When the 9/11 terror attacks first rocked the U.S., Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City and helped lead the city out of the literal rubble. Times have changed. Now, while continuing to serve in his role as lawyer for President Donald Trump and routine public laughingstock over the ways he’s willing to contort himself for Trump, he’s taken to Twitter this week with a message commemorating the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that… didn’t exactly land well. His (completely staged) video depicts police officers standing against “anti-fascist” demonstrators in a set-up that’s clearly supposed to show those demonstrators as out of line, violent, and ultimately a threat to the stability of the U.S — just like, the implication seems to be, those who attacked the U.S. in 2001.
All Giuliani wrote was:
‘GOD BLESS AMERICA!’
Check it out:
GOD BLESS AMERICA! pic.twitter.com/VklXvWggKJ
— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) September 11, 2019
It’s a short clip from an ad that a clothing company called Grunt Style, who made the production around Super Bowl season but never actually submitted it for consideration to run during the big game, despite conservative cries of censorship. The company claims that the ad “shows what we stand for,” which includes “our military… the police… [and] everyone’s right to protest. Protest peacefully.” There’s only a thin explicit connection in the ad to the actual 9/11 terror attacks, delivered via a clip of the officer character watching coverage of the incident as a child. The “story” progresses through the officer joining the military and eventually confronting those demonstrators who dared make their (fictional) voices heard against fascism.
The video clip does not reflect the realities of life in the United States. There is no “body count” from anti-fascist demonstrators; meanwhile, there’s a slow but more than steady enough stream of incidents like the recent one in Texas in which a white supremacist spouting the exact same rhetoric that Trump has used killed 22 people and wounded many more in a Walmart. They were complaining of a “Hispanic invasion” and openly told police that they’d been targeting Mexicans, an atrocity that they drove ten hours or so towards the border for. But Giuliani would apparently like us to think that the “real patriotism” or whatever is with those who stand on that side, against the oh-so-scary anti-authoritarianism demonstrators.
Check out Twitter’s response…
Featured Image via screenshot
