable. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to prove. The whole thing feels like the premise of an Innuendo Studios video.
Regardless of the intent behind the number, our primary focus should be on how this executive order is being used to silence free speech and deport lawful permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi.
No disagreement, though TBH everyone who doesn't know and agree either explicitly avoids politics on Tildes or has been removed from the site.
IRL I've really only seen two camps: Utterly mortified people, and utter idiots who think this is all a good thing.
I said on a previous thread, this could be a hell of a coincidence, but I also strongly suspect that Miller or Musk or Bannon or any number of the people who fully align themselves with white supremacy, trolling the libs and just being awful individuals, would have seen the opportunity and made sure this aligned on purpose for the lulz/liberal tears/whatever the fuck makes them happy today besides locking up innocent people in El Salvador. There was a clear fascist salute at the inauguration. I think we can stop pretending they don't know.
I don't think it's a secret message, I think it's overt and intentional as trolling at a minimum. It would have been incredibly easy to not have the topics of antisemitism (and to be clear as noted by Timothy Snyder, this is authoritarianism masked as protecting Jews while inevitably harming Jews) on this specific number if anyone cared. And they don't. This doesn't require a conspiratorial mindset. It's just acknowledgement that the Republican administration is made up of some really shitty people.
Yup, absolutely agreed. The analogy that’s floated into my mind would be to imagine if they were preparing an executive order telling the DEA to bulldoze a bunch of cannabis farms and someone somewhere along the chain noticed that the last order signed ended in 415. They would absolutely shuffle the order of the next five so it ended in 420, and I doubt anyone would be questioning the fact it was deliberate. “Why use the weed number on an anti-weed bill? Lol weed number funny fuck those woke criminals in California and fuck your feelings lib.”
It could in theory be deeper: a nod to basically tell the actual full blown neo-nazis not to worry because the intent of the “antisemitism” bill is absolutely nothing to do with protecting Jewish people. But yeah, I think the more likely series of events is that some group of white supremacist assholes in the administration are just chuckling to themselves that they got the nazi number pinned to a bill about Israel.
To clarify, are you tracking that there has also been an executive order 14187 and 14186 and so on? It's not like they skipped ahead or something. I think that rather undermines your argument.
Just as an example, executive order 14187 is titled "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation." Let's imagine that the number 1487, not 1488, was the secret Hitler number. If it were, I think you could just as easily argue that EO 14187 was secretly a reference to the whole "we must secure a future for white children" thing, which is a famous white supremacist quote.
My point is that I don't buy in the slightest that the white house is trying to do secret Nazi signals. The truth is arguably worse: that they're putting out so many terrible executive orders that one of them just happens to align with a Nazi number.
I want to share something of interest.
3 days ago if you had said that after some period of time, this thread would have 14 main comment threads, and 88 comments total, I would say "that is wildly unlikely. It would never happen". And yet here we are. As I type this, there are 14 comment threads, and 88 comments. I took a screenshot.
Did this happen by accident? Yes.
Did we all band together to do something that is objectively closer to 14/88 than executive order 14188? No.
We are wired to find patterns, and the strong law of small numbers tells us that there aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them. This is generally presented as a humourous law, but it is true. Whether it's coffee on sale at $14.88 at CostCo (.88 at the end indicates managers sale) or whether it's my unfortunate friend whose favourite number is 14 and who was born in '88 and ended up banned everywhere on reddit and super confused, these numbers can and will show up in lots of places.
I find it funny that there are both Jews as well as Nazis hidden in the White House now. They should just have a showdown to decide who gets to rule the American elite once and for all.
This feels like actual antisemitism, saying that Jews are hidden and controlling things is right out of that playbook.
Not to speak for @crissqueira but I parsed it as "there are conspiracy theories claiming that there are Jewish people controlling things in the government" and also "there are conspiracy theories claiming that there are Nazis controlling things in the government" and that these conspiracy theories are going to be duking it out.
That is very much not how the post reads and while I hope that you're correct, it's not clear to me, so I'd rather say something than ignore it.
The words "conspiracy theories" don't make an appearance.
To be clear, it immediately read like that to me. I don't disagree with you that it's not clear, but I think that the way I read it is just as reasonable as the way you read it.
I get that but I truly don't understand how without some indication that the writer doesn't think the thing they explicitly said is true. "Hidden" being italicized didn't help with that and I think the "Nazis" regardless of technical party membership are very apparently present in the White House, so I don't see it as obviously any other way.
But yes when I say "it doesn't read that way" I do mean "to me" but truly I've tried reapproaching it and came away with the same interpretation every time. I don't want that to be true which is why I didn't hit the malice button and instead replied.
