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'Stay Strapped or Get Clapped'

How the media misses the story of companies seeking profit by keeping
traumatized veterans armed and enraged

In the summer of 2021, reporter Jason Zengerle published a fluffy
profile in

**The**

**New York Times Magazine** of a growing veteran-owned company. "Can
the Black Rifle Coffee Company Become the Starbucks of the Right?
"
was filled with heartwarming photos. The brand's three founders in
baseball caps sitting around a conference table in front of a wall-sized
rendition of Washington crossing the Delaware. Employees practicing for
an "adaptive athlete" archery competition. ("It's active
meditation, basically.") The fellas chillin' out in the company's
"converted warehouse with a lot of black metal and reclaimed wood."
And also, should there be any doubt where readers' sympathies were
meant to lie, CEO Evan Hafer ("who is Jewish") posing with his puppy
dogs.

The gravamen of the piece was examining the risk brands take when they
plant a flag on the terrain of contested political issues. Readers were
to understand this, naturally, as a problem for #bothsides. One example:
the time in 2016, when Apple and Bank of America asked the governor of
North Carolina to repeal that state's hateful, anti-trans "bathroom
bill," and conservative customers balked.

Opposite that: the headache that emerged for the nice fellas at Black
Rifle when investigators sought to identity the January 6th fugitive
known as "Zip Tie Guy" for the tools he wore on his tactical belt,
designed to hog-tie treasonous senators. The FBI had identified the
baseball cap he wore, which featured an assault rifle silhouetted over
an American flag, as a Black Rifle product.

"I was like, Oh [expletive]," Hafer was quoted. "Here we go
again."

"Again" referred to the time Kyle Rittenhouse was photographed in a
Black Rifle tee after bailing out of jail for fatally shooting a Black
Lives Matter demonstrator.

Hafer pronounced himself baffled.

**Why does this keep happening to us?**The reader is supposed to be
baffled, too-as when we meet Black Rifle employees like the "quiet,
haunted-seeming man who had been a C.I.A.-contractor colleague of
Hafer's and who, for a time, lived in a trailer he parked on the
office grounds. Later, I asked Hafer what, exactly, the man did for
Black Rifle. 'He just gets better,' Hafer replied. 'He gets
better.'"

No wonder Hafer is so anguished by the thought that

**racists**, of all people, could identify with his brand: "Like,
I'll pay them to leave my customer base."

Hafer could maybe save that money by not selling a coffee called "Thin
Blue Line." (If you don't see the racism in that symbolic clapback
by politicized cops to the Movement for Black Lives, take your dog
whistle in for repairs.) Or by making their YouTube channel, which has
1.19 million subscribers, a bit more of an unsafe space for those who
prefer their social media minority-free; I had to scroll some 61 videos
before spotting a single patch of non-Caucasian skin, save for the movie
fight scenes in the "Veterans react to ..." series.

None of the videos I reviewed featured women either. In the Black Rifle
universe, "veterans" are bearded and beefy, infatuated with the
healing power of arms, and, above all, aggressively in the face of
anyone who disagrees. That's the whole point.

The

**Times**profile reads like a 12th-century beat sweetener on King Henry
II that handles the troubling matter of the assassination of the
Archbishop of Canterbury by quoting the king: "I didn't want them to

**kill**that meddlesome priest ..." Poor, poor Black Rifle Coffee.
"'How do you build a cool, kind of irreverent, pro-Second Amendment,
pro-America brand in the MAGA era,' Hafer wondered aloud, 'without
doubling down on the MAGA movement and also not being called a
[expletive] RINO by the MAGA guys?'"

What I wonder is: How did America's vaunted Newspaper of Record manage
to make

**this guy**a martyr to political correctness? I looked up Hafer's
political contributions. They include $2,500

in seed money to Brandon Herrera, a gun YouTuber and DIY machine-gun
manufacturer known as the "AK Guy." Two weeks ago, after forcing the
Republican congressman representing Uvalde, Texas, Tony Gonzales, into a
runoff after he dared vote for a gun safety bill, Herrera tweeted,
"Texas is done with RINOS. The war starts now."

One way you can make Hafer a martyr is by not telling naïve blue-state
readers what a "black rifle" is. Not a rifle that is black. An AR-15
assault rifle-which polling consistently finds half of America wants
banned, and increasing portions of the other half uphold as a talisman
of

**the war that starts now**, perhaps to be used against liberals,
against the "woke," and against anyone who stands in the MAGA
movement's way.

