Items

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  2020-06

  The Overton Window Shift

  This meme is in reference to President Ronald Reagan’s gun control measures, which are a callback to the sentiments of a large number of gun-owning former Trump supporters that have been left in the dust by the President’s increasingly authoritarian and draconian attitude towards the Second Amendment. Once he started saying things such as “I prefer to take the guns first and go through due process second” and advocating for expanded red flag laws, many libertarian-leaning conservatives realized that the Republican Party was not going to preserve or prevent infringement on their Second Amendment rights. The final nail in the coffin came with the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, when riot police across the country began abusing protestors and onlookers. When right-wing libertarian militias grabbed their kits and began protecting BLM protesters from police and protecting businesses from rioters, they were targeted by counterterrorism elements of the federal government. This meme represents the complete and total lack of faith that most gun owners now have in the Republican Party.
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  2020-09-02

  Justice For Sophie March

  This social media post is in regard to a march. This march was a crowdsourced effort to save a 9-year-old Texas girl, Sophie Long, from her mother and stepfather that had been allegedly molesting her repeatedly. After a gag order had been placed on Sophie’s father for publicly revealing this information, a judge that allegedly was friends with Sophie’s mother placed a gag order on him and banned him from seeing Sophie. Furthermore, a GoFundMe started by Sophie’s father to raise money for legal fees was taken down. The police, some of whom were alleged to be friends with Sophie’s stepfather, refused to intervene. Following the public spread of this information on social media, a group of young, far-right libertarians that called themselves the “boogaloo boys” (who are mostly known for marching in solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters against police brutality in May-June 2020) organized a march near the judge’s house in which they would protest the handling of Sophie’s case. This picture details when and where the march would be taking place. The ad mentions instructions to bring supplies such as guns and ammunition, water, flags, and heavy equipment like wood chippers or stump grinders. The last bit is a reference to some boogaloo boys’ belief that pedophiles are subhuman, which spawned several memes about pedophiles and other child predators being thrown through wood chippers feet first. Ultimately, the march proved successful. Sophie’s case was assigned to a new judge, her stepfather and mother are being investigated for the sexual abuse of a child, and Sophie and her brothers are in the custody of their father for the time being. This digital artifact, when examined, is an illustration of how little faith the American public has in the police or the court system’s ability to execute true justice in the country, and how many see it fit to take on that responsibility themselves through their own means.