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Sir, there's been four new Nazi/Hitler/antisemitic issues in the conservative community in just the past day
Following the recent Politico expose on the Young Republicans groupchat leak among mid 20s-30s leaders of the organization containing comments about gas chambering their political opponents and antisemitic remarks like this
In the followup to this, yes you heard it right, at least four new antisemitic and/or Nazi controversies in the past day or so.
A flag with a swatiska embedded in it was spotted in the office of Representative Dave Taylor. Rep. Taylor has called it out and condemned it, and it's quite possible he never noticed it before himself but it does seem to be another sign of the embedded antisemitic and pro nazi rhetoric in lower level staffers if one of them put it up.
Additionally, the Border Patrol posted a video on an Instagram containing an antisemitic slur. While the higher ups of the border patrol likely don't have much to do with what gets posted on the social media, it's again another bad sign that the lower levels who coordinate posts and approve them are antisemitic. Someone had to specifically pick that particular verse of that particular version of that particular song, they knew what they were posting and whatever approval process they use, the others would have heard the lyrics and yet signed on.
The third controversy is the most explicit of them all. Myron Gaines, host of the Fresh and Fit podcast (1.58 million subscribers on YouTube alone) posted
Now, I never would have imagine that the word woke includes "thinking the Holocaust is real and Hitler is bad", but that seems to be where we are at now. Gaines is also a former employee of the DHS, which is just another point of evidence of low level gop aligned staffers having pro Nazi/antisemitic views.
But in fact, all of this seems to be par for the course, according to Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab. who also wades into the ring of antisemitic Holocaust denialism with comments like
That's right, at least two major conservative names have directly engaged in unashamed pro Nazi/Holocaust denialism/etc rhetoric in response to the group chat leak and both of them strongly believe that many other high level conservatives agree with them (Myron's use of "We like Hitler and Torba saying it's normal).
As Richard Hanania (Writer of "The Origins of Woke" who has been in many conservative spaces before) explained months before the leak, this is actually pretty common. As he's said before, the two types of comments he tends to get "it can't be that bad" and "lol that's exactly what it's like" such as this agreement from National Review reporter James Lynch
What's interesting is that the one thing both the Nazi denouncers (Hanania/Lynch/etc) and Nazi defenders (Myron/Torba/etc) here both seem to agree on, is that this is common among the young right. There seems to be a broad consensus that this gropyer antisemitic Nazism is growing among conservatives, especially young ones. We've seen this with Kanye and his descent into Nazism, we've seen this with John Reid and Mike Robinson both exposed over their Nazi fetish. We've seen this with Tucker Carlson and Daryl Cooper. The rapid growth of figures like Nick "six million cookies" Fuentes, Ian Carroll and Theo Von. In fact a neo Nazi inspired kid was even behind a recent school shooting in Colorado a few months ago
EW Erickson says https://x.com/EWErickson/status/1978812093773041964
Ben Shapiro says that unity with radicals will destroy the right wing as it pushes moderate Americans away.
Right wing conservative libertarian speaker Phil Magness says
So with all this recent controversy, how big of a Nazi problem is actually festering, and why do the Nazis seem to feel so comfortable in modern conservativism? They even seem to be dropping hints at the highest levels if the border patrol video was intended as a dog whistle to be dropped before deleting. Is this growing widespread agreement (from Hanania to Torba) that this is just the tip of the iceberg among young conservatives accurate? Will this growing trend of Nazi radicalism destroy the Republicans chances among moderates in the future like embracing left wing radicalism hurt Biden? And how do the non Nazi conservatives and moderates balance fighting off Nazi accusations from the left also working to stem this apparant rise of unashamed nazism and Holocaust denialism?
This is, unfortunately, not something that I can give a solid answer for, given that I am not a conservative myself and don’t partake in the particular self-punishment in going around trying to hang out in conservative crowds (…well, aside from this site). Polls on this are, for obvious reasons, going to be somewhat unreliable, so I’m operating purely off gut feelings and vibes here.
Based on those vibes & gut feelings, I’d guess that the number of committed, truly ideological neo-Nazis on The Right are probably still quite low, for now. Unfortunately, seems to me that the cohort of fascism-curious rightists is small but growing, and firmly in the drivers seat of The Right. Certainly, the majority of American conservatives don’t see them as a problem, and are not likely to be an impediment to them.
Because Modern Conservatism™ by and large doesn’t view this as a big deal. See all the responses to your previous top-level post; it’s just not a problem, and if it is then it doesn’t matter; the Left is ultimately such a horrifying boogeyman to The Right that in the end they’ll still side with anyone if it leads to The Left’s defeat- even if it requires ever-more-uncomfortable rationalizations.
I don’t know… any young conservatives, so, uh… IDK? I imagine this kind of rhetoric is pretty common amongst young conservatives. I doubt (hope?) they don’t really believe it, but I don’t think that actually matters. As long as the next generation of conservatives continue to vote deranged MAGA Republicans into office, I don’t really give a shit whether they’re really true believers or just horrendously foolish.
If everything Trump and his toadies have done and are currently doing haven’t caused the “““moderates””” to wake the fuck up, then those moderates are probably a lost cause until the administration does something so disastrous that they can’t just bullshit their way out of it like they do for everything else- at which point, it’ll be far too late.
Simple.
They won’t. Hard to correct a problem if you just refuse to admit a problem exists.
This is actually a big tribalist issue that seems to be happening across both aisles right now and it genuinely scares me. There's a joke that goes
The man in the in the joke is unlucky. Despite all the assumed similarities between the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, and the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 ("on the same side"", he stumbled upon a radical 1879er who supports violence on disagreement.
Had a normie non violence supporting Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, or any other religious group member stumbled upon on him, he would still be alive. Despite all the similarities between the two councils, and all the differences between his religions and the other beliefs, the only one that truly matters there is the willingness to use violence.
Look at authoritarian dictatorships and you see something like this. You can be a great and wonderful ally to Xi, or Putin, or Kim Jong Un, you still don't get a pass to disagree with them much. Deng Xiaopeng was a true believer with relatively minor variance from Mao, and he was condemned as the "number two capitalist roader" and purged twice in 1967 and 1976.
Things like the two party system and the idea of "left wing" vs "right wing" leads people to forming tribalist ideas of sides, but there are no sides. There are loose coalitions, with wide disagreements inside them. Communist left wing groups splinter all the time from purity tests and purging, and I'm sure there was plenty of Jews in Germany that approved Hitler's non antisemitic policies yet they died just the same.
The true threat of the Baptist man in the joke isn't the normie atheist, or the normie Hindu, or the normie Buddhist but of "his own side" willing to use violence over disagreement.
Any thoughts on which side of the political aisle tends to be prone to ruthlessly enforcing purity politics over relatively small schisms?
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