BRCC are the company's initials and also its stock symbol. Shortly
after the piece came out, and surely borne aloft by it, Black Rifle
successfully went public. It may soon be coming to a store shelf or
street corner near you: 2024 is the year, I learned in a recent earnings
call, BRCC hopes to expand into all 50 states. Perhaps it would not have
earned the attention of Wall Street analysts' cold, calculating eyes
had Zengerle chose to tell another, far more relevant story: that this
company named after a slaughter machine is the leading edge of a trend
of brands that make fascist aesthetics into a central part of their
business strategy.

Look! Puppy dogs!

[link removed]

ONE COMPANY ORGANIZED ON THE BLACK RIFLE MODEL is both more modest (it
booked an estimated $36 million in annual revenue in 2023, compared to
BRCC's $300 million) and more immoderate. None of Evan Hafer's
crisis communications-style hedging for Nine Line Apparel. After
visiting their website, my feed immediately began filling up with ads
picturing images like the Christmas card

trollingly circulated by Gen. George S. Patton's son, also a general,
after the revelation of the My Lai massacre. Beside the inscription
"Peace on Earth," it depicted a stack of Vietnamese corpses. He also
passed around a picture of himself posing with a polished skull with a
bullet hole above the eye. Dad bods can now sport stuff like that

on a hoodie for the low, low price of $47.99, less if you join Nine
Line's "Patriots Club
."

Nine Line is also ostentatiously veteran-owned, its PR saturated with
the language of healing and service. It's strange, yes, that veterans
carrying home the trauma of combat should embrace an ethic of staying
armed to the teeth, on hair-trigger alert for enemies in an everyday war
at home of all against all.

Or, as Winnie the Pooh
puts
it on one of their apparel designs: "Stay Strapped or Get Clapped."

This, Black Rifle and Nine Line treat as a way to

**heal**wartime trauma.

But what do I know. I'm not a "patriot." At least not according to
their most fearsome design: a Spartan helmet done up in Darth Vader
black above the legend "I'm a patriot. Weapons are part of my
religion."

That particular "2A" tribute is twinned

with one honoring "1A." It features the same helmet, only this one
with that most patriotic of symbols added: sharp Viking horns. "Speak
freely," it enjoins.

Sure, just as soon as you leave the room.

There's a whole stable of cuddly creatures. Tactical Trash Panda

warns, "Forage around and find out"; Freedom Llama
is kitted
for battle in combat boots and night vision goggles.

Less cute: an American flag with sharks

swimming down the stripes, shark teeth for stars, and a giant chomp out
of the side. A German shepherd labeled "Land Shark: Four Legged
Freedom Defender
,"
laid out like a weapon schematic: nose labeled "To sniff out lack of
patriotism," teeth, "Freedom enforced at 238 psi."

I haven't found a clearer expression of the American reactionary
tradition of equating liberty with coercion since I read Jefferson
Cowie's Pulitzer Prize-winning history
of Barbour County,
Alabama. Likewise, nothing more clearly expresses that culture's
rendering of the moral universe into two incommensurate categories-

**us**, who are blamelessly pure, and

**them**, who are dangerous pollutants of that purity-than a Blue
Lives Matter flag identifying the stripe in the center
as
the "Barrier between community and lawlessness." (Only those who
hate freedom, one supposes, dare suggest communities can include
lawbreakers, and that lawbreakers can have community.)

Another tribute to cops adds divine sanction
: "Blessed
are the peacemakers/For they shall be called the children of God."
Naturally, since "Family/Faith/Friends/Flag/Firearms" are, according
to another shirt, "5 Things You Don't Mess With
."

QAnon fans aren't left out: A design called "Steamboat Willie
"
features Mickey Mouse brandishing an assault rifle. It reads, "Kill
your local pedophile." Pagan types can choose from an array of
Valhalla-wear
starring a grinning skull with Viking horns, including one satirizing
the Starbucks mermaid
as a
skull with Viking horns and a pair of pistols.

Air Force fans can order "Dropping Warheads on Foreheads since 1947
."
A shirt honoring the four martyrs of Benghazi
reads, "Men do
not die until they are forgotten." There's nothing, though, for the
241 U.S. personnel who died from a terrorist truck bomb in 1983 after
the Reagan administration fumbled into the middle of Beirut's civil
war at the behest of Israel; honor is a partisan thing. "By Patriots
for Patriots," as Nine Line's slogan reads. Obama partisans need not
apply.

A CERTAIN ESOTERISM IS CENTRAL TO THE MARKETING STRATEGY for stuff like
this: a delineation between the

**us**who know and the

**them**who scratch their heads. Which is how you know

**they** are not part of the Family/Faith/Friends/Flag/Firearms tribe.

For instance, do you know what a shirt reading "22
"
signifies? I had to look it up. It's not the "angel number"
signifying wisdom and relationship balance to woo-woo New Agers. Nor,
God forbid, the 22nd catch in Joseph Heller's classic novel about the
meaninglessness, dehumanization, and waste of war.