Ironically calling on harmful tropes really does require a lot of care, especially in text.
I agree that there is a lack of care taken in this context. I still think it's actually the more likely interpretation, at least partially because this post reads like a circlejerk / conspiracyjerk style post (no offence intended to OP).
I guess but I also genuinely think, as discussed in a previous thread on the topic, that they had to know, and considering this is an administration that named a "department" after a meme, I actually don't think it's unreasonable that they were intentionally thrilled to make this their "Antisemitism" EO.
We're not used to the officials being terminally online, and even if the memes are dated, they're still actively used.
Anyway, we can all guess at what was meant here except the only person that can tell us, hence me asking them.
Guys! It was a joke! lol
lol Please don’t take me seriously. I’m just making a joke about the conspiracies that “the Jews are infiltrated everywhere”. Of course it’s dumb. Of course I don’t believe it. And I also don’t care for this numerology business either.
As I noted above, this isn't numerology. I don't see the Nazi rhetoric as a joke, and while a few decades ago someone saying they named a department after a Shiba Inu meme turned crypto currency would sound insane, that's what actually happened. So I don't think it's nearly as ridiculous as you seem to.
I appreciate that it was intended as a joke, but genuinely it was not obvious to me. Thanks for the clarification
I wish it were amusing to me. That there are Nazis at all in this world fills me with disgust.
So, I'm a "conspiracy theorist," although I hate that term, I prefer paranews analyst. I think I've even laid down a few of my favorites on tildes. I assume qanon began as a larp Umberto Eco Foucault's Pendulum style. But, I think this is quite a reach. That Jewish folk risk becoming scapegoats as part of coming backlash is not something I had considered and is very troubling, so I'm grateful you pointed that out. That there are legitimately chaotic and evil elements within the current administration is beyond question, that's no no conspiracy or parapolitical proposition. That they aim to deport, kill, or enslave every undesirable (to them person) is also very plain. There's no need for this hidden stuff. I also don't think Trump desires (or is capable) of this degree of subtlety. They no longer feel any need to hide or code their stuff anymore, which, if we survive it with minimal damage, will serve us well because we will be able to know who is who.
The linked Axios article explains it.
TL;DR: 14188 makes "Anti-Semitism", Jews, the scapegoat for several of 47's crackdowns on civil liberties. Jews have been scapegoats throughout history, including by the Third Reich.
I learned recently that in the early first century CE, the myth was propagated that the Hebrews kept a young Roman in hidden in the Temple that they sacrificed yearly. The scapegoating goes a long way back.
It's interesting because as far as my knowledge, it was the ancient Hebrew religion that created the whole actual 'scapegoat' thing, where a goat would be run through town, and everyone would purge themselves by cursing it, after which it would be sacrificed (and eaten).
Yeah, for some reason I thought you said that separate from the link. Deleted my comment very quickly once I realized, but I guess you were even faster.
Heheh. It's ok. Someone isn't going to read the article so it's just as well that you asked.
EDIT: Several someones clearly didn't read the article.
I really don’t understand the meta-conflict occurring in this topic. Please help me understand. I’m writing this with honest, good-faith curiosity so please take it as such.
If I may summarize the contention as I see it (and please correct me if I’m wrong)… OP and others, you included, think the EO number is an incontrovertible admission of nazism in the administration. Others agree it’s likely a dog-whistle but since the nature of such a thing creates plausible deniability, it’s better to focus our energy and attention on the provable fascistic actions rather than the unprovable ones. I don’t think I’ve seen a single comment here suggesting the administration is innocent. Everybody seems to be in agreement about the basics. They just disagree about the importance to place on the EO number. Is this a fair summary?
So please help me understand what grievous thing was said that led OP to feel gaslit, emotionally abused, and needing to take a break from Tildes entirely. I didn’t see it. Literally everything I’ve seen in this thread was congenial and seemed to reinforce the notion that all participants are on the same side here. What did I miss? What “fucking mental” comments are you referring to? Why are you describing other commenters as “these people” like you and they are adversaries?
Maybe I just overlooked some true hostilities. Maybe the mods are doing a great job (well, that’s never been in question on Tildes) and nuked the bad stuff before I could see it. Maybe I’m just a Pollyanna that doesn’t recognize fighting words when they’re staring me in the face. But truthfully, from my perspective, this looks like a handful of people doing the opposite: finding fighting words where none actually exist, looking for contention, over-eager to draw up battle lines against allies. That’s why I’m so confused. That’s why I took all this time to write this up; I really just need somebody to connect the dots for me and show me the root cause of the frustration.
