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.
I get the point of analyzing fascism in logical circles but to discuss the issue with the adherents sounds a bit “lost ball in tall grass” to me.
Who cares what Republicans think of the origins and prior applications of the ideology while they are exclusively leaning into it in the present moment? Frankly it seems like a strange jumping off point to change people’s minds or engage in any kind of fruitful conversation.
My two pennies (by way of Ecco I suppose.)
My suggestion isn’t for the edification of fascists; it’s to show leftists that conservatives cannot be honest about fascism.
We’re in agreement that it doesn’t much matter which option they choose, as the effect is the same.
I see, thanks for setting me straight.