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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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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

“I was about to say you’re giving nationals to [sic] much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest,”

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.

“The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff, or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms,” Taylor said in a statement

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

Yeah we like Hitler. No one gives a fuck what you woke jews think anymore.

Bro was a revolutionary leader and saved germany. The jews declared war on Germany first.

If can israel deny a genocide with 4k video proof, I'm questjoning everything you guys have said about the painter during WW2.

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

A Jew scolding me about creating fictional collectivist, grievance-based narratives is projection at its finest.

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

Everyone involved with the young right already knew this was happening.

Hanania was first to articulate it in depth from a place of familiarity.

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

This is why the “no enemies to the right of me” stuff cannot work. There are enemies there and we cannot be silent. This stuff is festering and needs to be excised from the right.

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

The same people calling for conservative "unity" in the wake of the Hitler chat group leaks also spent the last decade trying to purge classical liberals & free market economics from the conservative movement.

They don't want "unity." They want room for Nazis in that movement.

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?

  • -43

You've been catching a lot of flak over this, and I am already tired of the "Nazi!" topic, and besides there's probably a lesson to be learned from history about spotting extremism early and preventing it from turning moderate societies into failed states...

...but given the last decades, I really don't care anymore. Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs. Thank you but it's been quite enough. My patience ran out with some finality at some point in 2021. If we can't have nice things, then I'll be living on spite.

...but given the last decades, I really don't care anymore. Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs.

Well add another to the pile of evidence that Hitlerism and Nazism is growing.

  • -24

Let me second Southkraut's comment and say that, if this serves as evidence for you, then this comment of yours along with the rest of your comments on this thread have convinced me more than ever that Nazism being a problem in the right is basically entirely the invention of motivated reasoning by their political enemies. This is due to seeing the type of reasoning that you employ that leads you to such a conclusion.

Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs.

This is what they said. I didn't write this, they did. I don't think you're gonna convince me that this isn't pro Nazi rhetoric, I'm typically opposed to calling things "gaslighting" or "telling me to ignore what is in front of my eyes" or something, but I don't see any serious argument that "bring on the Nazis, I'd rather have Hitler than the left" is anything other than a pro Nazi sentiment. Unless he's not being serious in the comment in which case whoops!

  • -24

Again, if you believe that someone saying

Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs.

means "Hitlerism and Nazism is growing," then your standards of evidence show me just how much this sort of conclusion requires grasping at straws. Preferring literal Hitler brain-rot over leftist brain-rot doesn't mean that the person is either into Hitlerism or Nazism.

Preferring literal Hitler brain-rot over leftist brain-rot doesn't mean that the person is either into Hitlerism or Nazism.

Biden was a terrible president, but if you'd have rather have Hitler over him then yeah, you probably are into Hitlerism. The average American doesn't feel that way.

  • -15

Personally, while I do think kitty is grasping at straws making equivalences, I do think there is smoke here. I don't think "I wouldn't care if the party I seem to support became pro-Nazi" is to a significant degree better than actual support for Nazis.

I am in the unenviable position of being anti-woke left. I am pro legal immigration; want regulated, anti-oligarchy capitalism; some gun regulation; and broadly think the the Republican party does more shitty things than the Democrats. But I hate the left's obsession with race and identity. That's why I'm here, because I'm looking for places I can talk that aren't too group-thinky one way or another.

But the popular sentiment here seems to be that because I vote left I bear some culpability for the shit leftists do because I enable them. Conversely, the right gets basically an unlimited-use free pass so long as there is some leftist act that can be deemed worse. They never cancel each other out either. The same leftist act could be used to excuse 10,000 different right leaning actions.

And here it's stated pretty much crystal clear. Right up there with MovieBob's "There are no bad tactics, only bad targets." It's a pretty flat admittance that there's no point engaging with you because you don't have any standards. It's not even "I don't care about this example," it's "I will never care."

I'm not looking to change anyone's mind on which side is worse. What I'm aiming for it consistency on whether a side is culpable for its own bad apples. Everywhere I go, left or right, it's "excuses for my side, maximum uncharitability for my opponents." I won't say I'm immune to it either, but I try to see things how the other side would see it.

The moderate left exists to provide reputational cover for the progressive left and the moderates are too cowardly to stand up to the progressives. Biden bails out the teamsters as an expensive reward but also issues communiques with language about birthing persons latinx, opens the border for millions of illegal migrants while pretending that border encounters are what people care about and threaten title ix trans compliance for school funding. The nonwoke left is now viewed (rightly) as hypocrites pretending to champion Common Sense things but actually are just going to run full tilt into progressive cause celebres immediately.

The problem for the nonwoke left is that the extreme far right is now back in play thanks to the tarring of everyone unwoke as a nazi. Partially though this can be attributed to woke tactics being employed in new battlefields where previous rules limited employment of such tactics. If wokes want to play race essentialism, then whites are happy to play that game too. Once you westerners are done with bronze league white-black racism you can play in gold league balkan racism to get your toes really wet before diving into asian ultraracism.

This sounds like the horseshoe version of the progressive complaint that centrists provide cover for the far right. But no. The moderate left exists because they have their own policy goals, and a democratic system often involves allying with people whom you don't entirely agree with but can tolerate to an extent. This is true for the right as well, which is why Mr. "Trump is unfit for our nation's highest office" is now playing second fiddle to the guy he once insulted.

But again, my point is the consistency. Does the right exist to provide reputational cover for every crazy Republican, up to and especially Trump? Do you also have to answer for everything your side does, and abandon your beliefs if someone odious holds something vaguely similar? Because that's the same argument progressives lob at me whenever I argue against wokism.

Many on this forum have said they flat-out don't care about the right's excesses but the left's are so egregious that nothing could top it. If I say I believe that I believe the right's excesses are actually pretty damn egregious, does that give me license to just dismiss any complaints about the wokies with "I don't care?" No, it wouldn't. It would just prove there's no point engaging with me, because I'm just a partisan with no principles.

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