It's the number of veterans who commit suicide on an average day.

Well,

**that**was arresting to learn. That strange equation kept swirling in
my head, of the compulsion to

**dwell**in the culture of battle as a

**cure**for the culture of battle. I really don't know what to say. Or
rather: I quail at saying too much. Don't dig too deep to get to the
bottom of a culture like this, where even the "Made in America"
badge is scary (the stars looking like the barbs in a strand of razor
wire). The last time I wrote too frankly about certain concerning
symbols of wartime trauma and mourning celebrated by veterans, I was
singled out as a witch and reported on Fox News, and was flooded by
messages from veterans about the pleasures to be had of flaying off the
skin of people like me.

Speak freely! Just don't say ...

Never mind. Puppy dogs. Puppy dogs.

[link removed]

I'LL PROBABLY GET ANGRY MESSAGES THIS TIME, TOO. Maybe it will come
from what I'm about to note.

Nine Line's mission statement reads, "In combat, a Nine Line is an
emergency medevac request, and is often the difference between life and
death for the most severely wounded soldiers. Nine Line Foundation aims
to serve in a similar manner, offering a lifeline once wounded veterans
return stateside."

Thus their logo: a thick line shooting down from a helicopter.

You may see where I'm going with this.

I first became aware of Nine Line when a fascism researcher whose name I
will not say, the better to protect them from any suggestion their skin
needs flaying off, asked me about whether I'd noticed one fascist
clothing company with the logo that looked like the alt-right
"helicopter ride" trope, the one advertising their fantasy of
throwing

**Untermenschen**like us into the sea from a high distance like South
American dictators used to do.

To point to this possible dog whistle, alas, is to play the fascist's
game; no trolling without plausible deniability, as the maestro recently
demonstrated in campaign rally in Ohio when he predicted a
"bloodbath" should he not be elected president.

He was talking about the automobile industry, you paranoid moonbat!

Be that as it may. Nine Line, you shouldn't be surprised to learn by
now, received its own elite media fluffing in 2018, in a

**Washington Post** article headlined "How This Veteran's Company
Found Profits in Trump-Era Patriotism and Polarization
."
Who doesn't like a feel-good story about helping those who've
served?

It described Nine Line's origin story as a reaction to Colin
Kaepernick's Black Lives Matter protest
,
as the anti-Nike: "Just Stand," their first big hit read. "The
success of the T-shirt provided [Tyler] Merritt and his team with a few
lessons. His company needed to be loud, quick and clear. Merritt also
learned that selling just about anything in this polarizing moment in
the country's history-especially patriotism-means picking a side.
'Polarizing topics create brands,' he said."

Then, yes, it ventured into the marketing challenges-a day in the life
of Kaila Donaldson, the company's 28-year-old Facebook administrator,
whose job, we learn, involves both "hook[ing] potential customers"
and "trying to start a conversation that will offer her insights into
Nine Line's most loyal clientele."

Like the time she shared a story about Trump donating his salary to a
veteran entrepreneurship program. "'It did really well,' she said
of the posting, which racked up about 500,000 views."

Or the one she posted just that day about Gen. Jim Mattis, which
didn't: "The post largely fell flat among readers who weren't sure
what to make of it"-Trump having just said on

**60 Minutes** that the defense secretary was "sort of a Democrat."

Then, she checked the response to "a story she had posted earlier that
day about Trump's threat to permanently close the southern border."
And people knew

**exactly**what to make of that:

"I've been voting red for 20 years [hoping] for this," one comment
said.

"SHUT IT DOWN!!!" roared another.

Donaldson blanched. "These are kind of racist," she said.

Odd how that keeps on happening.

It was close to quitting time. On the video screen behind her, the daily
sales figure had surged past $100,000, about 25 percent higher than the
same-day sales from a year ago. Americans were angry, passionate and
eager to let their friends and neighbors know exactly where they stood
on the flag, immigration, guns and just about every hot-button issue in
the president's Twitter feed.

This much Donaldson, Merritt and the rest of the Nine Line team knew for
certain: All that emotion was good for business.

And ...

**scene**. Whether all that concerted effort to identify and amplify the
things that make armed, traumatized veterans the most angry, in order to
get them to open their wallets, is good for democracy: That question,
not being fit to print, will have to die in darkness.

Extra! Extra! Got Infernally Triangular questions you'd like to see
answered in a future column? Send them to [email protected]
.

~ RICK PERLSTEIN

Follow Rick Perlstein on Twitter ,
Facebook , or Instagram

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