Trump's big, beautiful gulag

The Concentration Camp Reimagined As A Hype House

President Donald Trump toured a new migrant detention center in Florida this week that Republicans are calling “Alligator Alcatraz.” When asked if the center was called “Alligator Alcatraz” because escapees might be eaten by the alligators living nearby, Trump responded, “I guess that’s the concept.”

“Snakes are fast but alligators — we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator. Don’t run in a straight line, run like this,” the president said, waving his hand in a zig-zag motion.

The ACLU has called Alligator Alcatraz an “attack on humanity, indigenous sovereignty, and constitutional rights.” The Florida GOP has responded by selling Alligator Alcatraz merch on their website. I guess Trump supporters are the kind of people who would love to own a concentration camp-themed beer koozie.

Joining Trump on his visit was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and a cadre of right-wing influencers, who were all more than happy to shoot videos from inside the camp. Although, apparently Noem is feuding with DeSantis because he took the hosts of Fox & Friends on a tour of the camp a week before the supposed public launch this week. It’s sorta comforting to know how much these people hate each other.

According to Anna Eskamani, a Democratic representative from Florida, the facility, which appears to be nothing more than barely enclosed bunkers full of chainlink fencing and bunkbeds, cost $450 million and is already flooding. “Not only is this an environmental disaster, but it is inhumane and not even close to being safe,” Eskamani wrote on TikTok. Democrats would like our domestic gulags to be humane, safe, and affordable, thank you very much.

This is not the first migrant detention center in the US, of course. There is an entire network of both public and private Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities spread across the country. There is also the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which has been repurposed recently to hold migrants. But Alligator Alcatraz is a decidedly different approach. It is both highly advertised and on US soil. The assumption being that not only will Trump’s supporters not care about the human rights abuses, but, like the beer koozies, they might even like them. Which is an opinion you can only have if you’ve never been to one of these camps before.

I reported on the European “migrant crisis” in the 2010s. I was inside the Calais Jungle in France when the detainees lit it on fire in 2016. Many of them had been there for over a year, living in a makeshift camp built in a landfill full of toxic waste. By the time I arrived it had grown into a shantytown full of sewage and standing water. I spoke to detainees there so desperate to leave that they were holding on to the bottom of cars and hiding in engine compartments of aid vehicles, hoping that one of them might cross the English Channel to the UK.

I also spent time at the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, often called the "Guantanamo Bay of Europe.” It was built inside of a prison on the Greek-Turkish border, with spillover camps spreading across the hills outside the facility. Inside, migrants slept behind bars, outside, they slept in tents. While I was there, Greek authorities detained me and seized my camera after I tried to shoot video of the conditions inside the prison. Nowadays they’d probably just send a YouTuber in for a state-sanctioned tour. According to WhatsApp videos I obtained from detainees inside the prison after I was barred from filming, police regularly physically assaulted migrants. Detainees were also forced to hoard water bottles to clean themselves. And they used garbage to “winterize” their tents when it got cold outside. My point is that these camps, by design, cannot ever be humane.

The Trump administration’s decision to publicize something like Alligator Alcatraz is not just a useful weapon that they can now threaten their enemies — and Elon Musk — with. It’s also a distinctly new form of propaganda. Something they seem to have picked up from the video tours of Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) in El Salvador. The concentration camp reimagined as a hype house. A place to make content, both real and AI-generated, that glorifies the power of the state. What Democratic super-poster Will Stancil described this week as “pornography for Trump's sadistic base.” But also content that desensitizes you. That normalizes state violence and, most importantly, turns it into a meme. Trump’s administration knows that most effective propaganda of the 21st century is viral, ephemeral, and, crucially, stupid. Something CNN hosts can joke about on air, distracted by how idiotic the name is. How goofy the T-shirts are. Completely removed from the human misery happening behind closed doors.

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A Really Good Realtor Video

kylehuckabee

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The Oligarchs Are Looking For A New York Mayoral Candidate

Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman wrote a Long Post on X last week, promising to fundraise for a “centrist candidate who could go toe-to-toe with [Zohran] Mamdani on the campaign trail and on the debate stage.” Ackman does acknowledge, however, that this “centrist candidate” would have to be a write-in lol because all of the spots on the ballot are full for November.

This, obviously, will not work at all, but it’s important to see how brazen oligarchs like Ackman are about wanting to dump money into the election to block Mamdani’s likely victory. Mamdani’s main opposition right now is a Republican candidate who owns a bunch of cats and seems to genuinely have brain damage, current New York Mayor Eric Adams, who has a different kind of brain damage, and possibly Andrew Cuomo, who doesn’t appear to have brain damage, but sucks in almost every conceivable way.

Anyways, excited to see who gets to burn all of Ackman’s money!

AI Slopaganda

Trump, over on his Truth Social account, as well as the administration’s official X.com accounts have gone all in on AI content. Also, Thomas Kinkade paintings, apparently, which actually serve the same purpose as AI art for reasons I will explain in a sec.

The video embedded above is an AI-generated video of Trump playing “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey. The video was originally uploaded to TikTok by a user that goes by @pro_ai_artist, who does not actually seem to be pro-Trump exactly. For instance, they make a lot of videos depicting Trump with monkeys for some reason.

But it doesn’t really matter what the original intent of @pro_ai_artist was. It seems clear that AI art’s biggest utility right now is aspirationalism. The ability to quickly and cheaply generate a vision of the future for Trump supporters. And I’ve written before about how AI art is to modern fascism what futurism was to 20th-century fascism, but the Homeland Security X account posting a Thomas Kinkade painting — and a right-wing user getting mad at them and AI-generating a more “futuristic” version — unlocked something for me. Unlike 20th-century futurism, AI art is, by definition, cobbled together out of previous art styles. An AI model cannot create anything new, only remix what it’s ingested. Which is an apt metaphor for the Trump administration. An aspirational vision of the future that’s completely defined by nostalgia. A complete cultural dead end.

The TikTok Hair Stylist That Asks For Consent Before Cutting Hair Got Accused Of Being A Witch

@rosygirlgrace

Should I say where it is? Ever heard of anything like this? #haircut #hex #hairfail #halloween #hairsalon #curse #salon #badhaircut #voodo... See more

A TikTok user named @rosygirlgrace made a video this week claiming that she was, uh, like, put under some kind of evil spell while getting her haircut. She claims there was spooky music and a ring of salt around her chair and a bunch of other “threatening stuff.” She also said that she thinks the hairdresser put a “voodoo hex” on her. This will be important later.

In the comments @rosygirlgrace confirmed that the salon she went to was the very popular JPalm Hairdressing, in Omaha, Nebraska, which has gone viral repeatedly as the place that asks customers what their pronouns are and if they give consent for getting their hair cut.

JPalm is now getting a bunch of harassment because of @rosygirlgrace’s video, but, incidentally, so is @rosygirlgrace. Users are particularly mad at @rosygirlgrace because she used the word “voodoo,” to describe the witchcraft that could have possibly been used at the salon. Thankfully @rosygirlgrace has since apologized. Just a normal week on TikTok.

Anime Horse Girl Racing Is So Hot Right Now

Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a 2021 game that’s suddenly become very popular on Steam in the US thanks to a huge ad push and its developer is even sponsoring the Kentucky Derby. It’s based on an anime with the same name, which depicts like cute anime girl versions of famous race horses. And like the horse girls are sort of idols, also. Like imagine cute anime girls with horse ears running around a track.

Anyways, a bunch of streamers are now playing the game and I’ve even seen a few users betting on the races. The TikTok edits are pretty wild too. Here’s one more good video actually.

A Real Good Bit

@ro_cocoa

The Wonderwall of it all 🥴 Please don’t send him hate guys, it’s just silly, he’s a kid @Green Day @Green Day Inc. @Green Day Italy #greenday

Some Stray Links

• “Cloudflare Introduces Default Blocking of A.I. Data Scrapers”

• “Racist AI-generated videos are the newest slop garnering millions of views on TikTok”

• “G/O Media Winds Down, Selling Off One of Its Last Sites”

P.S. here’s a good post.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***