I can: thinking that a far-right industrialist at a far-right victory celebration making a far-right hand gesture, with perfect form, in duplicate, didn't mean it.

Well you can start by correcting the point that it was a far-right victory celebration or that a far-right guesture was made.

Why would I correct myself? I'm already correct on both counts.

What about trying really, really hard to believe that a guy with a Nazi tattoo on his chest didn't know it was a Nazi tattoo?

You know we forced that guy to withdraw his candidacy, right?

After it came out that he might have raped someone.

There were a lot of people on the left noting that a totenkopf was a big red flag warning of others lurking. The centrist consultants tried to push past it, as they often do, and that's one of the big issues I have with the Dem establishment.

Meanwhile, the Republicans elected and continue to rabidly support a court adjudicated actual rapist (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-car...) to the Presidency, who appointed someone with similarly questionable tattoos to be the SecDef (https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5191413/peter-hegseths-...). I think I'm comfortable with the contrast.

That's insane revisionism. The center Democrats do not support the progressive wing of the party. The DSA types were all in on him and willing to look past just about everything. It wasn't until the actual rape allegations that Bernie Sanders withdrew his endorsement.

> Meanwhile, the Republicans...

Meanwhile, whataboutism.

Such highly-public but deniable signals of support are actually a very, very common tactic of extremist movements.

But at the end of the day you know what you saw. Reflects very poorly.