And do it quick, before the mods lock this thread lol
I've silently followed this thread up until now and chose not to comment before, because it felt very uncomfortable to read through this thread with no productive outcome in sight. It really felt to me that I could only loose by commenting here, because being chastised simply for having an opinion one way or the other seemed likely. And I'm still not sure wether it's a good idea to leave this comment.
I haven't seen anyone here defend what the trump administration is doing on a factual level either. The discussion has very much degenerated into a meta conflict about wether you're supposed to have an absolute position on wether the specific symbolism here was intentional or not. I'm afraid I can't offer a good explanation for what you're asking, but I believe the comment thread by @kfwyre, @elight, and @aphoenix is the most nuanced perspective in this thread.
Please people... Just let us accept that it's okay for different people to have different opinions about what proof is required for them to be convinced of something being intentional or not. Neither labelling someone as a conspiracy theorist for being convinced that some expression was intentional, nor labelling someone as insane for having a more nuanced perspective due to their hurdle of objective proof not being met helps any of us. Both are unnecessarily dismissive of the other person's position. Allowing for different opinions to exist is an essential part of any healthy discussion, and creating a fractured community with hundreds of little filter bubbles where any one of us is affirmed in their preexisting position isn't productive either. No one will be convinced if we're going into a discussion with the mindset of 'you can either take my exact position, or be the evil antagonist that's not worth talking to in the first place'.
Retaliating against anyone with slightly differing opinions is one of the major issues the Trump administration is citizised for. Let's not go down that route as well. It just feels so unnecessary... :(
I think @kfwyre addressed it well in their comments at the top of the thread. Especially the second one. But let me try.
If Trump added a pink triangle to his next executive order targeting queer people - even though some people have reclaimed that symbol, even if every executive order has a shape in a color on it, and it's inevitable a pink triangle would be used - I'd be very very scared that this was the beginning of citizens, queer citizens, being rounded up, arrested/detained/etc.
If everyone spent most of the thread trying to tell me that statistically it had to happen that a pink triangle would show up, and why not be worried about other things, I'd be pissed too. If I was told I was engaging in fortune telling bullshit (instead of numerology) when I'm of pointing out a very well known symbol (to those who use it harmfully and those who study the topic and those who have been targeted by these people and this symbol historically), I'd think I was being gaslit too. I do worry about other things but this specific thing targets me.
Many Jewish people in the US have stories of their families coming to this country to escape persecution. Many have current stories of persecution, harassment, and hate. Seven years ago, a synagogue was the site of a shooting by a right wing extremist for just existing.
I was 14 when a young man was tortured and left to die for being gay. I was 34 when a queer nightclub was the site of a horrific shooting. The queer faculty/staff group on my campus didn't keep a list of members until 2020 for safety/persecution reasons, because the leaders had experienced that persecution in their lives personally.
When Black folks explain how something they experienced was racist, many white folks, myself formerly included, want to explain how that situation might not have been or probably wasn't racist because of any number of other possibilities, instead of listening to the person experiencing the harm who's trying to share their hurt with you and just focusing on caring about the person.
And if you don't believe your fellow Tildes users, here's the opinion of a a history professor at UNC, a veteran, who focuses on Holocaust and Genocide studies and has a podcast on Holocaust history:
(And I don't want to get into a debate about how there's a difference between a pink triangle and the white supremacist/Neo Nazi use of the various numbers and symbols. That's not the point, and it's not helpful.)
Even without going through other comments to find quotes, I recall people calling this "numerology" and saying other things that more or less imply that OP was inventing a crazy association that could not possibly be there. I don't feel like re-reading all the comments to find choice quotes, but iirc I replied to the ones I found most egregious so searching for my replies might turn up some that I at least found particularly condescending about the whole thing.
🤔 Well, okay then. Thanks anyway.
I don't think anyone is "jumping through hoops" or are "insane" for pointing out that one of Trump's executive orders was already guaranteed to be EO 14188. Biden left us on EO 14147, and Trump signed 124 executive orders. They increment sequentially. Many if not most of the 124 are shitty and authoritarian, so no surprise that EO 14188 is too.
How am I "insane"? How is this "like saying Musk's Nazi salute was an 'awkward gesture'"? It's worthwhile to be charitable, as I think everyone in this thread is operating in good faith.
Can we not do the unhinged numerology stuff, especially considering that there is sufficient evidence for whatever bad behavior you dislike.
Just for posterity, this isn't an example of numerology, which usually suggests occult or divine messaging to numbers or symbols that relate to numbers. This is just an example of a potential encoded message.
Calling the identification of a known white supremacist symbol "unhinged numerology" is ridiculous. Even if you believe this is a coincidence or otherwise not worth focusing on, the number is a very well-known, documented white supremicist symbol.