Yup. Fascism in 2019 doesn’t speak German and wear a uniform. These kids are proto-fascists at the minimum. And again, their inherent privileges put them above and beyond any attempts to justify their hate and bigotry.
In related news…
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/tech/twitter-suspends-account-native-american-maga-teens/index.html
The account claimed to belong to a California schoolteacher. Its profile photo was not of a schoolteacher, but of a blogger based in Brazil, CNN Business found. Twitter suspended the account soon after CNN Business asked about it.
The account, with the username @2020fight, was set up in December 2016 and appeared to be the tweets of a woman named Talia living in California. “Teacher & Advocate. Fighting for 2020,” its Twitter bio read. Since the beginning of this year, the account had tweeted on average 130 times a day and had more than 40,000 followers.
Fake account by blogger from Brazil posing as a teacher from California.
paid by Russia? That would be the first thing I would assume.
That picture tells you everything you need to know about that school.
She’s right.
Is that craziness during games and pep rallies, etc, normal for this sort of school these days? Because holy shit, that’s insane. I know some people will excuse the black paint as part of the “black out” day but fuck that. In this day and age in Kentucky, you know what you’re doing when you paint yourself black. Their parents are racist and that directly translates into kids that have heard things like “Martin Luther Coon, Jr” their whole lives.
Having just had a son graduate from high school and a daughter still attending…it’s absolutely the norm at high school sporting events, especially here in Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky, where high school sports are a Really Big Deal (think Friday Night Lights/Texas/Florida).
Black Out nights and White Out nights are fairly common among every high school, along with specific school color nights. (many colleges do this as well) Some kids will go the extra mile and paint themselves white, blue, red, and yes, even black, for that extra level of fan crazy. I doubt most of them even think about it beyond “it’s -insert color- night!”, though it’s undoubtedly a good idea for parents to talk with their kids about maybe just sticking to colored clothing on “black out” night for obvious reasons. The one kid in the CovCath videos who also did the white around his eyes and mouth though…that is straight up racist bullshit and that kid should have never been allowed past the front gate.
The cheers are also a big part of the student section at the high school games as well. Granted, the private schools seem to have advanced it to an art form, especially for rivalry games where they play each other. Recently several local schools have found themselves in hot water over the actions of their student section or a smaller segment thereof at such rivalry sporting events. Social media absolutely eggs this on, pushing students to do ever increasing crazy antics.
I think a lot of the stuff now being dug up about Covington Catholic is being used out of context to paint a much worse picture than reality. On the other hand, as I said at the beginning of the thread, I also think many of the boys of Covington Catholic and their parents are a prime example of middle-class white privilege and the whole “got mine, fuck you” attitude that seems to be so prevalent among middle-class white Trump voters. Maybe a little national attention will result in some personal introspection for some of these folks, but I doubt it.
This part is my biggest problem with these rallies. There’s no way anyone’s truly naive about blackface these days. Not in a group that big. Someone, a fellow kid, a teacher, a parent, sees that paint and knows it’s some pretty racist shit. And yet they’re ok with it for some reason. My guess is that reason is because they’re pretty damn racist and don’t care. They’re getting away with it, so to speak, with the excuse about the black out rally to fall back on. Kind of like the assholes that make white power symbols with their hands, or wear Nazi pins or whatever gets them off.
Thanks for the background on the cheers, etc, though - damn! I went to Catholic HS in Texas but we had nothing like this. We had pep rallies for football but it was just the usual mediocre rally type stuff.
“People you don’t like,” no. But I happen to think the current peculiar Godwinized attitude toward Nazi analogies (both instantly-kneejerk and utterly beyond the pale) neuters an extremely urgent historical lesson. In other words, in some cases it is actually appropriate to compare people (or, more precisely, groups/movements of people) to Nazis.
As for the “murdered millions of people” point, it’s helpful to imagine 1931, say, rather than 1945. Then the ineffable difference between MAGA hats and swastika armbands begins to dissolve, somewhat.
Not saying I agree with Scott’s point, exactly, but I had the exact same thought so see where he’s coming from.
I actually think there’s another aspect to this point, that I hadn’t thought of until I read your post. That being the way kids view social media in somewhat the same way PR agencies say there’s “no such thing as negative publicity.”
I think kids don’t get the difference between fame and shame. Or they confuse fame with infamy, like the Three Amigos do.
I’m not kidding. Kids see getting Internet attention as getting famous, even if it’s for questionable reasons. But then you have a kid like the center-of-attention kid in the picture who realizes, “Holy fuck. This isn’t what I wanted at all! Mommy what do I do?”
Yeah. No shit.
I wrote a whole long post about how it’s on these parents for not schooling their kids, and how I would tell my kid to be careful where he wears certain soccer jerseys, or my Obama sweatshirt, or how a friend I have got yelled at that she should “Leave the country!” at the CostCo gas station because she had a Hillary Clinton sticker on her car. We’re in a weird place now, and the symbols matter. The MAGA hats have resonance that is not accidental. And while these are “kids”…their parents should have told them what to expect.
But I suspect that part of their agenda is to rub it in the face of Liberals like me. Whatever. I wear my Obama sweatshirt I got after working on his campaign because I’m proud of helping get him elected and because I believe his presidency deserves to be remembered in a positive way. I think MAGA hats are the polar opposite of that. I may be wrong. I’ll allow that. But the parents should have said, “Look, dopey Liberals may interpret this as you being a bunch of White Supremacists. Just be aware of that.”
They have the right to wear what they want. But there are consequences even when I wear my Duke sweatshirt certain places. I know this. And I communicate this to my kid.
That every kid in these pictures is wearing MAGA swag is telling. I don’t like the dunking on kids thing either, Telefrog. Their parents should have been on that. Because that’s where we are now. And in no small part, due to them.
-xtien
Don’t make me join the “where’s the like button?” crowd.
All you have to do is look at all the dumb shit things kids do and post on their social media. I would think being a high school kid has been made nothing but more difficult by the social media available today. You can be famous for a day, or someone can make you infamous for a day.
To be fair they’ve only murdered a handful brown children at their pop-up concentration camps.
So if you were wondering if the Covington mob were perpetrating a deliberate act of white supremacisim, this should be your tell.
Fine people on a side I guess.
Those MAGA kids will be leading your kids into camps and you’ll wonder why you didnt do everything you possibly could to stop them and the culture they are raised in.
Whats the lesson learnt from this? That they will be protected? That they will be excused? That they will be apologised for? Do it again, because this is normal now.
Well put. This is why the movie Eighth Grade wound up on my top ten list of movies this year, and, more importantly, why I describe it as a horror movie for parents.
-xtien
Ha! I made the same joke when I introduced Eighth Grade for a class screening. It was October so I told them we were getting a head start on Halloween horror… “Get ready cuz you’re going back… to EIGHTH GRADE!”
What have you done to stop them? What is it that you think should be done with them?
More of a rhetorical question, but I wonder if the next time the Dems control the Pres, House and Senate, how many of you would be cool in just naming the GOP and anyone who voted for Trump as members of hate groups and thus outlawing them. It would be a great way to ensure Dem control of the government, just outlaw your opposition.
The kids
- expulsion
- volunteer work/education with activists
and for all employees of the school
- dismissal
and for the kids parents
- do you do business with them? Why are you still doing business with them
If the kids were brown and walking down the path of Islamic extremism they would be on watchlists, special schools and enforced re-education programmes
but as they are white, wealthy, healthy, middle class kids people (even here) are really more concerned about their chances of Havard and jobs in S&P500 companies and ensuring they remain in the elite 10%