#elon the fascist

[autumngracy]

Musk to Unions: The Nazis Are Coming - by Jim Stewartson

Okay. Time for my two cents.

As a graphic designer, I would like the point something out here.

As the article says, the DOGE logo has 8 stars under the banner and 8 stars on the flag inside the gear; the number 88 being code for "Heil Hitler," as H is the 8th letter of the alphabet.

And yes the 3rd Reich did originally have a golden gear symbol around the swastika on their flag, with 14 teeth—which can also be found, with the exact same number of teeth, in the DOGE logo.

As stated above, 14 is also an important number for Neo-Nazis, being the number of words in the most famous Neo-Nazi slogan of all time, with the number itself becoming a dogwhistle for other Nazis, ESPECIALLY when paired with the number 88.

"Together, the numbers form a general endorsement of white supremacy and its beliefs. As such, they are ubiquitous within the white supremacist movement - as graffiti, in graphics and tattoos, even in screen names and e-mail addresses, such as aryanprincess1488@hate.net. Some white supremacists will even price racist merchandise, such as t-shirts or compact discs, for $14.88." (via the Anti-Defamation League)

The official DOGE logo, from Wikipedia, for reference:

Now, here's the rub:

Given the strange artifacting, imperfect colors, wonky lines (note the edges of the letters in DOGE, for example, or the extremely warped stars), and the fact this is a poorly made jpeg rather than a vector file (which would be the standard for any digital logo design) I believe this logo was, at least in part, created using AI.

It's also horribly designed in general—just look at the poor alignment of the top banner text to both itself and the curve of the ribbon it's on. Or at the (lack of) alignment of the stars beneath it. Or at the stars, in general, on the flag the dog is holding and around the inside of the gear. There seems to have been some attempt of the AI to mimic an embossing effect on these stars, only to fail miserably and leave unrecognizable dark shapes inside of them.

The eyebrows of the dog have a strange 3-dimensional quality to them that the rest of the dog lacks. The finial of the flag the dog is holding lines up, uncomfortably, in perfect sync with the line of its muzzle (not a huge flaw, per se, but something visually awkward enough that most designers would not leave as such).

The logo isn't even cropped properly; there's empty space underneath it, and yet the sides have been cropped too close, cutting off the edge of the ribbon's shadow.

And yet, despite AI being awful at getting prompts right, and clearly struggling to output a clean and "professional-looking" design here, whoever was responsible for making this image (whether through use of AI or otherwise)—despite their disregarding numerous other, blatant design flaws—still bothered to make sure it had 14 teeth on the gear, and two separate sets of 8 stars.

Coincidence? Absolutely not.

And another thing of note: the stars making up the sets of 8-8 are all relatively perfect (or intentionally stylized) shapes, while in comparison, the stars around the inside of the gear, as well as on the flag the dog is holding, are extremely warped, lacking some of their points, and varying in size and spacing—leading me to the conclusion that AI (poorly) generated those stars. And because they did not hold the same significance as the other stars, the "artist" responsible for making this logo did not bother to fix them.

Whereas, with the other sets of stars, the "artist" may have edited the file retroactively and personally placed those stars themselves (which I believe may be true at least in the case of the set beneath the ribbon, as they look VERY crisp comparatively), or at least cleaned up their AI generated design. While, again, neglecting the other, very badly generated sets of stars.

Because those ones weren't the important ones.

In conclusion,

In my professional opinion as a graphic designer, I can tell you with confidence that no designer on the face of the earth would or could have created an image like this—with all its combined, hyper-specific idiosyncrasies—accidentally.