All the symbols depicted in the hate symbols database must be evaluated in the context in which they appear. Few symbols represent just one idea or are used exclusively by one group. For example, 100% is often used as an amount or an expression and it is also used by some white supremacists as shorthand for "100% white." Similarly, other symbols in this database may be significant to people who are not extreme or racist. The descriptions here point out significant multiple meanings but may not be able to relay every possible meaning of a particular symbol.
The term “right-wing death squad” became widely used in the 1970s and 1980s to describe violent groups with varying degrees of government involvement that emerged in numerous Central and South American countries (including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, among others) to engage in violent assaults, kidnappings and assassinations of perceived opponents of the ruling right-wing regimes in such countries. The victims targeted were typically aligned with left-leaning or far-left politics.
At the time and later, many far-right figures in the U.S. defended or supported such groups, claiming they were an effective antidote to communist insurgencies. The phrase “right-wing death squad” itself, however, was typically used by critics and opponents of such groups, or neutral observers, rather than by far-right activists themselves. This changed with the rise of alt right white supremacists in the U.S. in the mid-2010s, as many alt right adherents embraced the phrase and its implicit reference to violence against left-wing activists.
The phrase, written in full or abbreviated to RWDS, appears both online and offline (for example, on patches and riot shields). Related phrases also emerged, such as “Pinochet did nothing wrong,” a reference to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s violent repression of opponents of his regime in the 1970s and 1980s, and “Free helicopter rides,” an allusion to so-called “death flights” in Argentina and other countries, where regime opponents were arrested or kidnapped, tortured, then dropped from a helicopter to their deaths.
In the 2020s, the phrase “right-wing death squad” and its acronym RWDS are used by white supremacists as well as some other far-right adherents. If the full phrase or RWDS appears entirely in isolation, one must be careful about assuming a specifically white supremacist connection. However, white supremacists frequently combine the phrase/acronym with other white supremacist symbols, including Waffen SS shields or lightning bolts, Totenkopf skulls, Sonnenrads, or other white supremacist imagery.
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