Jeff Sharlet

gorgons and roses @jennlea.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:45 UTC

Jeff Sharlet can take the darkest subject and alchemize it into some of the most beautiful prose you'll ever read

1 replies 9 reposts 20 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:13 UTC

If you find this thread valuable, consider subscribing to its source Free for now. I'm hiring an assistant, so I'll make a paid option to cover wages, but the important stuff will remain free, my individual bit in trying to stop what's headed our way. jeffsharlet.substack.com

0 replies 1 reposts 5 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:11 UTC

Back to my eyes & ears: the "bullshit" chanting lasted a long time in Vegas, standing in for every grievance they cld imagine. It's a powerful force. But this, friends, in closing, is the reality: fascism wobbles.

1 replies 0 reposts 7 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:10 UTC

Thru fascist eyes: His people roar. He steps back. “Oh!” he says, his voice startled, because he’s humble even in his pride. He turns to take in the men behind him shouting bullshit like wind in his sails, the word making him strong. 18/

1 replies 0 reposts 7 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:09 UTC

Me, too. And I was watching it live.

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:07 UTC

A refrain I hear from friends: "I just don't understand how anybody could even bear to *look* at the man." But reporting on fascism means developing a kind of double vision. Keep yr wits about you, but see also with fascist eyes. This is what Trump looks like to them. 17/

1 replies 1 reposts 7 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:07 UTC

Fascist divinity claims are rarely static. Fascism requires ever greater grandiosity. In '16, Trump ran on the prosperity gospel--God wants you to be rich. In '20, it was a bastardized gnostic gospel--think QAnon. Now, tho, we're in the age of martyrs--think violence. 16/

2 replies 2 reposts 9 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:07 UTC

Speaking of divinity claims at Trump's rally The Nevada GOP chair, Michael McDonald, is such a nasty piece of work that "ex-cop linked to Proud Boys" only scratches the surface. He's been nvestigated more times than I could count. But he feels he knows God, and God's name: 15/

1 replies 0 reposts 8 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:06 UTC

My "portrait" of the junior demagogue, pointing up at Heaven from which she's saying Trump-like-Christ came. I'm not joking. Neither is she. Fascism is making real divinity claims. 14/

2 replies 1 reposts 11 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:06 UTC

Some news orgs noted Trump's use of the term "bullshit." None I saw reported that chants of "bullshit" were the defining experience of the day in Vegas--starting with Trump's herald, MTG, who used the profan as prelude to the "sacred." 13/

1 replies 0 reposts 8 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:05 UTC

It's not enough to know that MTG's a racist or a hypocrite. I think it's critical to stopping her to follow the logic in her own ugly mind, the better to understand how hatemongers bend minds. 12/

1 replies 0 reposts 7 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:05 UTC

A friend ask if I’m decoding Marjorie Taylor Greene. I don’t think so, I say. I think I’m tuning my dial. I think I’m receiving the transmission. I don’t like the tune but the signal is strong. 11/

1 replies 0 reposts 7 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:04 UTC

The most revealing part of the rally to me wasn't Trump himself but his herald of sorts, Marjorie Taylor Greene. I tried to see her with my own eyes and as I might if I believed. If I believed, this cornball song would be badass: 10/

1 replies 1 reposts 17 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:03 UTC

You know how Trump likes to say his hate-filled rallies are about "love"? The above, the identification of violent hysteria as "love," is what that means. Here's another capture I made from the Vegas stream: 9/

2 replies 0 reposts 8 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:03 UTC

Wayne Allen Root continued with his violent rhetoric from the stage of the Trump rally. As far as I saw, not one major news org mentioned it. So, in my little way, I did--and why it's important not just as violence but as a window into the nature of Trump worship. 8/

1 replies 0 reposts 7 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:03 UTC

Not long after Chris, comes one of the first speakers at Trump's Vegas rally, who back in '17 suggested the white supremacist murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville was a false flag, because no RWer "commits violence ever." But in Vegas, this guy was all about violence: 7/

1 replies 0 reposts 8 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:02 UTC

Another image I saw in the stream & snapped & bent into grainy B&W that I think lets us see simultaneously the absurd, the grotesque, and the sorrow of Trumpism. This is Chris at the rally. He thinks foreign armies are invading. He expects civil war. I think he wants it. 6/

1 replies 0 reposts 11 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:02 UTC

If you stop at the absurd, as some do when mocking Trumpism, you miss both the danger &, yes, the tragedy. My RW proxy wants "illegal" horror stories; he finds one, but right behind it is a very different, genuinely heartbreaking story he can't hear. 5/

1 replies 1 reposts 14 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:01 UTC

I'm not a fan of comedians who go to Trump rallies to collect funny-cuz-they're-dumb talk. That, to me, is a reassurance narrative. Trumpism is dumb; it's also dangerous. That said, I listen for the unintended comedy. My RW proxy doesn't, but it comes to him anyway 4/

1 replies 0 reposts 12 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:00 UTC

I never stick to the press pen when I report Trump rallies. I wait in line for hours like anyone else, the better to hear the ways in which fascist anger doesn't just stagnate, it expands. Lucky for me, my "proxies" on this obscure RW channel try the same: 3/

2 replies 1 reposts 14 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 17:58 UTC

The image above: “Costumes of sorts,” proclaims one of the two broadcasters, Vanessa Broussard. Then, as if on cue, right behind her, a “costume”--the man in the sombrero. My article continues w/ the juxtaposition of the grotesque & the absurd in service of fascist hysteria: 2/

1 replies 0 reposts 9 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 17:57 UTC

(This thread's from my new Substack, "Scenes from a Slow Civil War." jeffsharlet.substack.com/p/hello-trum.... This is a thread I posted on Twitter, which suppresses mention of Substack as a rival platform. Bsky doesn't, but I'm posting it here since I already wrote it...)

1 replies 1 reposts 16 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 17:54 UTC

I was going to go to Vegas to report Trump's first rally as a felon--not for "news" but to listen for tone, for the mood of fascism as it mutates. But I decided it was too hot, so I stayed in VT & watched 5 hrs of it from an obscure rightwing network. And I made pictures... 1/

2 replies 10 reposts 42 likes

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 17:53 UTC

Thanks, Elizabeth.

0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes