And now we have #Jack­et­Gate. Because it was just a mat­ter of time: Mela­nia Trump cre­at­ed a bit of a befud­dled uproar over her high­ly unusu­al choice of jack­et she wore while get­ting on an off the plane dur­ing a high-pro­file trip to vis­it the child deten­tion cen­ters cur­rent­ly hous­ing thou­sands of undoc­u­ment­ed chil­dren. The jack­et inex­plic­a­bly had the words “I real­ly don’t care. Do U?” on the back in large let­ters, thus guar­an­tee­ing that this jack­et would become a news sto­ry.

But the exact nature of this sto­ry is still an open ques­tion because, while Mela­nia appeared to be try­ing to send some sort of mes­sage, the mes­sage and its intend­ed audi­ence is high­ly ambigu­ous. Pres­i­dent Trump tweet­ed out that it was a mes­sage to the ‘fake news’ media while Mela­ni­a’s own spokesper­son claims it was “just a jack­et.” Regard­less of the intend­ed mes­sage and intend­ed audi­ence, though, it’s pret­ty clear that send­ing an ambigu­ous “I real­ly don’t care” mes­sage while trav­el­ing to meet­ing detained chil­dren, many in a state of emo­tion­al tur­moil, looked hor­ri­ble.

And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle makes clear, wear­ing an “I don’t care” jack­et looks even more hor­ri­ble when you con­sid­er that “I don’t care” was an impor­tant fas­cist slo­gan:

Over­land

A brief (fas­cist) his­to­ry of ‘I don’t care’

By Gio­van­ni Tiso
22.Jun.18

This arti­cle was sparked by the jack­et that Mela­nia Trump wore as she trav­elled to a deten­tion camp for migrant chil­dren, but my intent isn’t to argue that she or her staff chose that jack­et in order to send a cod­ed mes­sage to the president’s far-right fol­low­ers. It is, rather, to high­light some of the his­tor­i­cal echoes of that phrase – ‘I don’t care’.

The echoes of which some­one ought to have been aware, espe­cial­ly in an admin­is­tra­tion that includes – to put it mild­ly – sev­er­al far-right sym­pa­this­ers. And also to show that the atti­tude, the the­atri­cal ‘not car­ing’, was an explic­it char­ac­ter trait of Fas­cism.

...

Fas­cism lay its roots in the cam­paign for Italy’s late entry in the First World War, of which Mus­soli­ni was one of the lead­ers. It was at this time that the phrase ‘me ne frego’ – which at the time was still con­sid­ered quite vul­gar, along the lines of the Eng­lish ‘I don’t give a fu ck’ – was sung by mem­bers of the spe­cial force known as ardi­ti (lit­er­al­ly: ‘the dar­ing ones’) who vol­un­teered for the front, to sig­ni­fy that they didn’t care if they should lose their lives.

The ardi­ti were dis­band­ed after the war, but many of them vol­un­teered in 1919 for an expe­di­tion led by the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio to cap­ture the city of Fiume (Rije­ka, in present-day Croa­t­ia) and claim it for Italy dur­ing the vac­u­um cre­at­ed by the dis­so­lu­tion of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an empire. At the time of this occu­pa­tion, for­mer ardi­ti also formed the back­bone of the orig­i­nal Black Squads dur­ing the ter­ror cam­paigns that began in 1919 and cul­mi­nat­ed with the ‘March on Rome’ of 1922, which com­plet­ed Fascism’s swift rise to pow­er.

This lapel pin worn by an orig­i­nal mem­ber of the Black Shirts was recent­ly sold on a web­site devot­ed to mil­i­tary mem­o­ra­bil­ia. It is embla­zoned with the words ‘Me ne frego’ under­neath the orig­i­nal sym­bol of the ardi­ti and the acronym FERT (which stands for the mot­to of the Roy­al Fam­i­ly). The sell­er calls it ‘bel­lis­si­mo’.
[see image of “me ne frego” pin worn by the Black Shirts]

‘Me ne frego’ was the title of one of the most famous songs of the Fas­cist era. Its orig­i­nal ver­sion, dat­ing around 1920, hails D’Annunzio and Mus­soli­ni as the fathers of the fas­cist move­ment, recy­cling the old war song of the ardi­ti as the third stan­za.

Me ne frego I don’t care

me ne frego I don’t care

me ne frego è il nos­tro mot­to, I don’t care is our mot­to

me ne frego di morire I don’t care if I should die

per la san­ta lib­ertà! … For our sacred free­dom! …

Lat­er ver­sions removed men­tions of D’Annunzio, who fad­ed fair­ly quick­ly into the back­ground. In the mean­time, Mus­soli­ni made the slo­gan his own, and explic­it­ly ele­vat­ed it to the phi­los­o­phy of the regime.
[See image of Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni “me ne frego” quote]

The mean­ing of ‘Me ne frego’

The proud Black-Shirt mot­to ‘I don’t care’ writ­ten on the ban­dages that cov­er a wound isn’t just an act of sto­ic phi­los­o­phy or the sum­ma­ry of a polit­i­cal doc­trine. It’s an edu­ca­tion to fight­ing, and the accep­tance of the risks it implies. It’s a new Ital­ian lifestyle. This is how the Fas­cist wel­comes and loves life, while reject­ing and regard­ing sui­cide as an act of cow­ardice; this is how the Fas­cist under­stands life as duty, exal­ta­tion, con­quest. A life that must be lived high­ly and ful­ly, both for one­self but espe­cial­ly for oth­ers, near and far, present and future.

The con­no­ta­tions of altru­ism at the end of the quote are in direct con­trast with the mean­ing tak­en on by the word mene­freghis­mo (lit­er­al­ly, ‘Idont­careism’), which ever since the regime has meant in com­mon par­lance a kind of detached self-reliance, or moral autoc­ra­cy. Just as Italy broke with its for­mer allies and chart­ed a stub­born path towards the ruin and dev­as­ta­tion of the Sec­ond World War, so too the Fas­cist cit­i­zen was encour­aged to reject the judge­ment of oth­ers and look straight ahead. It should be remem­bered in this regard that the regime treat­ed igno­rance and pro­cliv­i­ty to vio­lence as desir­able qual­i­ties to be reward­ed with posi­tions of influ­ence and pow­er. This required a swift redraw­ing of the old social norms, and of the lan­guage used to sig­ni­fy the moral worth of indi­vid­u­als. ‘Me ne frego’ was the per­fect slo­gan for the peo­ple in charge of over­see­ing such a pro­gram.

Four years ago, speak­ing at a First World War com­mem­o­ra­tion in the small town of Redipuglia, Pope Fran­cis linked ‘me ne frego’ not only with the car­nage of that con­flict, but also with the hor­rors of Fas­cism, recog­nis­ing its ide­o­log­i­cal and pro­pa­gan­da val­ue for Mussolini’s project. This is the form in which the slo­gan has sur­vived until the present day, as a lin­guis­tic sig­ni­fi­er not of gener­ic indif­fer­ence, but of ide­o­log­i­cal nos­tal­gia. And because the attempts in Italy and beyond to stem the spread of such sig­ni­fiers have been com­pre­hen­sive­ly aban­doned, we read­i­ly find those words appear­ing not just on seem­ing­ly ubiq­ui­tous Fas­cist-era mem­o­ra­bil­ia but also on posters,
[see image of poster]
t‑shirts,
[see image of t‑shirt]
or this line of stick­ers that can be pur­chased for $.193 from Red­bub­ble (mot­to ‘awe­some prod­ucts designed by inde­pen­dent artists’), where it was uploaded by user ‘fash­di­vi­sion’.
[see image of stick­ers]
The inter­na­tion­al neo­fas­cist move­ment is of course well aware of this lin­eage. By way of exam­ple, if you search for it online you’ll find a long-run­ning Eng­lish-lan­guage pod­cast called Me ne frego which recy­cles this imagery in sup­port of argu­ments against immi­gra­tion and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, or to opine on the sub­ject of ‘the Jew­ish ques­tion’. I don’t doubt that peo­ple close both to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and this world are sim­i­lar­ly cog­nisant of the uses to which those three words have been put. But even for those who aren’t, claims to indif­fer­ence have a his­to­ry which we mustn’t allow our­selves to for­get.

———-

“A brief (fas­cist) his­to­ry of ‘I don’t care’” by Gio­van­ni Tiso; Over­land; 06/22/2018

“This arti­cle was sparked by the jack­et that Mela­nia Trump wore as she trav­elled to a deten­tion camp for migrant chil­dren, but my intent isn’t to argue that she or her staff chose that jack­et in order to send a cod­ed mes­sage to the president’s far-right fol­low­ers. It is, rather, to high­light some of the his­tor­i­cal echoes of that phrase – ‘I don’t care’.”

Yep, it turns out the phrase “I don’t care” has a rather inter­est­ing fas­cist his­to­ry. The slo­gan was part of the rise of Ital­ian fas­cism from the very begin­ning of the move­ment, sung by mem­bers of the Ardi­ti Ital­ian spe­cial forces on the front lines of WWI who went on to make up the back­bone of Mus­solin­i’s Black Squads and even­tu­al­ly the Black Shirts. They were singing about how they ‘did­n’t care if’ they lost their lives. So it’s like a fas­cist brain­wash­ing song that :

...
The echoes of which some­one ought to have been aware, espe­cial­ly in an admin­is­tra­tion that includes – to put it mild­ly – sev­er­al far-right sym­pa­this­ers. And also to show that the atti­tude, the the­atri­cal ‘not car­ing’, was an explic­it char­ac­ter trait of Fas­cism.

...

Fas­cism lay its roots in the cam­paign for Italy’s late entry in the First World War, of which Mus­soli­ni was one of the lead­ers. It was at this time that the phrase ‘me ne frego’ – which at the time was still con­sid­ered quite vul­gar, along the lines of the Eng­lish ‘I don’t give a fu ck’ – was sung by mem­bers of the spe­cial force known as ardi­ti (lit­er­al­ly: ‘the dar­ing ones’) who vol­un­teered for the front, to sig­ni­fy that they didn’t care if they should lose their lives.

The ardi­ti were dis­band­ed after the war, but many of them vol­un­teered in 1919 for an expe­di­tion led by the poet Gariele D’Annunzio to cap­ture the city of Fiume (Rije­ka, in present-day Croa­t­ia) and claim it for Italy dur­ing the vac­u­um cre­at­ed by the dis­so­lu­tion of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an empire. At the time of this occu­pa­tion, for­mer ardi­ti also formed the back­bone of the orig­i­nal Black Squads dur­ing the ter­ror cam­paigns that began in 1919 and cul­mi­nat­ed with the ‘March on Rome’ of 1922, which com­plet­ed Fascism’s swift rise to pow­er.

This lapel pin worn by an orig­i­nal mem­ber of the Black Shirts was recent­ly sold on a web­site devot­ed to mil­i­tary mem­o­ra­bil­ia. It is embla­zoned with the words ‘Me ne frego’ under­neath the orig­i­nal sym­bol of the ardi­ti and the acronym FERT (which stands for the mot­to of the Roy­al Fam­i­ly). The sell­er calls it ‘bel­lis­si­mo’.
[see image of “me ne frego” pin worn by the Black Shirts]
...

And those “Me ne frego” (I don’t care) lyrics went on to become part of one of the most famous songs from the fas­cist era. A song appro­pri­ate­ly title “Me ne frego”:

...
‘Me ne frego’ was the title of one of the most famous songs of the Fas­cist era. Its orig­i­nal ver­sion, dat­ing around 1920, hails D’Annunzio and Mus­soli­ni as the fathers of the fas­cist move­ment, recy­cling the old war song of the ardi­ti as the third stan­za.

Me ne frego I don’t care

me ne frego I don’t care

me ne frego è il nos­tro mot­to, I don’t care is our mot­to

me ne frego di morire I don’t care if I should die

per la san­ta lib­ertà! … For our sacred free­dom! …

Lat­er ver­sions removed men­tions of D’Annunzio, who fad­ed fair­ly quick­ly into the back­ground. In the mean­time, Mus­soli­ni made the slo­gan his own, and explic­it­ly ele­vat­ed it to the phi­los­o­phy of the regime.
[See image of Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni “me ne frego” quote]
...

And from the fas­cist per­spec­tive, “I don’t care” sym­bol­ized the ‘sto­ic phi­los­o­phy’ of the fas­cists. It was lit­er­al­ly an encap­su­la­tion of the self-glo­ri­fy­ing fas­cist nar­ra­tive:

...
The mean­ing of ‘Me ne frego’

The proud Black-Shirt mot­to ‘I don’t care’ writ­ten on the ban­dages that cov­er a wound isn’t just an act of sto­ic phi­los­o­phy or the sum­ma­ry of a polit­i­cal doc­trine. It’s an edu­ca­tion to fight­ing, and the accep­tance of the risks it implies. It’s a new Ital­ian lifestyle. This is how the Fas­cist wel­comes and loves life, while reject­ing and regard­ing sui­cide as an act of cow­ardice; this is how the Fas­cist under­stands life as duty, exal­ta­tion, con­quest. A life that must be lived high­ly and ful­ly, both for one­self but espe­cial­ly for oth­ers, near and far, present and future.
...

And while the “I don’t care” slo­gan rep­re­sent­ed to fas­cists an altru­is­tic view of them­selves of liv­ing “high­ly and ful­ly, both for one­self but espe­cial­ly for oth­ers, near and far, present and future,” the notion of ‘Idont­careism’ in the post-fas­cist era has come to rep­re­sent some­thing more like moral autoc­ra­cy. And as the arti­cle notes, this out­look meshed well with the encour­age­ment Mus­solin­i’s gov­ern­ment gave to fas­cists to ignore the judge­ment of oth­ers. Igno­rance and a pro­cliv­i­ty to vio­lence were deemed desir­able qual­i­ties by fas­cists and ‘Idont­careism’ was part of for­mal­iz­ing that as a ‘new nor­mal’:

...
The con­no­ta­tions of altru­ism at the end of the quote are in direct con­trast with the mean­ing tak­en on by the word mene­freghis­mo (lit­er­al­ly, ‘Idont­careism’), which ever since the regime has meant in com­mon par­lance a kind of detached self-reliance, or moral autoc­ra­cy. Just as Italy broke with its for­mer allies and chart­ed a stub­born path towards the ruin and dev­as­ta­tion of the Sec­ond World War, so too the Fas­cist cit­i­zen was encour­aged to reject the judge­ment of oth­ers and look straight ahead. It should be remem­bered in this regard that the regime treat­ed igno­rance and pro­cliv­i­ty to vio­lence as desir­able qual­i­ties to be reward­ed with posi­tions of influ­ence and pow­er. This required a swift redraw­ing of the old social norms, and of the lan­guage used to sig­ni­fy the moral worth of indi­vid­u­als. ‘Me ne frego’ was the per­fect slo­gan for the peo­ple in charge of over­see­ing such a pro­gram.
...

“It should be remem­bered in this regard that the regime treat­ed igno­rance and pro­cliv­i­ty to vio­lence as desir­able qual­i­ties to be reward­ed with posi­tions of influ­ence and pow­er. This required a swift redraw­ing of the old social norms, and of the lan­guage used to sig­ni­fy the moral worth of indi­vid­u­als. ‘Me ne frego’ was the per­fect slo­gan for the peo­ple in charge of over­see­ing such a pro­gram.”

“I don’t care.” The per­fect slo­gan for fas­cist pro­les. And as we should expect, “I don’t care” this isn’t just an inter­est­ing fun fact of the fas­cist era of Italy. The ‘me ne frego’ slo­gan is pre­dictably part of today’s far right iconog­ra­phy:

...
Four years ago, speak­ing at a First World War com­mem­o­ra­tion in the small town of Redipuglia, Pope Fran­cis linked ‘me ne frego’ not only with the car­nage of that con­flict, but also with the hor­rors of Fas­cism, recog­nis­ing its ide­o­log­i­cal and pro­pa­gan­da val­ue for Mussolini’s project. This is the form in which the slo­gan has sur­vived until the present day, as a lin­guis­tic sig­ni­fi­er not of gener­ic indif­fer­ence, but of ide­o­log­i­cal nos­tal­gia. And because the attempts in Italy and beyond to stem the spread of such sig­ni­fiers have been com­pre­hen­sive­ly aban­doned, we read­i­ly find those words appear­ing not just on seem­ing­ly ubiq­ui­tous Fas­cist-era mem­o­ra­bil­ia but also on posters,
[see image of poster]
t‑shirts,
[see image of t‑shirt]
or this line of stick­ers that can be pur­chased for $.193 from Red­bub­ble (mot­to ‘awe­some prod­ucts designed by inde­pen­dent artists’), where it was uploaded by user ‘fash­di­vi­sion’.
[see image of stick­ers]
The inter­na­tion­al neo­fas­cist move­ment is of course well aware of this lin­eage. By way of exam­ple, if you search for it online you’ll find a long-run­ning Eng­lish-lan­guage pod­cast called Me ne frego which recy­cles this imagery in sup­port of argu­ments against immi­gra­tion and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, or to opine on the sub­ject of ‘the Jew­ish ques­tion’. I don’t doubt that peo­ple close both to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and this world are sim­i­lar­ly cog­nisant of the uses to which those three words have been put. But even for those who aren’t, claims to indif­fer­ence have a his­to­ry which we mustn’t allow our­selves to for­get.

“The inter­na­tion­al neo­fas­cist move­ment is of course well aware of this lin­eage. By way of exam­ple, if you search for it online you’ll find a long-run­ning Eng­lish-lan­guage pod­cast called Me ne frego which recy­cles this imagery in sup­port of argu­ments against immi­gra­tion and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, or to opine on the sub­ject of ‘the Jew­ish ques­tion’. I don’t doubt that peo­ple close both to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and this world are sim­i­lar­ly cog­nisant of the uses to which those three words have been put. But even for those who aren’t, claims to indif­fer­ence have a his­to­ry which we mustn’t allow our­selves to for­get.”

Yeah, it seems like a safe bet that peo­ple close to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion are well aware of the fas­cist con­no­ta­tions of “I don’t care”. And that’s part of what makes Mela­ni­a’s jack­et so chill­ing: The fas­cist con­no­ta­tions of “I don’t care” are a chill­ing­ly apt slo­gan for what’s going on with the “zero tol­er­ance” approach to undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. It’s an attempt to nor­mal­ize the key fas­cist prin­ci­ple of view­ing entire groups of peo­ple as less­er beings, a crit­i­cal ele­ment of the hyper-hier­ar­chi­cal author­i­tar­i­ans inher­ent in fas­cism.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Bri­an Kilmeade, a co-host of Fox & Friends, Trump’s favorite cable news show, tried to make the case on Fri­day morn­ing that Amer­i­cans should­n’t get too upset about the child sep­a­ra­tion poli­cies and throw­ing undoc­u­ment­ed kids into prison-like con­di­tions, a large num­ber refugees seek­ing asy­lum. Accord­ing to Kilmeade, they aren’t “our kids” so Amer­i­cans should­n’t be too both­ered by their con­di­tions. And Ann Coul­ter pro­claimed on Fox News that these chil­dren were child actors and implored Trump not to ‘fall for it. That sure sounds like an attempt to nor­mal­iza­tion the for­mal dehu­man­iza­tion of ‘oth­ers’.

Not be be out­done, Fox & Friend’s super-fan Pres­i­dent Trump declared that the Democ­rats want ille­gal immi­grants to “infest” the US:

Democ­rats are the prob­lem. They don’t care about crime and want ille­gal immi­grants, no mat­ter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Coun­try, like MS-13. They can’t win on their ter­ri­ble poli­cies, so they view them as poten­tial vot­ers!— Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2018

This, of course, is Nazi-style lan­guge that implic­it­ly dehu­man­izes an entire group of peo­ple.

Sure, the dehu­man­iza­tion of ‘oth­ers’ is noth­ing new when it comes to humans. Some­times its hyp­o­crit­i­cal dehu­man­iza­tion by soci­eties that pro­claim a high­er moral ground and don’t live up to those self-pro­claimed stan­dards. But when the dehu­man­iza­tion is open­ly embraced and explain away in blunt terms like Kilmeade used that real­ly is scari­er. Hyp­o­crit­i­cal dehu­man­iza­tion could be worse and open­ly dehu­man­iz­ing philoso­phies like fas­cism are a good exam­ple of worse.

And Kilmead­e’s dis­turb­ing ratio­nal­iza­tions were just one exam­ple of this push to for­mal­ly nor­mal­ize an “I don’t care” moral frame­work. There’s also the “I don’t care” embrace of igno­rance on promi­nent dis­play as this child immi­gra­tion cri­sis plays out. Fox News anchor Lau­ra Ingra­ham described the liv­ing sit­u­a­tion of these kids as ‘sum­mer camp’.

But per­haps the most dis­turb­ing embrace of igno­rance was Pres­i­dent Trump’s Fri­day morn­ing tweet in response to the leaked audio and video evi­dence of dis­traught chil­dren and reports of the forced drug­ging and abuse. Accord­ing to Trump, those sto­ries are “pho­ny sto­ries of sad­ness and grief” orches­trat­ed for polit­i­cal gain. And in the same tweet and then excused away the reports with an ‘Oba­ma did it too and no one cared!’ response. Of course, Trump is incor­rect. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma did use fam­i­ly deten­tions but not fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion. So Trump denied the reports and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­missed the crit­i­cisms as unfair by inac­cu­rate­ly assert­ing that the same thing hap­pened under Oba­ma. It’s the ‘I don’t care about the truth’ dimen­sion of this creep­ing ‘Idont­carism’:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Livewire

Trump Claims There Are ‘Pho­ny Sto­ries Of Sad­ness And Grief’ At The Bor­der

By Nicole Lafond | June 22, 2018 10:15 am

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has ful­ly embraced a far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that the images and audio of dev­as­tat­ed chil­dren dis­traught after being ripped from their par­ents arms are fake.

In a tweet Fri­day morn­ing, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump called the media cov­er­age of trau­ma­tized immi­grant chil­dren and par­ents “pho­ny sto­ries of sad­ness and grief,” orches­trat­ed by Democ­rats for polit­i­cal gain. Then, in an unhinged twist, he defend­ed the valid­i­ty of the images because they exist­ed dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, but his pre­de­ces­sor “did noth­ing about it!”

We must main­tain a Strong South­ern Bor­der. We can­not allow our Coun­try to be over­run by ille­gal immi­grants as the Democ­rats tell their pho­ny sto­ries of sad­ness and grief, hop­ing it will help them in the elec­tions. Oba­ma and oth­ers had the same pic­tures, and did noth­ing about it!— Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2018

Ear­li­er this week, con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Ann Coul­ter said dur­ing an inter­view on Fox News that the cry­ing chil­dren recent­ly sep­a­rat­ed from their fam­i­lies were “actors.” She warned the Pres­i­dent to not “buy” the show.

...

Trump’s tweet comes just days after Trump appeared to believe the sto­ries of grief-strick­en fam­i­lies, sign­ing an exec­u­tive order Wednes­day that called for the detain­ment of fam­i­lies togeth­er, but sought to abol­ish a fed­er­al pro­tec­tion that lim­its how long a child can be held in deten­tion.

Repub­li­cans, at Trump’s behest, are scram­bling to piece togeth­er an immi­gra­tion plan to address the issue of fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion, which was cre­at­ed by his administration’s “zero tol­er­ance” pol­i­cy. Appar­ent­ly peev­ed on Fri­day morn­ing, Trump told GOP law­mak­ers to “stop wast­ing their time on immi­gra­tion” because Democ­rats have indi­cat­ed they won’t sup­port Repub­li­can immi­gra­tion bills. In the Sen­ate, Repub­li­cans would need at least 10 Democ­rats to jump onboard for a bill to move to the House.

———-

“Trump Claims There Are ‘Pho­ny Sto­ries Of Sad­ness And Grief’ At The Bor­der” by Nicole Lafond; Talk­ing Points Memo; 06/22/2018

“In a tweet Fri­day morn­ing, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump called the media cov­er­age of trau­ma­tized immi­grant chil­dren and par­ents “pho­ny sto­ries of sad­ness and grief,” orches­trat­ed by Democ­rats for polit­i­cal gain. Then, in an unhinged twist, he defend­ed the valid­i­ty of the images because they exist­ed dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, but his pre­de­ces­sor “did noth­ing about it!””

That’s the Orwellian place we find our­selves: And the under­ly­ing mes­sage to the Amer­i­can peo­ple in this ‘Idont­carism’ push is the mes­sage that Amer­i­cans should­n’t care about non-Amer­i­cans and when they claim asy­lum Amer­i­cans should assume they are lying as part of a far right push to for­mal­ly nor­mal­ize the idea that there are some peo­ple, includ­ing chil­dren, who we just should­n’t care about very because they ‘aren’t us’. And the pres­i­dent him­self is pro­mot­ing this by tweet­ing out dou­ble­think that is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­mot­ing both igno­rance and a lack of com­pas­sion, two key ele­ments of the fas­cist mind­set. It was a tweet that remark­ably man­aged to touch on near­ly every aspect of ‘idont­carism’.

So who knows if Mela­nia her­self had any idea about the cryp­tomes­sage her jack­et sent to the world. It would­n’t be too sur­pris­ing if some­one else con­vinced her to wear it with­out telling her that slo­gan is like a fas­cist gang sign. Using the FLOTUS as a fas­cist prank prop seems like kind of thing we should expect from this White House. Regard­less, while the First Lady’s choice of jack­et was clear­ly an inap­pro­pri­ate choice for this kind of sit­u­a­tion, from a his­tor­i­cal con­text it was actu­al­ly a high­ly appro­pri­ate. A his­tor­i­cal con­text we should all care about learn­ing about so we don’t repeat it.

@Pterrafractyl–

Now Mela­nia has TRULY giv­en us an exam­ple of “bad­jack­et­ing!”

Best,

Dave Emory

@Dave: It’s also worth recall­ing that Zara, the com­pa­ny that made Mela­ni­a’s jack­et with the fas­cist slo­gan, has a his­to­ry of this kind of stuff. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle from 2014 points out, not only did the com­pa­ny offer a chil­dren’s shirt that looked alarm­ing­ly like the out­fit for Jew­ish con­cen­tra­tion camp vic­tims (a blue and white striped shirt with a big yel­low six point­ed star that looks like a Star of David), but it also was caught sell­ing a hand­bag with a swasti­ka back in 2007:

The Guardian

Zara removes striped pyja­mas with yel­low star fol­low­ing online out­rage

Social media users likened the baby’s pyja­ma top, fea­tur­ing hor­i­zon­tal stripes and a ‘Sher­iff’ star to clothes worn by Jew­ish con­cen­tra­tion camp pris­on­ers

Ele­na Cresci

Wed 27 Aug 2014 06.51 EDT
Last mod­i­fied on Thu 30 Nov 2017 04.39 EST

High street retail­er Zara has pulled a striped shirt fea­tur­ing a yel­low star on the front on Wednes­day after social media users likened it to the uni­form worn by Jew­ish pris­on­ers in con­cen­tra­tion camps dur­ing the sec­ond world war.

The striped “sher­iff” T‑shirt, aimed at chil­dren aged three months to three years, drew crit­i­cism for a design which fea­tured white and blue stripes and a six-point­ed yel­low star on the front. The star itself had the word “sher­iff” writ­ten across it, which was not com­plete­ly clear in the zoomed-out images on the Span­ish chain’s web­site.

But from first glance, many peo­ple felt the shirt bore too close a resem­blance to the striped uni­form and yel­low star Jew­ish pris­on­ers were forced to wear dur­ing the Holo­caust.

...

The shirt was avail­able via Zara’s UK home­page as well as in a num­ber of its inter­na­tion­al out­lets, includ­ing Israel, France, Den­mark, Alba­nia and Swe­den. Israeli jour­nal­ist Dimi Rei­der was among the first to notice the resem­blance.

Writ­ing on 972mag.com, he said: “It’s a SHERIFF shirt for your three-year-old. Obvi­ous­ly. What else could it be?

“Why, what else does it remind you of?”

The retail­er has since apol­o­gised, in sev­er­al lan­guages on its Twit­ter feed, and con­firmed the shirt is no longer on sale.

...

A spokesper­son for Zara’s par­ent com­pa­ny Indi­tex said: “The item in ques­tion has now been removed from all Zara stores and Zara.com.

“The gar­ment was inspired by the clas­sic West­ern films, but we now recog­nise that the design could be seen as insen­si­tive and apol­o­gise sin­cere­ly for any offence caused to our cus­tomers.”

This is not the first time Zara has made an unfor­tu­nate design choice. In 2007, the retail­er with­drew a hand­bag from its sto­ries after one cus­tomer point­ed out the design fea­tured swastikas..

———-

“Zara removes striped pyja­mas with yel­low star fol­low­ing online out­rage” by Ele­na Cresci; The Guardian; 08/27/2014

“The striped “sher­iff” T‑shirt, aimed at chil­dren aged three months to three years, drew crit­i­cism for a design which fea­tured white and blue stripes and a six-point­ed yel­low star on the front. The star itself had the word “sher­iff” writ­ten across it, which was not com­plete­ly clear in the zoomed-out images on the Span­ish chain’s web­site.”

It was inno­cent­ly inspired by clas­sic West­ern films. That was Zara’s sto­ry.

So, at best, Zara mar­ket­ed a bizarre shirt for chil­dren what looks like a pris­on­er’s striped shirt with a sher­if­f’s badge. At worst, some­one at Zara decid­ed to mar­ket Holo­caust shirts for kids.

