Current Events > Trump 2020 campaign accused of 'ripping off' Nazi eagle logo

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https://globalnews.ca/news/7130932/trump-nazi-eagle-logo-america-first/

Donald Trumps re-election campaign has a new America First logo and it looks a lot like the Nazi eagle used by Adolf Hitler and modern white supremacist groups, according to many critics on Twitter.

The logo, which can be found on T-shirts sold through the Trump campaign website, shows a stylized eagle grasping a circle containing the American flag. The eagle has its wings spread and its head turned to show its profile.

Photos of the new apparel quickly went viral on Twitter Wednesday, with critics sharing side-by-side images of the Trump logo and the Nazi eagle, which the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes as a hate symbol.

The Nazi symbol shows an eagle clutching a circle containing a swastika. The Trump and Nazi symbols depict the eagle in the same perched spread-wing pose, although the Nazi bird is typically drawn with more sharp-edged lines.

Trumps latest logo is yet another rip off of the Nazi logo, tweeted Qasim Rashid, a lawyer, activist and Democratic candidate for Congress.
Come. On, wrote the Lincoln Project, a Republican anti-Trump political action committee.

Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the NSA and the CIA, expressed his astonishment on Twitter with a pair of four-letter words.
Holy sh, he wrote, in a retweet thats racked up more than 26,000 likes.

Others suggested that the design was an attempt to troll Trumps left-leaning critics something the campaign has done several times in the past by altering slogans such as defund the police or Black Lives Matter.

The President of the United States is campaigning for reelection with a Nazi symbol, Bend the Arc, a U.S. Jewish political action committee, tweeted on Wednesday. Its not an accident. Bigotry is their entire brand.

The logo itself appears to be an altered stock image, as Reddit users pointed out on Thursday afternoon. Trump 2020 and America First seem to have been added to the existing photo.

The Trump campaign responded to the outcry on Twitter by suggesting, without evidence, that Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, is a secret Nazi.

Zach Parkinson, the campaigns deputy director of communications, described the comparison as so stupid in a separate tweet. Parkinson also included several photos of official U.S. seals that show eagles clasping various objects in their claws.

The images show the eagle with its head facing the opposite direction, and with its talons extended to the side.

Parkinsons tweets show several takes on the Great Seal of the United States a stylized eagle clutching an olive branch in one talon and several arrows in the other.
The olive branch and the arrows held in the eagle talons denote the power of peace and war, according to the National Museum of American Diplomacy.
The ADL notes on its website that eagles are a common symbol among nations around the world, including the U.S.

Not every image of an eagle is derivative of the Nazi eagle, it said. It is not uncommon, for example, for some Americans to mistake the Blue Eagle logo of the Roosevelt-era National Recovery Administration for a Nazi-derived symbol.

The ADL says neo-Nazis will occasionally remix the logo to show the bird clutching other symbols of hate. Occasionally, extremists will leave the circle blank where the swastika normally would appear, the ADL says. This seems to be more common in countries where the swastika is prohibited.

Various depictions of the Nazi eagle has have shown it facing either direction. The eagle facing the viewers right is known as the parteiadler (the party eagle), while the eagle facing to the left is called the reichsadler (the imperial eagle).

The Nazi eagle was a prominent symbol in Hitlers Germany, and a massive version of the logo lorded over the German Reichstag during the Second World War.

The symbol has been adopted by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists around the world since Hitlers fall, according to the ADL.

This is the second time in two weeks that the Trump campaign has been accused of using Nazi imagery. Facebook says it removed several Trump campaign ads on June 18 because they included images of an upside-down triangle a symbol the Nazis used for political prisoners. Facebook said the ads violated its policies against organized hate by using a banned hate groups symbol.

The logo emerged less than a week after Trump retweeted a video showing some of his supporters shouting White power! in a Florida retirement community. Trump eventually deleted the video and the White House claimed he hadnt heard the slogan.

Trumps America First slogan also has its roots in Nazi history, as researcher Molly McKew pointed out on Twitter.

America First was the propaganda of the American Nazi Party, she tweeted. Trump used it anyway and didnt care and basically no one called him on it.

Nazi ideology wasnt always verboten in the United States. There actually was an American Nazi Party in the 1930s, and it managed to pack about 20,000 people into New York Citys Madison Square Garden for a rally in 1939. America First was a popular slogan for the party at the time, as the Washington Post and The Atlantic have previously reported.

