This is why I don’t care that much about the internet fascists, or the Patriot Front or any group like them. Obviously they should still eat lead, but they just aren’t going to work.

This is what happens when internet poisoned losers meet real life fascists. The scary ones aren’t the guys doing elaborate dog whistles and wearing costumes. They’re relatively regular people who probably own businesses and have families and go to church and carry a certain amount of respect in their communities, and also happen to follow the tenets of American fascism without consciously reproducing the iconography.

The internet losers care most about aesthetics (memes?), and the scary fascists care more about results. They still care about aesthetics, but the aesthetics are homegrown Americana, not transplanted Nazism. The internet poisons everything, even fascism.

The ones who consciously align themselves with Nazis are not the biggest threat, except stochastically. I’m more concerned about the ones who unironically believe Nazis were leftist socialist marxists while also perfectly reproducing the Nazi platform.

And obviously the internet freaks are capable, perhaps only capable, of mass shootings. But I honestly think they were 75% of the way to a shooting without the fascism. Also, while shootings are more psychologically damaging, the greater threats statistically to comrades and minorities are car crashes and health issues. We can’t let them have an outsized influence on our minds.