\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRight-militant symbolism encountered in the last two months playing the Battlefield franchise of online shooters:
\n
- One Nazi flag profile image, all colors and proportions on-model
\n- A wide variety of South American users and private servers with 4-letter clan tags and logos (frequently in quartered unit patch format with skulls and lightning bolts as prominent elements) that map to local paramilitaries
\n- A few Rising Sun flags and uyoku dantai slogans
\n- (just now) one profile tag consisting of a large silver police shield bearing an image of a modern rifle above the large numbers \u201c88\u2033 in blue
\nLeft-militant symbolism:
\n
- One profile image of a red flag with yellow hammer and sickle flapping in the wind
Since then (11/10/16):
- A Kek flag
\n- Several Pepe variants
\n- The usual Nazi flags
\n- A swastika made of right-facing handgun stamps that was actually the most novel take on the subject I\u2019ve seen in a while
\n- A LOT of Blue Lives Matter iconography - the American flag (often subdued color) with one blue stripe, the Punisher skull, often with \u201cfirst responder\u201d subculture signifiers like the numbers 5.11, etc.
5.11 clothing is far Right now? What political affiliation is Dickies? Timberland boots? LL Bean?
Being a fan of comic book character The Punisher is far Right? What political affiliation does liking Spiderman indicate? Deadpool? Captain America?
Seriously? You\u2019re tarring all first responders as far Right? We\u2019re legit going with the \u201cfiremen up against the wall\u201d thing here?
This seems messy, yeah.
I do frequently see the Punisher skull as a right-authoritarian symbol. I\u2019m not even sure most of the users know it\u2019s from comics, though that\u2019s obviously the tough-on-crime connection. I think a lot of them might just find it badass.
Similarly, 5.11 Tactical is a weird combo of sepratist-right, authoritarian-right, and simple practicality. It\u2019s obviously not full-rightist, it was founded by climber-hippy Royal Robbins and a lot of people buy it like they buy Carhartt. But\u2026 it first got major traction with FBI agents, and their April Fools tactical kilt actually sold super well with the Ammon Bundy utilikilt crowd. (And that\u2019s it\u2019s own contradiction, of course. Lumping the ATF and the Waco crowd together as \u201cfar right\u201d is damn sloppy, but there\u2019s alignment there.) I have raised an eyebrow on seeing 5.11 gear in totally needless contexts, but it\u2019s far from a clear symbol.
There was a great photo a while back of a website about government surveillance selling masks to hide your face - printed with the Punisher skull in thin blue line colors! I\u2019m tempted to file the whole thing as a vague counterculture mashup too ill-defined to read much into.
People who intend to actually do things, like working, rescuing people, engaging in gun violence, and so on, like good equipment with which to do so. The rare practical revolutionary Communist is no different about their priorities for equipment.
NOT EVERYONE BUYS CLOTHING FOR SIGNALING PURPOSES. Some people buy shit to actually use, and they prioritize comfort, durability, pockets custom made to hold EMT gear or spare magazines, and having an extended crotch panel so they don\u2019t split their pants while crawling around over if it properly signals their ideological affiliation.
If you\u2019re sincerely planning on maybe running through bushes and shooting people, you will be interested in an accurate easy to use gun that doesn\u2019t jam and some pants that won\u2019t rip, etc. to do it all with. It doesn\u2019t matter what ideology, if any, you plan on supporting via running through bushes, etc. you are going to want the same basic equipment.
There exists a cluster that overlaps \u201csuspicious of the government, likes guns, and would like a thing in Punisher skull with a thin blue line\u201d You already mentioned them as \u201cthe Ammon Bundy utilikilt crowd\u201d! (Utilikilts don\u2019t actually correlate to being a 3%er or in a militia, imo btw) but you mean militia/3% types.
Also, @isaacsapphire, L.L. Bean is ‘70s Vermont hippie turned '80s yuppie, Timberland boots-wearers probably supported BLM, and I’m not too sure about the particulars but when I lived in Echo Park when there were still blue collar work clothes shops Dickies and Ben Davis were definitely trying to differentiate what kind of person bought each.
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