Make Communists Afraid of Rotary Aircraft Again
Before this year, as violent scuffles broke out in Portland between the proto-fascist Patriot Prayer grouping and counter-protesters, journalists spotted something new. Tusitala "Tiny" Toese, the burly sidekick of Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson, was wearing a T-shirt with a message that had nothing to do with Donald Trump, Portland, or even his Patriot Prayer grouping.
Rather, the front of the shirt blared, "Pinochet did nothing wrong!"
Tiny Toeseis DJing in a shirt bearing the slogan "Pinochet did aught wrong" pic.twitter.com/gG4QR2Lviq
— Jason Wilson (@jason_a_w) August 4, 2018
The message, for those unaware, references former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet rose to power in 1973 on the back of a right-wing insurrection that finer imploded Chilean democracy for the amend part of two decades, overseeing 1 of the almost repressive, blood-soaked regimes in Latin America over the past one-half-century.
Thanks to Pinochet's repression, thousands of Chileans — activists, scholars, workers, and opposition politicians — were killed or remain missing. Tens of thousands who opposed Pinochet's dictatorship were tortured, with methods ranging from electrocution to sexual abuse. Hundreds of thousands of Chileans fled or were forced into exile.
And perhaps most memorably, dozens of Chileans were targeted for a specific form of execution: "death flights," in which political prisoners were bundled into sacks, taken up by a helicopter, and dumped into the ocean, lakes, or wherever Pinochet'due south goons saw fit.
And there, on the dorsum of Toese's T-shirt, is an paradigm of a helicopter dumping bodies, reading, "Physical removal since 1973."
Petty matter for the neo-fascist groups at present populating the American right, similar Patriot Prayer or Proud Boys. To Toese, the tens of thousands of victims apparently had it coming. As he told HuffPost's Christopher Mathias, "Aren't they all communists?"
Forgot to post this earlier: I asked Proud Boy/Patriot Prayer member Tusitala 'Tiny' Toese about his PINOCHET WAS RIGHT t-shirt.
"Didn't Pinochet impale similar 35,000 people?" I asked him.
"Aren't they all communists?" he responded. #AllOutPDX moving-picture show.twitter.com/dzVcYIgHaV
— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) Baronial 5, 2018
But where did Toese, and some of the other proto-fascists joining him, get such a shirt? Who was profiting off of selling swag supporting a murderous Chilean dictatorship?
Turns out there are a few options.
The offset, and most prominent, company selling pro-Pinochet cloth is one of America's largest retailers: Amazon. As the shirt's description on Amazon reads, "Make communists agape of rotary aircraft again." (Amazon also offers gratuitous shipping and complimentary returns on the shirt.)
But that's not the only production bachelor on Amazon for fascists to bear witness their support of a man who crumbled Chile's democracy and whose authorities disappeared and tortured tens of thousands.
Some of the other shirts allude to the Pinochet government's "death flights" — "Pinochet is my copilot," reads one; "Legalize free helicopter rides," reads some other. 1 simply has a stencil of Pinochet on the shirt-front, saying, "I eat Commies for breakfast."
It's unclear whether the shirts breach Amazon's Terms of Service. The company declined to respond to ThinkProgress' request for comment about the products, directing ThinkProgress to its "Offensive and Controversial Materials" policy. That page describes Amazon's policy on prohibiting article of clothing that is "related to human tragedies," as well every bit the prohibition of clothing that "contain[s] violent or offensive textile that has no historical significance. Amazon reserves the correct to make a determination on the historical value of the detail."
Given that there is no similar clothing available on Amazon praising certain other correct-fly dictators popular among American fascists — say, Adolf Hitler or Slobodan Milosevic — there'southward at least the advent of a selective prohibition on similar items.
Fascist fashion
Unfortunately, Pinochet isn't the lone correct-wing dictator whose epitome, and whose legacy, Amazon is currently profiting from. The original fascist, Benito Mussolini, has seen something of a resurgence in American far-right circles over the past few years, with Trump even retweeting a Mussolini quote two years ago.
Enter Amazon. A quick search for pro-Mussolini clothing on Amazon wields a number of options. Some simply feature Mussolini's scowling confront, with "DUCE" — Mussolini's nickname — emblazoned beneath. Some have images of the fasces, Mussolini's preferred symbol. And ane fifty-fifty features an image of a towering Mussolini, with his National Fascist Party's slogan in big, block letters on the forepart: "Believe, Obey, Fight." (Amazon also sells hagiographic clothing featuring more recent dictators, from Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev to Spain's Francisco Franco and Great socialist people's libyan arab jamahiriya's Muammar Gaddafi.)
As information technology is, Amazon isn't the only company selling the pro-Pinochet shirts. The Proud Boys' own store — which now reroutes to something chosen "1776 Store," but which notwithstanding hawks Proud Boys cloth — recently sold the shirt. The listed seller is "RWDS," brusque for "Right-Wing Death Squad."
And far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who has worked closely fourth dimension and again with white supremacists, as well recently started selling the shirt.
As before, Yiannopoulos uses Stripe to procedure his payments. Stripe did not respond to ThinkProgress' questions about Yiannopoulos using their product to brand money by selling pro-Pinochet material — although the company has made efforts elsewhere to reject service to white supremacists.
All told, these pro-Pinochet shirts are the latest pieces of evidence that proto-fascist groups like Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer are less interested in the merits of their supposed "complimentary speech" arguments, and are, rather, broadcasting exactly what they'd like to practise to their perceived political enemies. All the while, companies like Amazon are profiting off of the threats and helping introduce a new cadre of American fascists to the tactics and terror they'd bring to acquit in the The states.
Source: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/amazon-shirts-pinochet-far-right-aed4d58ccb0a/
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