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Notes -
Big leak of the Young Republicans groupchat, spanning multiple high level members across the nation's "premier Republican youth organization" (as it calls itself), including staffers for GOP representatives, at least one Trump admin employee, at least one elected official, and other high ranking conservatives. "Young" in this case is 18-40, adults working in a professional capacity.
The leaks showcase praise for Hitler, jokes about gas chambers, comments on Jewish dishonesty and other antisemitic messages. Also comments supporting slavery. Along with it is generic racism and bigotry such as widespread usage of slurs.
It also shows an interesting insight into what ordinary republican activists are thinking behind close doors.
One interesting thing is their fear that tying a political opponent within the party to white supremacists and Nazis might hurt them in the general election, but make them more popular among the base.
The response has been mixed.
Elected state senator Rob Ortt says
Adviser for Elise Stefanik says
And Roger Stone says
However, some Republicans in high places don't seem to view it as a major deal. Such as JD Vance, whose only comment is to call it "pearl clutching"
Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler. I also have to wonder how sincere it is to deflect away the topic and talk about "powerful people call for political violence." when it seems calls for violence happened in the chat given the many jokes about gassing and even bombing political opposition. Is it not possible to be against neonazism such as "I love Hitler" and talk about sending opposition to the gas chambers your opponents and Jay Jones's awful comments? Stefanik, Ortt and others seem to manage. Plenty of others also seem capable of this feat and have criticized both.
Richard Hanania, author of The Origins of Woke, suggests that these sorts of group chats are actually really common among the right wingers he interacted with. In fact his response to this seems to indicate agreement this chat is tame compared to many conversations he has seen.
Some beginner questions for discussion.
is neonazism, support of slavery, and unabashed bigotry such as this actually common among young conservatives as Hanania and the group chat themselves seem to believe?
In that same vein which response is better, someone like Ortt and Stefanik or Vance? And should the Republican party be concerned about the rise of neonazis and support of slavery if question 1 is yes?
Often what we see now is people "hiding their power level" with extremism, and it's often not revealed till they get to the point no one seems denouce them much. This is happening with Jay Jones now, and has happened before in cases like Mark Robinson "black Nazi". Even now Vance can't bring himself to denouce this. Is this tribalist loyalty helping to empower extremism and violence?
A common complaint among the right is "they called us Nazis". But often, we see some right wingers calling themselves Nazis. The aforementioned "black Nazi" Mark Robinson, candidate for LT Gov John Reid in Virginia, etc. As Hanania himself pointed out, the only major national politicians to refer to Trump as Hitler was JD Vance (and RFK per community note, but that might not have counted under his usage of "national politician"). Even the leaked group chat expressed this belief about the Kansas delegation. Now I've been a strong believer in individual responsibilities and have fought for it consistently, so I do the same here and believe that the only people who should be called Nazis are the individuals who praise Hitler/want gas chambers/call themselves nazi/etc. But question 4 is, why do so many of these self identifying Nazis seem to feel at home in the GOP, and why do they seem to believe they might have decent levels of support? How many others are "hiding their power level" too as suggested?
I don’t want to be the edgy guy here. But hear me out. None of these people are or support neo nazis. But they likely think the actual nazis had some good ideas. Especially since the nazis were dealing with a lot of similar problems like Leftist degeneracy. And were quite successful!
The Nazis weren't wrong about everything, but the things they were right about were not uniquely or especially Nazi. That said, an alarmingly large number of people seem to have confused being an inverted Nazi* with being a good person, because Hitler is the secular devil.
*May not correspond to actual historical Nazis.
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The Nazis were relatively gay and not particularly trad. Limited moves to deal with the red light districts in a few major German cities were halfhearted at best. Single women were in some cases even encouraged to become single mothers, women weren’t removed from the workplace, there were forms of proto-feminism that certainly clashed with traditional Christian views of a woman’s place, even as fertility was lauded (but in a technocratic kind of way, not necessarily a trad one). Economically although heavily supported by small petit bourgeois business owners, the nsdap increased the presence of the major German corporations in the economy and was broadly supportive of the major capital markets through 1939. Exhibits on entartete kunst existed in an uneasy relationship with plenty of relatively modernist sculpture, art and especially architecture that, a few short decades earlier, would definitely have been considered degenerate and abstract by critics.
Being anti-gay was an area where the Nazis went above and beyond tradition. Sure, there were a few Nazis who were able to get away with gay sex, allegedly, but the median man accused of sodomy would have very much preferred to be in the Kaiserreich.
The Nazis were not big on Christianity or traditional families. Basically, the Fuehrer needed cannon-fodder. Turning kids into Nazis was not the job of the family, but of their youth organizations. As long as both partners met the Nazi definition of racial purity, the Nazis had no problem with supporting single mothers.
Their economic politics are likewise downstream of their ideology. Like every aspect of the nation, the economy had to be under the control of the Fuehrer. That is hard to accomplish if your economy is based on small businesses, so favoring big companies made sense. Typically, non-Jewish industrialists were not considered enemies, a lot of them had supported the NSDAP financially and did thrive under them. But ultimately, the Nazis called the shots, telling Hitler that your factory would not produce tanks because you believed that cars would be a more profitable product would not have gone well.
I don't know a lot about Nazi art, but I think generally their culture was a melange of different trends which were in the water supply at the time, together with a largely faked appreciation of the pre-Christian history of the German peoples.
So I guess I mostly agree with you, the TL;DR version is that the Nazis were a revolutionary and not a conservative movement, even if they kept lots of the social structure in place and embraced their version of RETVRN. I think the Fascists and Francoists were more pro-Christian and pro traditional family values.
Francoism wound up as a de facto theocracy, so it can accurately be pointed to as a genuine example of pro-Christian societal upheaval(and would've gotten away with it to, if it wasn't for Vatican II).
So would the median man accused of anything else. 'The Nazis were far more brutal than average' is a statement that's just true, it isn't specific to homosexuality.
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