Trump has previously claimed that he is the least racist person in the world.

He also infamously refused to condemn white supremacists who clashed with anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides, Trump said at the time.

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Sure, I'm sure they saw the Nazi eagle logo and thought it would get by the censors, so they purposely did it.

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Trump using Nazi stuff color me shocked

I can see it

but it feels like a bit of a stretch and it cheapens criticism of the President in the eyes of his base when you stretch like this

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This administration has Stephen Miller working for them. It was intentional.

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wackyteen posted...

I can see it

but it feels like a bit of a stretch and it cheapens criticism of the President in the eyes of his base when you stretch like this

Considering this isn't the first time Trump's campaign posted something that resembles something the Nazis used.

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Wait until you guys discover military ranks and emblems.

"Eagles and circles are racist now."

Jesus, guys.

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Isolated incident #3,605 of the Trump admin skirting right up to the line of white supremacy while still leaving themselves a shred of plausible deniability for the very, very gullible.

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Isnt it similar to the marine logo?

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DiegoSanchez206 posted...

Isnt it similar to the marine logo?

From what I can see military logos have the eagle looking to the left.

this logo and the nazi logo have the eagle looking to the right. Im not an expert so someone can feel free to prove me wrong

of course this and all the other Nazi-adjacent imagery used by the trump administration might just be a huge coincidence

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TheGoldenEel posted...

From what I can see military logos have the eagle looking to the left.

this logo and the nazi logo have the eagle looking to the right. Im not an expert so someone can feel free to prove me wrong

of course this and all the other Nazi-adjacent imagery used by the trump administration might just be a huge coincidence

when the military uses it the wings are always either curved up or vertical at its sides, never completely straight out like that

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thronedfire2 posted...

when the military uses it the wings are always either curved up or vertical at its sides, never completely straight out like that

Here you see it with the wings straight out

but again, the eagle is looking left

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_(United_States)

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TheGoldenEel posted...

From what I can see military logos have the eagle looking to the left.

this logo and the nazi logo have the eagle looking to the right. Im not an expert so someone can feel free to prove me wrong

of course this and all the other Nazi-adjacent imagery used by the trump administration might just be a huge coincidence

Really? The direction the eagle is looking is the issue here? This is one of the biggest reaches yet.

ohiostate124 posted...

Really? The direction the eagle is looking is the issue here? This is one of the biggest reaches yet.

No, the fact that it uses many elements of the Nazi symbology is what is damning. Looking right. Holding a circle. Wings straight out

it could be a coincidence if it was the only time such a coincidence has happened, but trump has repeatedly used nods towards nazi and white supremacist iconology

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And don't forget that the phrase America First has its origins in the KKK.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/america-first-ku-klux-klan-slogan/

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When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labelled made in Germany; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, Americanism.

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"Sure there are countless other incidents where he used white supremacist terminology and dog whistles, but you liberals are really stretching it thin this time! Name one thing Trump did that's racist."

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of course they model their new emblem after nazis...

you think its one of their graphics designers trying to have a laugh and trump just loved the symbol? thought it resonated with him or something? i'm picturing a team of people looking on in horror as the joke entry gets picked...

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I'd be willing to write this off as a coincidence if not for other things like the red triangle and the $88 baseball. Add it all together and it starts smelling mighty fishy
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ScazarMeltex posted...

This administration has Stephen Miller working for them. It was intentional.

Isnt Stephen Miller jewish?

ohiostate124 posted...

Isnt Stephen Miller jewish?

and nick fuentes is Mexican too. Supremacists are not known for consistency or intellect.

Son Of Spam posted...

And don't forget that the phrase America First has its origins in the KKK.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/america-first-ku-klux-klan-slogan/

Gun control was originally conceived as a way to suppress minorities and swastikas were a symbol of auspiciousness and good luck before the nazis.

What's your point.

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yeah you know thats not a coincidence with how many there have been recently. At a certain point they cant all be coincidences anymore

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Nazis dont have a monopoly on birds perching on round things.

CADE FOSTER posted...

Trump using Nazi stuff color me shocked

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What the..
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I'm sure Ben Shapiro has a perfectly good argument about why this doesn't really matter.

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coh posted...

Nazis dont have a monopoly on birds perching on round things.

No. Particularly not eagles.

