During an interview with a Philadelphia radio station earlier this week, Donald Jr. used a unique phrase to criticize the media: “every indiscrepancy on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing… If Republicans were doing that, they’d be warming up the gas chamber right now.”
Donald Trump Jr. subsequently claimed that his bizarre “warming up the gas chamber” comment wasn’t a reference to Holocaust but was a reference to “Capital Punishment.” Now even if he hadn’t tweeted white nationalist memes and we gave him the benefit of the doubt, it would be strange to refer to the gas chamber if he was in fact making a reference to “capital punishment.”
People online have even noticed that someone doesn’t “warm up” a gas chamber. The ADL certainly took notice of the not so subtle “Holocaust joke.” However, given the baby Donald’s penchant for extremist Twitter it’s pretty clear this is no joke and we can make a well informed guess as to where he got this phraseology. Donald Trump Jr. did in fact misspeak, but only because he used the term “gas chamber” instead of the term “ovens.”
Like any cult or closed belief system, Scientology comes to mind, the so-called alt-right which Donald Trump has engaged full throttle by hiring Steve Bannon as his “campaign CEO” uses it’s own language. If you were to read or listen to extreme right Trump supporters on YouTube it’s likely you would be very confused by their gibberish. A whole series of terms like “Cuckservative”, a conservative who isn’t racist, or “normie”, a person who isn’t part of the alt-right will appear. The term “White genocide” is a not so subtle derogatory term used to describe multiculturalism and race mixing. While this may already seem looney, if you move even further right the lingo becomes explicitly Nazi.
Even the alt-right flagship Breitbart doesn’t use terms like “lampshaded” or “shoaed,” which are references to Nazi’s making lampshades out of human skin and to the Holocaust. There is a white nationalist podcast called “The Daily Shoa.” One YouTuber in particular throws out these terms as often as possible, the YouTube commentator “fascist lemming,” who frequently makes references to getting “lampshaded” or getting “shoaed” anytime something bad happens to him. While Trump Jr. denies that his Holocaust reference is a Holocaust reference, the neo-Nazi right hears it loud and clear. The extreme right calls this “Meme Magic”, when one of their coded messages makes it out into the mainstream.
Jewish celebrities and journalists also hear this loud and clear. Everyone probably remembers the so-called “echo” or three parenthesis which alt-right trolls would put around the names of Jewish journalists on Twitter, to target them for abuse. In response to the “echos” many journalists who aren’t Jewish, myself included, put parenthesis around their own names in solidarity. Since Donald Trump Jr.’s “gaffe,” Jewish celebrities and journalists have pointed out how similar this terminology is to online abuse they have suffered. Sarah Silverman tweeted, “I wonder where Donald Jr 1st heard the reference ‘warming up the gas chamber’ bc I see it often in tweets to me from Trump supporters.”
Neo-Nazi YouTubers including Fascist Lemming see Trumps “gas chamber” comments as an unambiguous nod to neo-Nazis: “The first thing I thought about when I saw that he said that is like. He’s got it mixed up you can’t warm up the gas chamber you know. Too bad he didn’t say if Republicans were doing that they’d be firing up the ovens now. See if he had done that we would know for sure absolutely 100% that he is one of us.”
It certainly takes one to know one, immediately after Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment Trump Jr. tweeted a meme featuring “Pepe the frog,” the semi-official symbol of the new Nazi right. The only people who are confused about Trumps “gas chamber” comment seem to journalists who are too afraid of being called “biased” to point out the ostensible origins of the phrase. After gleefully pointing out that the Trump campaign didn’t even apologize for the comments, Fascist Lemming points out the obvious: “We use these new terms because we are red-pilled on Jews and race… ‘I’ve got my oven on pre-heat,’ ‘yeah they’re oven worthy,’ it’s the vernacular of a Nazi, just like me and you. He just say’s ‘Warming up the gas chamber’ in passing, why would he do that? I don’t know these Trumps manthey are the gifts who keep on giving.”
When I tweeted about this yesterday, Trump’s troll army wasn’t terribly confused about what Donald Jr. meant. Here are a few knee-slappers from the Nazi crowd directed at yours truly. Though it’s all probably a coincidence right?
You really should read before you insert your foot in mouth...........
