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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?
You know I don't think people are being fair to you. I can only address this by speaking to my own experiences.
I remember being there in 2007 or so, forming swastikas in Club Penguin with the other anons. Obviously at the time this was pure shock value and didn't indicate any serious ideological commitment. Now we may argue about exactly how serious /pol/ is today, but it's hard to deny that it is a lot more serious about Nazism than we were as teenagers in 2007 harassing kids in Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin.
But what about me? Am I meaningfully more Nazi now than I was in 2007? Did those formative years on 4chan have any lasting influence on my politics? It's hard to say, of course from my own perspective our jokes in 2007 had nothing to do with it. My beliefs seem to me to be merely a logical progression based on what I've learned and experienced over the past 18 years. But either way I've somehow ended up reading SecureSignals posts thinking to myself "Hey this guy may have a point" and to some degree embracing beliefs that would be described by some as white nationalist.
Perhaps this is just another manifestation of the fully generalizable Toaster Fucker Problem. 30 years ago I may have done my fair share of "noticing" but dismissed it without a community of noted race scientists like the Motte to further radicalize me. It seems obvious to me that while "haha just joking" extremism doesn't literally mean the jokers hold those specific beliefs in earnest, it does meaningfully shift the Overton Window and creates a space where serious discussion of previously taboo beliefs can blend with the jokes. If you believe that White Nationalism and Antisemitism are very evil then it is reasonable IMO to be concerned about these jokes and want to stamp them out.
Basically I don't think most of the people engaging in these jokes are seriously Nazis but I do think it creates a space for those ideas to spread and does probably contribute to the popularity of taboo far right beliefs if not outright Nazism. To be clear I think the Left has their own version of this same problem, in fact, to a much more advanced and concerning degree.
I feel like I showed up to this site too late and missed all of this because I keep seeing people make side references to this/HBD but no one ever actually talks about it, they just talk about talking about it.
I do remember when it was both everywhere and tedious.
The Motte goes through waves - for a while it was HBD/racism, for a while it was Holocaust denial, every now and then some people are determined to force their pet issue and it's everywhere. I won't say it's not a problem, or that it isn't a reason to avoid this place sometimes, but it does come and go.
Again, the reason it was "tedious" is because the left-leaning side wasn't satisfied with "maybe it's true, but I oppose doing anything about it on moral grounds", and had to own the chuds on factual grounds as well, which just left a huge opening for a handful of autists to slap them down over and over.
Arguably it could be no other way, as it's something that struck at the core of unspoken rationalist premises, and possibly even liberalism itself, that's why we couldn't help but pick at that particular scab. Trusting The Science, and following Reason and Rationality was supposed to be The Way to manage society, and The Way was specifically supposed to result in progressive social democracy. Suddenly it turns out that Trusting The Science makes you racist, and distrusting The Science undermines the foundations of your own legitimacy, so there was nothing left to do but SegFault over it.
I suppose the other option is to act like the conversation is tedious, and it's just evil chuds going through a wave of an obsession for no reason at all.
Lot of people took that option. It’s the progressive version of the cope cage.
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