Police and military uniforms have converged on a “special forces” look.
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RE: https://hachyderm.io/@rationaldoge/115953632587673647
Police and military uniforms have converged on a “special forces” look. SNL mocked ICE for wearing camo: “Where did you think Minnesota is??” But that’s the •look•: camo, tactical gear. It is the look ICE officers crave: “This is so cool, like Call of Duty” one said. And now you can’t tell all the militaries and militarized police forces apart, to the point where they have to wear safety vests over camo. High-vis! Over camo! The irony.
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RE: https://hachyderm.io/@rationaldoge/115953632587673647
Police and military uniforms have converged on a “special forces” look. SNL mocked ICE for wearing camo: “Where did you think Minnesota is??” But that’s the •look•: camo, tactical gear. It is the look ICE officers crave: “This is so cool, like Call of Duty” one said. And now you can’t tell all the militaries and militarized police forces apart, to the point where they have to wear safety vests over camo. High-vis! Over camo! The irony.
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This is a fashion trend. It’s not just functional; camo serves no purpose of disguising whatsoever on Minneapolis streets. Militaries are dressing the part — and ICE is playing dress-up.
Avery Trufelman’s excellent podcast Articles of Interest spent an entire season on this topic, under the name “Gear.” Here’s on relevant episode.
2/2
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This is a fashion trend. It’s not just functional; camo serves no purpose of disguising whatsoever on Minneapolis streets. Militaries are dressing the part — and ICE is playing dress-up.
Avery Trufelman’s excellent podcast Articles of Interest spent an entire season on this topic, under the name “Gear.” Here’s on relevant episode.
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@inthehands they are very effectively cosplaying the SA
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This is a fashion trend. It’s not just functional; camo serves no purpose of disguising whatsoever on Minneapolis streets. Militaries are dressing the part — and ICE is playing dress-up.
Avery Trufelman’s excellent podcast Articles of Interest spent an entire season on this topic, under the name “Gear.” Here’s on relevant episode.
2/2
"This is a fashion trend. It’s not just functional; camo serves no purpose of disguising whatsoever on Minneapolis streets. Militaries are dressing the part — and ICE is playing dress-up."
#ICE is 99% #LARP #Cosplay by over-weight men who can't even do (by all reports) one situp
More real than Call of Duty on their PCs any day
LARP cosplay, live-fire, live ammunition, shoot-to-kill whenever
What could go wrong?
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This is a fashion trend. It’s not just functional; camo serves no purpose of disguising whatsoever on Minneapolis streets. Militaries are dressing the part — and ICE is playing dress-up.
Avery Trufelman’s excellent podcast Articles of Interest spent an entire season on this topic, under the name “Gear.” Here’s on relevant episode.
2/2
@inthehands Aestheticization is a common trend in fascist regimes - Walter Benjamin's 'Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' goes into it, iirc he frames it as a way of giving the fascist in-group proletariat an outlet that does not risk fundamental structural changes.
But it functions more broadly as a means of social control, pacifying & reassuring the in-group with the spectacle, while terrorizing out-groups.
So the video game comparison is not an accident - it's kinda the point. -
@inthehands Aestheticization is a common trend in fascist regimes - Walter Benjamin's 'Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' goes into it, iirc he frames it as a way of giving the fascist in-group proletariat an outlet that does not risk fundamental structural changes.
But it functions more broadly as a means of social control, pacifying & reassuring the in-group with the spectacle, while terrorizing out-groups.
So the video game comparison is not an accident - it's kinda the point.@inthehands The aesthetics of law, structure, competence, fighting some enemy, etc. is clearly a major priority for the current regime - and if you look at right-wing news outlets, it's working for a significant the part of the sliver of the population that they actually care about.
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"This is a fashion trend. It’s not just functional; camo serves no purpose of disguising whatsoever on Minneapolis streets. Militaries are dressing the part — and ICE is playing dress-up."
#ICE is 99% #LARP #Cosplay by over-weight men who can't even do (by all reports) one situp
More real than Call of Duty on their PCs any day
LARP cosplay, live-fire, live ammunition, shoot-to-kill whenever
What could go wrong?
@FinchHaven @inthehands This has nothing to do with LARP or cosplay. I see this pop up every now and then in discussions revolving around ICE, but it's just wrong. Both cosplay and LARP are about fandom and crafts, not violence. Violent forces will find no support in those communities, so please stop comparing.
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@FinchHaven @inthehands This has nothing to do with LARP or cosplay. I see this pop up every now and then in discussions revolving around ICE, but it's just wrong. Both cosplay and LARP are about fandom and crafts, not violence. Violent forces will find no support in those communities, so please stop comparing.
Sorry to interrupt your fantasy gameplay with a cold, hard splash from the real world
You can go back to CoD now
Or are you a Tarky stan?
cc @inthehands
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@inthehands Aestheticization is a common trend in fascist regimes - Walter Benjamin's 'Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' goes into it, iirc he frames it as a way of giving the fascist in-group proletariat an outlet that does not risk fundamental structural changes.
