Well, the reviews are pretty much in on President Joe “Malarkey’s” crazy stunning speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 1, and they are quite breathless with descriptors like: “Authoritarian, fascist, creepy, Satanic, dystopian, occult, Orwellian, and ‘What the Fuck?’” One wonders: was the band playing “Hail to the Chief” or “Hail Satan,” instead?
Indeed, it seems as if Team Biden had summoned up the ghost of Leni Reifenstahl to design the lurid look of the performance, with a technocratic shade of hell-fire Red being the dominant tone back-lighting Biden, a curious color choice for Team Blue. One wonders how they missed this obvious visual association to Nazi rallies from the 1930s, or was this historical reference possibly intentional? While condemning “MAGA Republicans” only a few days before as “semi-fascists,” Biden’s stage props projected a dystopian vision of what a Real Fascist leader might look like in 2022.
This was also a War Speech, as symbolized by the two Marines standing at attention behind Biden (sacred triangle?), giving the whole production a decidedly militaristic look. But, who are “we” going to war against? Clearly, and repeatedly, Dark Lord Biden pointed at “MAGA Republicans” and their “extreme ideology” as threatening “our democracy,” suggesting that tough times may be ahead for those so identified. Interestingly enough, Biden didn’t address external enemies, nor refer to Russia’s president Putin even once, although the United States continues to lavishly pump up its proxy Ukrainian forces with Weapons and Cash — oh, and maybe a mercenary or two…
Perhaps we can paraphrase the ideological substance of Biden’s rather furious speech thus: “Folks, to save our Democracy, we’re transitioning, in a gender-fluid way, from Neo-liberalism to Neo-fascism. Our pivot to neo-Fascism will stop the extremist ideology and political violence of the insurrectionist MAGA Republicans. Democracy…you know…The Thing!”
The most immediate and visceral reactions to Biden’s fascist-looking speech came primarily from voices on the Right, who were quick to note the Hitlerian iconography of the performance. The irony, of course, is that Team Blue were quite blue-in-the-face for 4 years trying to paint Donald Trump as some kind of “new Hitler” figure; in fact, through the gratuitous grandstanding vehicle of the Jan 6 commission hearings, many on Dick-Liz Cheney’s side of the aisle still are — never mind that most of America has moved on. But the more interesting and twisted take on Biden’s at the very least authoritarian-styled speech came from — Team Blue.
Apparently, some folks in BidenLand decided to re-purpose a “Dark Brandon” meme that popped-up on Social Media earlier this year. “Dark Brandon” plays on an anti-Biden political chant –“Fuck Joe Biden!” — that emerged in sporting stadiums in September of 2021, then went “viral” after an NBC sports reporter, interviewing the winning NASCAR race car driver Brandon Brown at the Talledega Superspeedway in Alabama, translated the crowd’s chant as “Let’s Go Brandon!” The discursively subversive chant “Let’s Go Brandon!”, with its comically coded message, had a bit of a fast and furiously funny run for a while, the way certain catch-phrases will.
One hesitates to say “American political discourse at its finest!”, but this episode does demonstrate a curious example of populist political sentiment crudely expressed crossing over into double-entendre with a bit of wit. Nevertheless, the Bidenites, not content to let this “chant” go the way of all fads, decided to re-appropriate it into a pro-Biden message, and thus was born the Marvel Comics version of the Dark Avenger Biden, with crazy laser eyes burning holes into whatever — presumably the “Let’s Go Brandon!” chanting crowd most of all…
One can surmise, then, that this “Dark Brandon” re-branding of Biden had a lot to do with the menacing, fascist aesthetic framing of Biden’s Philly speech. Curiously, the kids at The Hill Rising and Breaking Points laughed off the notion that the eerie optics of Biden’s speech were anything but “right wing” talking points, as in: “Nothing to see here!” As self-described “alternative media” sources, it seems like both shows’ analyses are becoming more and more attached to the “Blob” they claim to critique. Basically, there is this weird fear going around of being seen as “right wing,” which Biden’s speech declared “extremist” in no uncertain terms.
This phenomenon was absolutely on display with the recent “Progressive Caucus” letter to president Biden mildly suggesting diplomacy with Russia over the Ukraine crisis, which appears to be in the next phase of escalation, possibly, but not probably, “nuclear.” In the event, it only took 24 hours for the 30 Team Blue letter signers to rescind their meek message, disingenuously blaming the release of the “diplomacy letter” on “staffers,” as if these incompetent politicians can’t even control their own communications.
The primary rationale for the Caucus saying “Whoopsie!” was that they were afraid to be seen as endorsing a Republican suggestion that maybe, just hypothetically, we might slow down, or at least question, our overwhelming support for the corrupt Ukrainian regime of Vladimir Zelensky. The “Squad,” it seems, is beyond useless at this point; perhaps the whole point of their “letter” was to scuttle any further talk of peace and diplomacy, just another political sabotage operation? They’ve pledged allegiance to “Dixiecrat” Joe and, more importantly, “Mama Bear” Pelosi — not to mention the Military Industrial Complex.
Biden began his presidency talking about democracy versus authoritarianism as the great challenge we all face going forward. And yet, in a significant public appearance, albeit quite domestically focused, he projected an unequivocally “authoritarian” image. Certainly, the “civil war”-obsessed “Dark Biden” has swapped out the “Unvaccinated” for “MAGA Republicans” as objects of derision and demonization in this, his second year in office, just as “Blame Putin!” has been used to replace a failing Covid narrative in official rhetoric. Trump himself was only mentioned once, but it is worth noting that this diabolical speech came on the jack-booted heels of the “unprecedented” FBI/DoJ raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Maybe the Democratic Party is trying to re-Brandon itself the “Banana Republican Party”? The Mar-a-Lago raid, a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars under the skimpiest of legal pretexts (it’s too ironic that a former Epstein lawyer was the Magistrate who signed the warrant), can be framed as an act of “political violence” against a once-and-potential political opponent. Not good optics for a so-called Democracy, but, hey, that’s what Authoritarians do! One doesn’t have to be a “Trumper” to see that this was straight-up strong-arm politics, an abuse of both Federal Law enforcement and the Department of Justice.
Just to wrap this commentary up, I’ll note that the excessive and often flippant use of the term “fascist” to epithet anyone you disagree with politically (unless, of course, Communist “red” is your favorite shade of accusatory shade…) is more than a bit over-used. It’s kind of a tired trope that ought to be retired unless something real is meant by its invocation. However, the dark theatrics of Biden’s Philly speech unambiguously suggest that the designation of this historically shaded term, “fascist,” to describe Biden’s performance: Well, if the jack-boot fits, so be it. Maybe the Neo-Lib-Cons “in charge” were going for that effect: Who knows?
Nevertheless, if only in dystopian style, its Riefenstahl-invoking Nazi aesthetic, Biden’s forked-tongue lashing suggests that we’re all in for some dark days ahead. Like the CIA’s Washington Post outlet says, “Democracy dies in darkness.” Biden’s speech, bathed in a Darkness of both staging and rhetoric, provides a clue where the real Darkness, perhaps, will be coming from…
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