That new video wasn't subtle. After a meme-riddled barrage of images, the video closes out with a prominent Nazi and neo-Nazi symbol, the sonnenrad, superimposed over the Florida state flag and DeSantis' head as lines of soldiers march towards the symbol. There's no non-Nazi interpretation of the ad; it's an overt utilization of white supremacist themes. Axios reports that the ad was created by DeSantis campaign speechwriter and (of course) former National Review writer Nate Hochman.
Hochman has now been fired, but it's not clear that the video had anything to do with it. Hochman was fired in the midst of deep cuts to the DeSantis campaign team as the campaign makes an attempt to "reboot" their way out of hemorrhaging money. It's also not clear who else in the campaign knew of Hochman's video(s). Axios reports the ad was made "on his own" and "secretly.” Anyone willing to buy that DeSantis campaign line without questioning it is too gullible to be in politics.
Campaign Action
There's also been no reporting as of yet linking Hochman to the other meme-riddled, 4chan-styled pro-DeSantis video DeSantis staffers had retweeted, the anti-LGBTQ+ video peppered with "masculine" images that crossed well over the line into homoerotic. That video, too, was steeped in Nazi and neo-Nazi themes of hypermasculinity and anti-gay paranoia. The amateur editing and extremely Too Online references certainly suggest both videos were created by the same person or team.
From here, we get to the Onionesque question that keeps facing Republicans: "How do all these Nazis keep making it into our inner circle?" It's a stumper, and we'll note in passing that today also sees a recent Texas Gov. Greg Abbott communications staffer sharing his thoughts on the Holocaust and the "Jewish presence in banking," just to underline how often this keeps happening.
The DeSantis campaign hired Hochman almost exactly four months ago, and he was a controversial hire from the beginning. A rising star among the Dapper Far Righty crowd of the sort who got his own New York Times opinion piece and a National Review gig, Hochman landed in hot water last year for his gushing praise of the infamous and virulently antisemitic pro-sedition white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
“We were just talking about your influence and we were saying, like, you’ve gotten a lot of kids ‘based’ and we respect that for sure,” Hochman said. “I literally said, I think Nick’s probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservative.”
He went on to discuss the merits and demerits of one of America’s most vile humans, saying the fact that he has said “super edgy things means that there’s a pretty strong ceiling to what you can actually accomplish in politics.”
Lavishing praise on the most infamous sedition-backing neo-Nazi in the country for being "edgy" is a pretty big hint that somebody has good feelings about neo-Nazis, but when you're Leni Riefenstahl-ing your way into a mashup of the Florida flag with actual Nazi symbols, you are almost certainly a f–king Nazi. There's no “accidentally” that applies to that one.
Hochman's prior flirtings with the violent fascist right are, of course, almost certainly how he came to be on DeSantis' campaign team in the first place. DeSantis has been running the most explicitly fascist campaign of any of the Republican candidates, focusing on the demonization of and promises to oppress and punish Republicanism's opponents. He's used the powers of his Florida office to actually carry out those policies, pushing state-sponsored retributions onto college professors and private companies accused of contradicting him. DeSantis has kept himself on the far-right fringe, simultaneously courting and distancing the state's actual flag-waving Nazi choads. The DeSantis camp didn't accidentally hire Hochman any more than Hochman accidentally closed out an explicitly fascist ad with an explicitly Nazi symbol.
Anyone who thinks there was nobody else inside the DeSantis campaign who knew about Hochman producing and leaking this video—and likely others—is a sucker. Of course they knew. Hugging fascism tight and promising the Republican base he can bring it to fruition better than anyone else is DeSantis' whole sales pitch.
RELATED STORIES:
DeSantis cuts a third of his presidential campaign staff as he mounts urgent reset
The DeSantis 'reboot' starts with a fascist bang
DeSantis War Room posts anti-gay, anti-Trump ad so awful it's got to be self-parody
