Ben Collins, a senior reporter on the “dystopia beat” for NBC News, warned the journalists on Thursday night not to parrot the far-right term “Dark MAGA.”
The term was used by outgoing Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) earlier on Thursday in a threatening message vowing revenge against those in the GOP who worked for his primary defeat on Tuesday.
“It’s time for the rise of the new right, it’s time for Dark MAGA to truly take command,” Cawthorn wrote on Instagram. “We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We are coming.”
As news media quickly picked up the story, the term “Dark MAGA” made it into headlines – a practice Collins immediately warned against.
“Reporters shouldn’t accept the branding on Dark MAGA. There are plenty of words for revanchist politics based on grievance and lies. It’s accelerationist violence, fascism, authoritarianism,” Collins wrote on Twitter. Revanchism is a term in political science derived from the French word for
“Don’t sanitize it with cute Batman movie words—even if they self-identify as bad guys,” he added.
“If we let fascist, retributive political violence become just another meme, we’ve failed everyone. Time to step up,” Collins concluded in a message to his fellow reporters.
Newsweek’s Giulia Carbonaro took a deep dive into the term “Dark MAGA” in April, sourcing its origins.
Carbonaro wrote that the term first appeared as a hashtag “on Twitter on January 21, and it had become increasingly popular by March. It can now be found in thousands of memes on Telegram and TikTok as well.”
“More of a meme than a political slogan, Dark MAGA is a post-alt-right aesthetic that promotes an authoritarian version of Trump in dystopian, Terminator-like images,” she explained, adding, “In some, the Trump Tower is painted entirely in black and the former president is seen piercing through the screen with blue laser eyes.”
Carbonaro explained how to pinpoint a “Dark MAGA” meme, noting they often include “images edited in red and black or red and blue, featuring people with blue laser eyes often holding weapons or standing in front of neo-Nazi symbols.”
Read Cawthorn’s full “Dark MAGA” statement below:
There are other National figures who I believe are patriots, but I am on a mission now to expose those who say and promise one thing yet
legislate and work towards another, self-profiteering, globalist goal. The time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end. It’s time for the rise of the new right, it’s time for Dark MAGA to truly take command. We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We are coming.
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