Their undeserving little smiles are called “einsatzgruppens.”
Big lies. Billionaire worship. White supremacy. Patriarchy. Chickenhawkery. Smirkiness.
Also posted at my website.
Let’s begin with a moment of silence. The term “white man’s war face” is being laid to rest.
As I send this phrase up into the universal ether, please wish it well.
Bye-bye, White Man’s War Face.
The Right has mutated over the years. They give off a pseudo-militaristic vibe nowadays and this is what inspired the W.M.W.F. idea.
The passive-aggressive smirks they like to flash while stating insensitive remarks or outright lies. Their willful obtuseness and spiteful cutesiness. “White man’s war face” encapsulated the essence of it all.
White Man’s War Face.® The official face of grievance politics.™
Some wise person named a type of fella the Schrodinger’s Douchebag. These empathy-challenged types enjoy sporting the W.M.W.F. while they claim to be victims of cancel culture or talk about the dangers of overpopulation.
Whenever I see stink-eyed bros promoting the Big Lie or railing against participation trophies, the whole lounge act reminds me that the Right has been transformed by men who supported the Vietnam War as young men, but did everything they could to dodge the draft.
Yep, the conservative movement is now owned by men like Donald “Bonespurs” Trump, Rush “Buttwarts” Limbaugh, Dick “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.” Cheney, and Ted “Pooshorts” Nugent.
War faces. White man’s war faces. To some, they’re the same thing.
The Right-leaning warmongers of my youth…those crotchety grumpsters were battle-crazed, WWII-hardened-career-Cold-Warrior mofos. Those psychos’ war faces were honest-to-goodness, undiagnosed-PTSD war faces. If you were a kid and they fired that glare at you, you know: their looks contained zero smirkiness.
Compared to the modern Right, those old timers make more sense. In a draconian, cuckoo-bananas kind of way, I mean.
When the 2021 Right talks about civil war, it’s a joke. Never forget: they want to instigate, then sic the police on people. They plan on wearing big ol’ White Man’s War Faces the whole time.
As a handle, W.M.W.F. rolls off the tongue. Me — the professional writer with a few books to my name — I loved my little four-word creation. It contained the perfect amount of irony. (I’m Gen X. We love that shit.) It oh-so-aptly-described the person who fantasizes about dialing 911 on the entire nation.
But I have to be honest: the word “einsatzgruppen” describes this smirk more aptly. Especially in the Summer of 2021.
Godwin…you know…the guy who penned Godwin’s Law…well, he has suspended Godwin’s Law. It’s okay to use the word “Nazi” when bringing up the sociopathic supremacists who snapped after Barack Obama got elected President.
Who were the Einsatzgruppen?
In 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Four fighting divisions, each with thousands of men, rolled eastward to seize farmland and oil fields for the Reich.
A unit containing around 700 men followed each combat division. Those units were called Einsatzgruppen. (Besides that Wikipedia link, check out the Netflix documentary, Einsatzgruppen: the Nazi Death Squads.)
Einsatzgruppen were tasked with fostering terror through the murder of defenseless Russians. After the fighting ceased and the combat groups left, Einsatzgruppen teams descended into nearby villages and rounded up men, women, children, old folks. More often than not, they took villagers to the outskirts and forced them to dig the ditches that would become their graves.
Einsatzgruppen did not engage with the Red Army or guerrilla troops. They shot unarmed folks in the back. Famine and disease ravaged this part of the world. Einsatzgruppen executed the starving and the sick.
On the front lines, German combat troops lived in the mud and snow, got shelled and bombed, fought for days on little sleep and food.
In the rear, the Einsatzgruppen rose out of bed, ate breakfast, showered, readied themselves to spend the day firing guns or directing others to fire guns at terrified mothers, fathers, farmers, teachers, retirees, school kids, tradesmen. At the end of the day, they returned to sheltered areas and enjoyed hot food and good drink.
Educated men and business executives joined their ranks. Some held doctorates. It’s a safe bet that many of them once ridiculed Hitler’s Brownshirt thugs, only to wholeheartedly commit to the homicidal agenda after the Nazis seized power.
In the post-war years, they talked about their time in the East nonchalantly. Committing mass murder did not bother former members of the Einsatzgruppen.
It all seemed very…Trumpian.
The modern Right does not want a civil war. They want to act like Einsatzgruppen.
We need to talk honestly about the modern Right. They promote racism. They aim to rob women of their rights. They know that climate change is real, no matter how much they say otherwise. Their attack on the vote is coordinated and well-financed.
The Right embraces fascism.
If Einsatzgruppen and Proud Boys ever had the chance to meet up, they would discover that they had a lot in common, I’m guessing.
And who knows? The average, MAGA-hatted pro-lifer who laughs off the pandemic’s high death toll might see eye-to-eye with the average Einsatzgruppen Kommando who shot babies.
Steve Bannon, Eric Trump, Moscow Mitch, Tucker Carlson, Kevin McCarthy, J.D. Vance, Greg Abbott — so many modern Right wingers seem to be tickling themselves silly as they do their Big Lie schtick and shamelessly shit on truth.
Their resentment-filled theatrics would make the Einsatzgruppen proud.
Some earlier posts:
• The four horseshits of the apocalypse.
• The era of anti-Semitic tightwaddery.
• When terms don’t mean what they seem to mean.
• Chevychasing it.
• Alan Berg: hi from Earth.
I also write fiction. I have two dark comedies available, Fearkiller (Volume 1) and Notes from Trillionaire Island: Fearkiller (Volume 2), as well as Revolutionizer Alpha, the first book in a sci-fi series. I also wrote a story about God. It was weird, but then I decided to make the story and its sequel free. And all of the sudden, it didn’t seem as weird. Writing about God is much less weird when you write about God without charging money for it.
