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Neo-Nazis are Hiding in Plain Sight in the GOP

Conservative conference featured a Nazi symbol

Manny Otiko
4 min readMar 2, 2021
Photo by John Kittelsrud/Flickr

When I first saw stories flashing around Twitter that the recently completed Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) featured a Nazi logo embedded in the stage design, my naturally-skeptical mind said, this can’t be true. I loathe conspiracy theorists and their obsession with hidden symbolism.

But after further examination and seeing several Twitter posts, I learned the logo, an odal rune, had also been featured at some white nationalist rallies. That convinced me that it really was a Nazi logo.

Image from Twitter

The history of the odal rune

Yugoslavian SS flag

I got a crash course on the odal rune over the weekend. According to social media posts and the Wild Hunt, a site that focuses on pagan and heathen culture, some SS units adopted the logo during World War II. In recent years, the odal rune has been embraced by white supremacist groups as a stand-in for…

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Manny Otiko
Manny Otiko

Written by Manny Otiko

Manny Otiko writes about race, politics and sports. He has been published in Salon and LA Weekly. Follow him at @mannyotiko.bsky.social

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