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In addition to more coverage of the coronavirus and the targeting of American troops by the Taliban, Heather Cox Richardson had an interesting comment about the use of Nazi imagery by the Trump campaign. Here is what she said:
" The Trump campaign today also reinforced its use of Nazi imagery. It offered for sale an “America First” t-shirt with a design reminiscent of the Nazi Iron Eagle widely understood to be a symbol of hate. Like the use of the triangle symbol that harked back to the Nazi tag for political prisoners, this image is close enough that it cannot be missed, but different enough that Trump supporters promptly insisted that people calling out its use are overreacting. On Twitter, conservative Tom Nichols, a professor of international affairs at the U.S. Naval War College said, “I've been pretty hard on people who make the Nazi comparisons around here, but Christ, even *I* saw this one right away. This is not some standard American eagle, this is a Trump graphics guy thinking he's being clever and trolling the world by saying "mayyyybe it's close."
As Holocaust scholar Waitman Beorn notes, the Trump campaign’s appropriation of Nazi images speaks to Trump’s white supremacist base. But as media critic Parker Molloy noted about the previous controversy, issuing these images is also a cheap and easy way to command media attention without having to pay for it.
By coincidence, I got an email from the Trump campaign store this morning, offering a 25% discount on merchandise in order to celebrate the 4th of July. Here is the t-shirt in question, which is priced at $30.
Here'a a picture of the Nazi Iron Eagle:
