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Notes -
Netanyahu Conspiracy Theories on X and Mark Levin as MAGA
Quick rundown:
Needless to say, the evidence provided has not dissuaded the rumors on X. I do not think Netanyahu is dead or severely injured, but these anomalies do warrant an explanation.
Why has Netanyahu not had any sort of public presence since March 9th that would be expected from a wartime leader? During the 12-Day War he maintained a public presence and even toured damage sites from missiles and took questions. But now the first time he appears in public in quite some time is is in a pre-recorded video to mock the rumors of his death in a coffee shop?
The easiest answer for the lack of public presence is due to security concerns. But it seems pretty trivial to me for a leader like Netanyahu to maintain a public presence with very low risk, and that risk would certainly be worthy of the benefits of moralizing the Homefront and projecting confidence.
I suspect the reason for this is because Netanyahu wants Trump to be the "face" of the war- several times a day you can see Trump on the News babbling to the media about the war attracting huge amounts of attention, while we can't spare a penny for Netanyahu's own thoughts or leadership at a time it would be expected. In particular, while Trump is clearly trying to muster NATO to join the war, it would be wise for Netanyahu to be far away from weighing in on that question or publicly supporting it because it would do more harm than good.
I do not see how traditional video touchups or filtering would cause the wedding ring to disappear like it did in the video released today, any video editing experts feel free to weigh in. Barring some "yeah I edit videos all the time and I've seen this before", the most likely explanation is that the ring disappearance was a video manipulation, but one intended to misdirect the critics on X- give them a bone to chew on with a false lead.
Mark Levin is MAGA, his critics are not
Rewind to 2016, Mark Levin was an avowed Never-Trumper while the alt-right essentially memed Trump into existence against all expectations. The tables have turned, if it was not already clear what side Trump was on in this feud between the Shapiro/Levin wing of MAGA and the online Right (tbh it was already clear), Trump has picked sides unambiguously:
So there you have it, MAGA has been subsumed, the 2016 alt-right energy that propelled Trump into office is out, hopefully the "plan trusters" now can stop pretending otherwise. For its part Fox News is unsurprisingly 100% behind the war, today they had on another 2016 never-Trumper Ben Shapiro, who gave Trump's Iran War an A+ grade and remarked:
MAGA is not dead, it's the rebranded neo-conservatism. The movement has been subsumed.
Trump is right, MAGA is Trump. He created the whole political movement. The broader alt-right was inchoate and without any opportunity before Trump gave it form.
It’s actually the failure of the alt right that Trump is in power and they can’t get more of what they want. Remember that Scott Adams meme about how Democrats successfully branded Trump as Hitler, then Hitler won? Time for reflection. Mark Levin opposed Trump, now Trump likes him. Time for some reflection.
What I mean is, these impotent Twitter squabbles actually don’t mean anything. The broad base of MAGA still supports Trump and the Republican Party loves Trump. The people braying that Trump has betrayed them, however influential they might be in the small world of right-wing New York / SF influencers — don’t matter. Objectively they don’t matter because Trump has no compunctions about disappointing them. He doesn’t think about them at all. Mark Levin apparently does matter because Trump is thinking about him.
The alt-right is not why Trump won in 2016 at all. It is simply what was easiest for this insular media ecosystem to write about. Insofar as that definition of “MAGA” died it died a long time ago when Milo got canceled for being a pervert and Bannon got fired for leaking like a sieve. But again that’s not what actually matters.
This plan truster is very happy thank you very much.
All of the energy behind Trump originally came from the “alt right”, who created the memes that boosted his popularity in the first place. They were fighting the likes of Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin. I remember the exact moment when he spoke about Mexican immigration in unadorned speech and how that immediately turned up the support 10x. MAGA is Trump if we’re talking copyright but the nationalism obviously preceded him. You had to be there. The nationalist current began at least four years before Trump’s elections.
He’s on Fox News. That’s pretty much it. Unfortunately he is 80 years old. We had a guy on Fox News, they got rid of him, but now Tucker has his own show. This does allows Tucker to continue the true “alt right” spirit though. We will see where we end up over the next decade, if it looks more like the original MAGA vision or the Mark Levin vision.
I see no organic support for Trump online. I think midterms will tell. I think there are those like myself who will be voting straight D.
I was there before anyone, I was there from escalator day and faced a lot of doubters and social consequence. The arguments I could recount… The nationalist current was formless. It was there but it had no shape. In Britain it arrived in Brexit and then was squandered for ten years because there was no other figure or leader to champion it — look at Britain for an idea of where America could be without Trump, look to Britain for an idea of what “squandering MAGA” would actually mean.
I don’t really believe this “Trump gets everything from Fox News” meme mostly spread by left-wing journalists painting a picture of Trump the simpleton. (By other accounts he consumes a lot of news in all forms.)
However that’s not really my point; if Trump does just get all his idea direct from Fox News, then it’s a failure of the alt-right not to fight for it. Who’s in the editing rooms, who’s in scheduling? Ten years on the feeling is that Fox is basically no better no worse than it used to be — well at least we still have shitposts and memes!
Tucker is a grifter and not a very successful role model for how a political movement should function.
Well if you support unlimited immigration and Minneapolis daycare fraud and never arresting criminals on the trains I don’t really trust your opinions on the original MAGA spirit.
Fox and people like Levin are dying out; viewer average age is 65. And Levin would not allow any genuine MAGA person in his newsroom. It’s just unfortunately not something MAGA can change. This is entrenched media which we always hated. MAGA never cared about Fox.
Tucker was the most popular Fox show, so it worked with Tucker, for a while, until he was fired. Now he is on x: 18 million views on his Nick Fuentes interview on x, 7 million on YouTube, while Levin is lucky to get 4,000 views on his YouTube channel and 150,000 views on his Fox videos. Tucker’s video on Iran is 4.5x the views of Levin, which is insane when you remember that all Levin does is fearmonger Iran to his audience averaging 65yo. But none of that matters because it’s Trump’s favorite show. The Alt Right has no avenue to influence the 80yo Trump like that, they just have to create propaganda and wait it out.
Genuinely makes no sense. What is he grifting? What does grifting even mean to you?
Ok yeah MAGA is weak and powerless Trump has betrayed us you’re right all we can do is post on Twitter. The key thing is that this explanation absolves us of having to do anything differently, because if it were the case that Trump isn’t beyond influencing and we gave up for nothing boy that would be a shame
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