However, it's the artistic style of said perched eagle that is quite questionable.

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The direction the eagle is facing doesn't matter the Nazis used both.

https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1278484113918431232?s=19

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

"Eagles and circles are racist now."

Jesus, guys.

Spread-wing eagles with their heads turned in profile, clutching/perched on a circular symbol of the ruling party, is a symbol that's synonymous with Nazis.

This isn't like "this character wears a lot of red, and the Nazi flag is red, so the artist is a Nazi sympathiser and their character exists to normalise fascist iconography". It's not a handful of disparate elements that are only connected to something bad through a bunch of mental gymnastics. It's a shitty rip-off version of a Nazi symbol that's been appropriated by the President of the United States. Same bird, same pose, perched on the same shape displaying a nationalistic icon.

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The imperial eagle (Reichsadler) symbol was used for hundreds of years in the Roman empire and Catholic Church, long before the Nazi's used it.

Just putting that out there.

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Xenozoa425 posted...

The imperial eagle (Reichsadler) symbol was used for hundreds of years in the Roman empire and Catholic Church, long before the Nazi's used it.

Just putting that out there.

so was the nazi swastika, whats your point?

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solosnake posted...

so was the nazi swastika, whats your point?

Gobstoppers12 posted...

"Eagles and circles are racist now."

Jesus, guys.

Also worth noting, you can find swastikas in ancient African ruins.

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Just a reminder that he made a tweet the other day about defending heritage which came out to 14 words -- an important number in white supremacists communities. The "14 words" is the common title given to their declaration of principles. And in a post about heritage.

Between that and this, he's directly coddling white supremacists.

That's the Nazi eagle. In no uncertain terms. I don't care if Trump himself personally believes that or not, his actions have rendered any distinction inconsequential. He is functionally a white supremacist.

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But you know what? If he even addresses this, he'll say that he didn't notice a similarity or that it's not on him because he's a president and not a t-shirt designer. :/

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I am not even surprised.
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I can see this one already:

Kayleigh McEnany: "Well, Mr Trump had a very large cross just sitting around the basement of the White House and he figured burning it in the front lawn would be a more eco friendly way of disposing of it. He did not realize that would be interpreted as racist."

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Zodd3224 posted...

I can see this one already:

Kayleigh McEnany: "Well, Mr Trump had a very large cross just sitting around the basement of the White House and he figured burning it in the front lawn would be a more eco friendly way of disposing of it. He did not realize that would be interpreted as racist."

Yep.

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Xenozoa425 posted...

Also worth noting, you can find swastikas in ancient African ruins.

fucking woosh man. Imagine defending this

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I will buy it.

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solosnake posted...

fucking woosh man. Imagine defending this

Who said I'm defending? Cause I'm not. I wouldn't buy that t-shirt. I'm just pointing out the obvious lack of history that conveniently gets ignored because people love to jump to conclusions without thinking. Or doing research, more importantly.

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Son Of Spam posted...

And don't forget that the phrase America First has its origins in the KKK.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/america-first-ku-klux-klan-slogan/

So I'm gonna tell you people, if Hitler's gonna be beat
The common working people have got to take the seat
In Washington, Washington

And I'm gonna tell you workers, 'fore you cash in your checks:
They say America First, but they mean America Next
In Washington, Washington

~Woody Guthrie.
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Xenozoa425 posted...

Also worth noting, you can find swastikas in ancient African ruins.

You know damn well that's not what this is about.

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Wii_Shaker posted...

You know damn well that's not what this is about.

Yeah, that's why I added it in as an edit. To give context to things. Because there's history behind it. And also because the other guy mentioned swastikas before me.

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Xenozoa425 posted...

Yeah, that's why I added it in as an edit. To give context to things. Because there's history behind it. And also because the other guy mentioned swastikas before me.

The woosh is because you arent comprehending that the previous history is irrelevant in this case. The nazi's are the most prolific evil regime in modern history. Using the fact that they adopted their symbols from previous cultures is not a defense for this.

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solosnake posted...

The woosh is because you arent comprehending that the previous history is irrelevant in this case. The nazi's are the most prolific evil regime in modern history. Using the fact that they adopted their symbols from previous cultures is not a defense for this.

honestly dude, either tag the dude as a nazi downplayer or something, or just ignore. you're not going to change this dude's mind, all he's doing here is agitating.

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