Recently, there have been a bunch of social media posts trying to paint vice presidential candidate JP Mandel JD Vance as a Nazi. How? By highlighting Nazi imagery at a gun show:

For all of this, the draw is to collect historical artifacts. For some people, it’s a particular part of history they’re particularly fascinated with. For others, any kind of military history is interesting. Just like stamps, guns and signatures of celebrities, people just like to collect things, and the things people want to collect can vary widely.

Another thing that’s fascinating about military memorabilia is the feeling of defeating enemies. For example, many World War II veterans came home with things they took off of captured Nazi soldiers and facilities. People who had fought against the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese didn’t embrace the ideology of the enemy. They wanted to remember defeating them and driving these disgusting ideologies into the dustbin of history.

The other thing that needs to be pointed out is that conservative gun owners would never embrace communism. They hate it. But, all of the gear, memorabilia and even guns from the communist bloc countries tend to be VERY popular at gun shows. Can we really say that a person who owns a Mosin-Nagant rifle, Makarov Pistol or AK is secretly a communist? That’s just silly. Some may be, but the majority most likely is not. But, if a swastika from a captured Nazi flag someone’s grandpa took home shows up, suddenly it must be there because Republicans are secretly Nazis.

So, no, this isn’t a good dig against JD Vance or against Republicans. Like the recent memes claiming Vance had intimate relations with a couch, based on a false rumor, there’s just not any truth to them. If the goal is to bash Vance, there are plenty of other things to dig up, like strange dolphin porn searches and past videos talking badly about Donald Trump. To just make stuff up both reflects poorly on whoever does that.