The white supremacist right is penetrating the mainstream right with increasing ease.

The Conservative Political Action Conference is the premier gathering of right-wing activists and politicians in America every year, and it serves as a bellwether for the direction of the conservative movement. This year Nazis showed up.

According to an NBC News report, “a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed ‘race science’ and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” (Hitler’s Nazi Party was officially called the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”) The reporter of the article has video of one of them giving a “heil Hitler”-style salute in the lobby of the hotel where the conference took place and of other members of the group reportedly used the N-word.

This is a critical frog-in-boiling-water moment for the right: The mainstream organs of American conservatism are apparently acclimating to Nazis in their pot. That this group was able to mingle with participants at a high-profile conference, wasn’t kicked out of CPAC, and wasn’t appropriately condemned is a sign of how contiguous mainstream conservatism has become with white supremacist politics today.

  • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    I think that wasn’t quite the beginning of the end, but it was definitely a warning sign for what was to become of the Republican party. I think they saw how Dubya was a moron and that was appealing to a lot of voters, so they thought “there’s a recipe for success here.”

    On a random note, that just led me to this video where the guy who floated Palin’s name to McCain said it was “the biggest fucking mistake of his life”.

    https://youtu.be/ihrCtRCGTro