Brackets, Cowbells, and Echos

I learn something new every day. I've been seeing brackets ((( ))) in several comments on various sites lately, and I've wondered what they mean. To me, they connote hugs, but judging from the context of these posts, I knew that there really had to be another explanation. According to a Slate writer (yeah, I know) they signify Jewishness. And not in a good way.

Mic has a good exposé on the origins of the cowbell: Known to alt-right activists as an “echo,” the symbol sprang from a hardcore conservative podcast named the Daily Shoah. The Shoah “featured a segment called ‘Merchant Minute’ that gave Jewish names a cartoonish ‘echo’ sound effect when uttered,” Cooper Fleishman and Anthony Smith explain. When they reached out to the podcast editors for more information, they were told that the meme also functioned as a critique of “Jewish power”:

"The inner parenthesis represent the Jews' subversion of the home [and] destruction of the family through mass-media degeneracy. The next [parenthesis] represents the destruction of the nation through mass immigration, and the outer [parenthesis] represents international Jewry and world Zionism."

Don't bother  reading the article unless you're into "Freudian effluvium that pours out of Trump-adjacent spigots of the Internet." Yep, he really said that. Or she did. Or zhe did. Whatevah. 

Strange times we live in. Very strange indeed.  Frankly, I could care less. Sticks and stones, and all that. Free speech is free speech. We wouldn't need laws (and a Constitutional amendment) to protect it if it was always rainbows and unicorn farts.

When you see me using brackets, rest assured that I'm hugging you and not labeling you a subversive, immigration-loving, world-conquering zionist.