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’m old enough to remember when Republicans and Democrats weren’t that different… There were always key issues that they disagreed on but at the end of the day the majority of both parties just wanted what was best for the country, and they would even WORK TOGETHER from time to time when it was for the common good… How did the GOP go from that to this white trash hillbilly Nazi bullshit? Are they ever going to recognize that the enemies of democracy have taken over their party? When did they become so complacent?
Not to discredit any of what you said, but to add to this I think a big piece of this that often gets glossed over is that since then the parties have become more ideologically sorted. Back in the day, conservative Democrats often worked with conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats often worked with progressive Republicans, and that isn’t really an option anymore.
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