Have you ever written a text message you regret? Don’t worry, you’re not alone; Republican officials can definitely relate. Last week, a report from Politico revealed a trove of offensive messages between leaders of Young Republican organizations. The group chat featured all manners of racism, sexism and homophobia. Chillingly, those messages also included statements that seemed to support Nazism, with one person explicitly saying, “I love Hitler.” In the aftermath of the scandal, the majority of Republican politicians condemned the remarks, and several members of the group apologized, resigned or were fired — but this is far from enough. The Republican Party, as it has grown increasingly far-right, now faces the prospect that mainstream members are Nazi sympathizers, and we must call out the proliferation of this viewpoint.
The texts from the Young Republicans group chat are obviously abhorrent, but they haven’t entirely faced condemnation from the larger party. Current Vice President J.D. Vance, who is just one step away from assuming the presidency should Trump be incapacitated, criticized attention given to the story: “I refuse to join the pearl clutching,” he said. He also termed the messages as being from a “college group chat.” To be clear, the Young Republican leaders were 25 to 34 years old. This scandal is something Vance would clearly like to brush off, but it’s a far cry from messing around with your friends in college. Presumably, Vance was expecting the backlash to subside, and the group chat fiasco to sit on the Republican Party’s ever-growing and unreachable shelf of controversies that fizzle into nothing. You may have forgotten, but there was already a large-scale messaging disaster this year when war plans were accidentally leaked to a journalist on Signal.
This incident stands out, however, because it speaks to the new moral fiber of Trump’s GOP. Republican leaders making approving messages about Nazism and Hitler show there is no check on that sort of behavior without getting caught. No one had any serious concerns the messages might get disseminated, and even when they were, the sitting vice president downplayed the scandal. In any other government before Trump’s, refusing to condemn pro-Nazi expression would be a major firestorm. But the Trump administration’s standard for taking blame is clear: If a wave of criticism erupts, you must deflect and deny the reasoning behind it. Plenty of Republicans condemned the messages, but the fact there were even different responses highlights the gulf of sanity we are currently experiencing. If Republicans cannot all agree that glorifying Nazism is bad, where do we draw the line?
The Young Republicans group chat wasn’t even the only story from last week in which someone on the right espoused an affinity for Nazism. Trump’s nominee for the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, was removed from contention after his pro-Nazi leanings were revealed. In a text chain, Ingrassia wrote “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.” Outside of texts, Ingrassia also has ties to avowed white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and has expressed white supremacist beliefs himself. Thankfully, several Republican senators got their act together and pressured Trump to drop the nomination. But Ingrassia still works in the administration as the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security. How can a man who supports Nazis and white supremacism have any position in government? The answer is that in the Trump administration, controversies are almost moot, and that extends to the issue at hand.
Trump himself has had several instances of pro-Nazi language. During Trump’s first term, he said “Hitler did some good things” and that he needed people like “Hitler’s generals,” according to former chief of staff John Kelly. He also echoed Nazi language while describing immigration, saying that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of the country.” This idea of foreigners poisoning a once-pure nation was expressed in Hitler’s infamous “Mein Kampf”, and Trump’s embrace of it shows his affinity for the foundations of Nazi thought. To top it all off, Trump also had dinner with the white supremacist Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Republicans have spent a long time criticizing Democrats for comparing them to Nazis, complaining about how such remarks are outrageous. But if Republicans want to stop getting Nazi comparisons, they should stop making glowing statements about Nazi ideology. Favorable comments about Nazism have no place in our politics, and just because some people may have been fired for making those comments, that does not change that they were said, and it does not change the top-down Nazi problem plaguing the Republican Party.