M.O.A.R.L.O.L.

After Charlottesville, the Far Right promised to bounce back in a big way in what organizers dubbed "the Mother Of All Rallies", or MOAR for short, to be held on Saturday, September 16, on the National Mall in Washington DC.

The Twitter bots were out in full force in the weeks leading up to this event, propelling the hashtag #MOAR to near the top of Twitter's trending chart. Some of the more optimistic projections based on online engagement suggested a possible turn-out of close to a million participants.

And then...

THIS WAS THE TURNOUT

That's right... despite clear skies and the fact that it took place on a Saturday, just about three hundred people bothered to show up for the festivities. The sight of security personnel guarding the periphery prompted Mikel Jolette to remark on Twitter: “Jesus Christ this picture is Right-wing America. A bunch of paranoid people trying to protect a fantasy from a threat which does not exist.”

So, aside from the paranoid, what other sorts of people bothered to show up for this thing? Well, if you want to get a feel for what the organizers of this event were all about, there's no better place to start than their official website, (which you REALLY ought to check out for yourself, even if only for the lulz) where they declare:

THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN RALLY. ITS NOT A LEFT OR RIGHT RALLY. WE CONDEMN RACISTS OF ALL COLORS AND SUPREMACY OF ALL COLORS. OUR PATRIOTS ARE OF ALL COLORS AND WE ARE UNITING UNDER OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS. WE ARE AMERICANS AND OUR COLOR SHOULDN'T MATTER.

All of which makes the photos they proudly display in their own website gallery sort of suspicious. I mean, if their rally isn't about "left or right", then why would they want to focus attention on a supporter wearing a t-shirt cheering Far Right Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet's tactic of tossing left-wing dissidents, labor organizers and others into the ocean via helicopter?

And if it has nothing to do with race or racism, then why showcase a bunch of goons flashing the increasingly popular White Power "OK sign" dog whistle?

So what are we to make of this humiliating turn-out, less than half the size the Juggalos achieved on the same day, across town? Are members of the Far Right still a little gun-shy following the public relations apocalypse of Charlottesville? Or was it just that this particular event relied too much on internet organization? Has the conservative movement's reliance on bot farm personas and literal A.I. propaganda bots come back to bite them in the ass by feeding their delusion that they're part of an organic groundswell when, in fact, many of their members are phantoms and shadows? I can't say for sure, but at this point, politically speaking, yer old pal Jerky's gonna take his small pleasures and minor satisfactions whenever and wherever he can get them. And so, in that spirit, I say:

"NYAH-ha!"