Should we assume the best or worst? Well, if if this was the only time some­thing like this hap­pened, and Zara had­n’t mar­ket­ed a hand­bag in 2007 with a bla­tant swasti­ka on the design, it would be a lot eas­i­er to assume the best. But Zara indeed did mar­ket a swasti­ka hand­bag just sev­en years ear­li­er...:

...
This is not the first time Zara has made an unfor­tu­nate design choice. In 2007, the retail­er with­drew a hand­bag from its sto­ries after one cus­tomer point­ed out the design fea­tured swastikas..

And, of course, there’s now Mela­ni­a’s jack­et. So that’s three fas­cist items over the past 11 years.

Oh, but there’s more! Zara’s fas­cist fash­ion sense just keeps bub­bling up. It turns out Zara made a skirt in 2017 with what appear to be ‘Pepe the Frog’ faces

The New York Times

Zara Los­es Its Skirt Over Pepe the Frog

By Vanes­sa Fried­man
April 19, 2017

Dig­i­tal activists have claimed anoth­er head. Or, rather, skirt.

On Tues­day, Zara, the Span­ish chain owned by Indi­tex that has more than 2,100 stores in 88 coun­tries around the world and was rat­ed No. 53 on the Forbes 2016 list of the world’s most valu­able brands, qui­et­ly with­drew a dis­tressed den­im miniskirt print­ed with a car­toon face from its web­sites and stores in the Unit­ed States and Britain after it became a sub­ject of social media con­tro­ver­sy for the graphic’s resem­blance to Pepe the Frog.

You know, the green amphib­ian that was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a “peace­ful frog-dude,” accord­ing to Matt Furie, the man who cre­at­ed him, but that was co-opt­ed by anti-Jew­ish and big­ot­ed groups and des­ig­nat­ed an alt-right hate sym­bol by the Anti-Defama­tion League last Sep­tem­ber.

The skirt had been on sale as part of Zara’s lim­it­ed-edi­tion “oil on den­im” offer­ing of spring-fling artist part­ner­ships.

Twit­ter got on it pret­ty fast. “Zara is real­ly out there try­ing to sell a P*pe the frog skirt, appar­ent­ly unaware (?) of its cur­rent impli­ca­tions,” @meaganrosae wrote. Added @ccarella, “Hmm Pepe on a Zara skirt.”

There is a lot of “how did this hap­pen?” and “how delud­ed could they be?” going around the cyber­sphere, but the answer may come down to a blunt col­li­sion of glob­al­ism and cul­tur­al igno­rance.

A spokes­woman for Zara said: “The skirt is part of the lim­it­ed Oil-on-Den­im col­lec­tion, which was cre­at­ed through col­lab­o­ra­tions with artists and is only avail­able in select­ed mar­kets. The design­er of the skirt is Mario de San­ti­a­go, known online as Yimeis­great. There is absolute­ly no link to the sug­gest­ed theme.”

Mr. de San­ti­a­go is a Span­ish artist based in Lon­don whose biog­ra­phy on his offi­cial web page states, “I like to explore social inter­ac­tions and gath­er them into quirky and colour­ful sto­ry­telling com­po­si­tions.” Accord­ing to Zara, he said the frog face “came from a wall paint­ing I drew with friends four years ago.” It is not hard to imag­ine he was unaware a sim­i­lar frog face had been used for a some­what dif­fer­ent pur­pose in the Unit­ed States.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Zara, how­ev­er, the brand has a his­to­ry with pub­lic pres­sure over a prod­uct with poten­tial­ly offen­sive impli­ca­tions — espe­cial­ly anti-Semit­ic impli­ca­tions — which may have exac­er­bat­ed the reac­tion. In 2014, it apol­o­gized for offer­ing, and then with­drew, a set of children’s striped paja­mas with a yel­low star on the breast that was wide­ly seen as resem­bling a con­cen­tra­tion camp uni­form (the star was sup­posed to be a sheriff’s badge). In 2007, it with­drew a hand­bag print­ed with folk­loric designs, one of which hap­pened to look a lot like a swasti­ka.

...

All of this may add up to some­thing of a teach­able moment for the fast-fash­ion mod­el. Because the busi­ness is based on the con­stant turnover of new prod­ucts that are effec­tive­ly “test­ed” on the shop floor, so that com­pa­nies can respond quick­ly to what sells and drop less pop­u­lar items with­out much cost, it involves a high­er than usu­al amount of churn. This may mean designs are sub­ject to less strin­gent vet­ting than they might be in, say, a tra­di­tion­al fash­ion brand in which prod­ucts are cre­at­ed and assessed more than six months ahead of pro­duc­tion.

Add to that the recent com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the sum­mer fes­ti­val cir­cuit, in which cor­po­rate giants are lever­ag­ing the fash­ion appeal of sar­to­r­i­al rebel­lion (always a dan­ger­ous game, since it co-opts sym­bols with­out real­ly under­stand­ing their use), and the pit­falls were poten­tial­ly pret­ty big. Just think for a minute of the absur­di­ty implic­it in choos­ing a hate sym­bol to stick on a gar­ment seem­ing­ly meant for a sum­mer-of-love/­danc­ing-in-the-mud­dy-fields-type event. Oops.