But it functions more broadly as a means of social control, pacifying & reassuring the in-group with the spectacle, while terrorizing out-groups.
So the video game comparison is not an accident - it's kinda the point.@miss_rodent I love that essay. He didn't spend that much time on the aesthetics of fascism as he did with other points, but in part because it was well understood at the time. Fascism is defined in part by performative violence as well as destruction for its own sake, and the ultimate expression of it is war.
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This is a fashion trend. It’s not just functional; camo serves no purpose of disguising whatsoever on Minneapolis streets. Militaries are dressing the part — and ICE is playing dress-up.
Avery Trufelman’s excellent podcast Articles of Interest spent an entire season on this topic, under the name “Gear.” Here’s on relevant episode.
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@inthehands as a veteran, I find the appropriation of military motifs by civil law enforcement extremely offensive, but also incredibly dangerous.
A particularly egregious example, that I wish people would address more often, is the use of the word "civilians" to describe people that are not whatever strain of police is using the term. "Civilians" refers to people within the general civil populace, as opposed to the military. The police (in all their various forms) are members of the civil society, and as such, civilians themselves.
Words have meaning, and those meanings matter. When we allow these subtle shifts in language, we normalize the militarization of police forces nationwide, but more than that, we reinforce the self-image of the police as separate from the rest of civil society. And history shows that when people view themselves as apart from civil society, they often see themselves unbeholden to the norms and ethics that govern civil society.
One can draw a pretty straight line from that to these guys cosplaying soldier, wearing full tactical gear, riding on MRAPs and HMMWVs, assault rifles on their shoulders like the movies, belt-fed automatic weapons mounted on turrets in the background for Kristi Noem's photo-ops. We, collectively, should have never let anyone get away with normalizing this from the second it started. Yet how many articles does one read in the press where no one ever bothers challenging a cop when they refer to the people that they've supposedly sworn to protect and serve as "civilians", as if they, themselves, are not?
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RE: https://hachyderm.io/@rationaldoge/115953632587673647
Police and military uniforms have converged on a “special forces” look. SNL mocked ICE for wearing camo: “Where did you think Minnesota is??” But that’s the •look•: camo, tactical gear. It is the look ICE officers crave: “This is so cool, like Call of Duty” one said. And now you can’t tell all the militaries and militarized police forces apart, to the point where they have to wear safety vests over camo. High-vis! Over camo! The irony.
1/2
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Sorry to interrupt your fantasy gameplay with a cold, hard splash from the real world
You can go back to CoD now
Or are you a Tarky stan?
cc @inthehands
@FinchHaven @inthehands Oh look, you just like to be disrespectful and offend people on the internet. Go ahead and contribute to the hate in your country then. Sad.
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This is a fashion trend. It’s not just functional; camo serves no purpose of disguising whatsoever on Minneapolis streets. Militaries are dressing the part — and ICE is playing dress-up.
Avery Trufelman’s excellent podcast Articles of Interest spent an entire season on this topic, under the name “Gear.” Here’s on relevant episode.
2/2
@inthehands what I find interesting is that these “uniforms” blur the line between countries, paramilitary goons are the same everywhere, they are not a symbol of authority, but of force.
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@inthehands Aestheticization is a common trend in fascist regimes - Walter Benjamin's 'Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' goes into it, iirc he frames it as a way of giving the fascist in-group proletariat an outlet that does not risk fundamental structural changes.
But it functions more broadly as a means of social control, pacifying & reassuring the in-group with the spectacle, while terrorizing out-groups.
So the video game comparison is not an accident - it's kinda the point.@miss_rodent
Oh 100% it’s the point. I do recommend listening to Gear: she casts a much wider net than fascism, and it’s a really subtle and interesting series. -
This is a fashion trend. It’s not just functional; camo serves no purpose of disguising whatsoever on Minneapolis streets. Militaries are dressing the part — and ICE is playing dress-up.
Avery Trufelman’s excellent podcast Articles of Interest spent an entire season on this topic, under the name “Gear.” Here’s on relevant episode.
2/2
I’ve had this contingent of the language police show up in my replies a few times now over the word “cosplay,” and look…
OK, I get it, I get the instinct to say “Don’t drag me into this!” and I applaud the effort to push fascists out of communities, yes to all that…
…and also we need to recognize that what ICE is doing absolutely •is• cosplay. The word means “costume play.” It refers to assembling and wearing costumes that are not necessarily functional, but show affinity for a particular subculture by reproducing characters from that subculture’s popular narratives.
ICE are cosplaying Call of Duty. That is an accurate description of what’s happening. (Listen to “Gear.”)
I make software and I make music. I don’t think either one of those things •should• be about violence. I don’t •want• them to be about violence. But both are used in the service of violence, like it or not. I shout the violence out whenever it shows up. But would be ridiculous for me to point at what Palantir does and say “That’s not software!” Unfortunately, it •is• software. To deny that would be beyond self-defeating; it would be irresponsible.
ICE •is• doing cosplay, and we hate it. It’s an insult to the cosplay subculture. It is an insult to the whole of humanity. Fascism creeps into all of our spheres, into every beloved craft and community, and the response is never to pretend it’s not there. The response is to drive it out.
@wildrikku
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@wildrikku/115956545807535535 -
@inthehands what I find interesting is that these “uniforms” blur the line between countries, paramilitary goons are the same everywhere, they are not a symbol of authority, but of force.
@thias
Listen to “Gear!” -
@inthehands they are very effectively cosplaying the SA
@Nicovel0 @inthehands Greg Bovino's style has been compared to Ernst Rohm....
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@inthehands as a veteran, I find the appropriation of military motifs by civil law enforcement extremely offensive, but also incredibly dangerous.
A particularly egregious example, that I wish people would address more often, is the use of the word "civilians" to describe people that are not whatever strain of police is using the term. "Civilians" refers to people within the general civil populace, as opposed to the military. The police (in all their various forms) are members of the civil society, and as such, civilians themselves.
Words have meaning, and those meanings matter. When we allow these subtle shifts in language, we normalize the militarization of police forces nationwide, but more than that, we reinforce the self-image of the police as separate from the rest of civil society. And history shows that when people view themselves as apart from civil society, they often see themselves unbeholden to the norms and ethics that govern civil society.
One can draw a pretty straight line from that to these guys cosplaying soldier, wearing full tactical gear, riding on MRAPs and HMMWVs, assault rifles on their shoulders like the movies, belt-fed automatic weapons mounted on turrets in the background for Kristi Noem's photo-ops. We, collectively, should have never let anyone get away with normalizing this from the second it started. Yet how many articles does one read in the press where no one ever bothers challenging a cop when they refer to the people that they've supposedly sworn to protect and serve as "civilians", as if they, themselves, are not?
@cross
You definitely should listen to “Gear.” -
@inthehands as a veteran, I find the appropriation of military motifs by civil law enforcement extremely offensive, but also incredibly dangerous.
A particularly egregious example, that I wish people would address more often, is the use of the word "civilians" to describe people that are not whatever strain of police is using the term. "Civilians" refers to people within the general civil populace, as opposed to the military. The police (in all their various forms) are members of the civil society, and as such, civilians themselves.
Words have meaning, and those meanings matter. When we allow these subtle shifts in language, we normalize the militarization of police forces nationwide, but more than that, we reinforce the self-image of the police as separate from the rest of civil society. And history shows that when people view themselves as apart from civil society, they often see themselves unbeholden to the norms and ethics that govern civil society.
One can draw a pretty straight line from that to these guys cosplaying soldier, wearing full tactical gear, riding on MRAPs and HMMWVs, assault rifles on their shoulders like the movies, belt-fed automatic weapons mounted on turrets in the background for Kristi Noem's photo-ops. We, collectively, should have never let anyone get away with normalizing this from the second it started. Yet how many articles does one read in the press where no one ever bothers challenging a cop when they refer to the people that they've supposedly sworn to protect and serve as "civilians", as if they, themselves, are not?
To put it into sharper focus: the antonym of «civilian» here would be «combatant». The mentioned usage would seem to suggest that that is how they see themselves.
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I’ve had this contingent of the language police show up in my replies a few times now over the word “cosplay,” and look…
OK, I get it, I get the instinct to say “Don’t drag me into this!” and I applaud the effort to push fascists out of communities, yes to all that…
…and also we need to recognize that what ICE is doing absolutely •is• cosplay. The word means “costume play.” It refers to assembling and wearing costumes that are not necessarily functional, but show affinity for a particular subculture by reproducing characters from that subculture’s popular narratives.
ICE are cosplaying Call of Duty. That is an accurate description of what’s happening. (Listen to “Gear.”)
I make software and I make music. I don’t think either one of those things •should• be about violence. I don’t •want• them to be about violence. But both are used in the service of violence, like it or not. I shout the violence out whenever it shows up. But would be ridiculous for me to point at what Palantir does and say “That’s not software!” Unfortunately, it •is• software. To deny that would be beyond self-defeating; it would be irresponsible.
ICE •is• doing cosplay, and we hate it. It’s an insult to the cosplay subculture. It is an insult to the whole of humanity. Fascism creeps into all of our spheres, into every beloved craft and community, and the response is never to pretend it’s not there. The response is to drive it out.
@wildrikku
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@wildrikku/115956545807535535@inthehands cosplay is an accurate term.
Doesn't mean people who cosplay in other contexts are bad.
But, these guys are pretending to be what they aren't. And are dressing as part of their pretense. Only they have guns and are told to use them.