Giv­en the increas­ing role of the inter­net in polic­ing brands and com­pa­nies, it was prob­a­bly only a mat­ter of time before a com­pa­ny attempt­ing to make hay while the music played made a mis­take instead.

Con­sid­er it a cau­tion­ary tale.

———-

“Zara Los­es Its Skirt Over Pepe the Frog” by Vanes­sa Fried­man; The New York Times; 04/19/2017

“On Tues­day, Zara, the Span­ish chain owned by Indi­tex that has more than 2,100 stores in 88 coun­tries around the world and was rat­ed No. 53 on the Forbes 2016 list of the world’s most valu­able brands, qui­et­ly with­drew a dis­tressed den­im miniskirt print­ed with a car­toon face from its web­sites and stores in the Unit­ed States and Britain after it became a sub­ject of social media con­tro­ver­sy for the graphic’s resem­blance to Pepe the Frog.”

Yep, Zara wants to assure every­one that Pepe the Frog just inno­cent­ly showed up on a Zara skirt in 2017 and the Span­ish design­er had no idea about the con­tem­po­rary sym­bol­ism of Pepe-like car­toon frogs:

...
You know, the green amphib­ian that was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a “peace­ful frog-dude,” accord­ing to Matt Furie, the man who cre­at­ed him, but that was co-opt­ed by anti-Jew­ish and big­ot­ed groups and des­ig­nat­ed an alt-right hate sym­bol by the Anti-Defama­tion League last Sep­tem­ber.

...

A spokes­woman for Zara said: “The skirt is part of the lim­it­ed Oil-on-Den­im col­lec­tion, which was cre­at­ed through col­lab­o­ra­tions with artists and is only avail­able in select­ed mar­kets. The design­er of the skirt is Mario de San­ti­a­go, known online as Yimeis­great. There is absolute­ly no link to the sug­gest­ed theme.”

Mr. de San­ti­a­go is a Span­ish artist based in Lon­don whose biog­ra­phy on his offi­cial web page states, “I like to explore social inter­ac­tions and gath­er them into quirky and colour­ful sto­ry­telling com­po­si­tions.” Accord­ing to Zara, he said the frog face “came from a wall paint­ing I drew with friends four years ago.” It is not hard to imag­ine he was unaware a sim­i­lar frog face had been used for a some­what dif­fer­ent pur­pose in the Unit­ed States.
...

And the arti­cle goes on to sug­gest that maybe Zara made such a mis­take due to its “fast-fash­ion” mod­el of rapid­ly intro­duc­ing new cloth­ing based on cur­rent trends that leads to less time to vet the items:

...
All of this may add up to some­thing of a teach­able moment for the fast-fash­ion mod­el. Because the busi­ness is based on the con­stant turnover of new prod­ucts that are effec­tive­ly “test­ed” on the shop floor, so that com­pa­nies can respond quick­ly to what sells and drop less pop­u­lar items with­out much cost, it involves a high­er than usu­al amount of churn. This may mean designs are sub­ject to less strin­gent vet­ting than they might be in, say, a tra­di­tion­al fash­ion brand in which prod­ucts are cre­at­ed and assessed more than six months ahead of pro­duc­tion.

Add to that the recent com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the sum­mer fes­ti­val cir­cuit, in which cor­po­rate giants are lever­ag­ing the fash­ion appeal of sar­to­r­i­al rebel­lion (always a dan­ger­ous game, since it co-opts sym­bols with­out real­ly under­stand­ing their use), and the pit­falls were poten­tial­ly pret­ty big. Just think for a minute of the absur­di­ty implic­it in choos­ing a hate sym­bol to stick on a gar­ment seem­ing­ly meant for a sum­mer-of-love/­danc­ing-in-the-mud­dy-fields-type event. Oops.

Giv­en the increas­ing role of the inter­net in polic­ing brands and com­pa­nies, it was prob­a­bly only a mat­ter of time before a com­pa­ny attempt­ing to make hay while the music played made a mis­take instead.

Con­sid­er it a cau­tion­ary tale.

And, sure, maybe the Pepe the Frog skirt was just a cau­tion­ary tale about the risks of ‘fast fash­ion’. Maybe it was just an inevitable ‘fast fash­ion’ prob­lem.

Or maybe Zara has a ‘fas­cist fash­ion’ prob­lem: A Nazi hand­bag in 2007. Holo­caust paja­mas sev­en years lat­er. Then Pepe the Frog skirts three years after that. Fol­lowed by Mela­ni­a’s fas­cist slo­gan jack­et the next year.

So based on the accel­er­at­ing pace of these inci­dents, not only does it appear that Zara has a ‘fas­cist fash­ion’ prob­lem, but that prob­lem is get­ting notice­ably worse in recent years. #Trump­Ef­fect #Fas­cionable­Fash­ion