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.
That has been the goal of that movement for at least the last 7 years, to use the chaos of the Trump administration to slowly infiltrate the Republican right. Clearly they have been successful, and CPAC the last few years have been a bellwether of that (e.g. the message: We are All Domestic Terrorists)
Trump did very publicly tell members of the Proud Boys, which is a recognized hate group, to “stand back and stand by”. So in allowing Trump to run the party they must also allow in all these wannabe Nazis, as these are his people, his “muscle”. He very much sees himself as the mob boss he has always wanted to be, but becoming president allowed him to create this cult that also has no issue answering his calls for violence.
Trump also has no loyalty to anyone, which is irony lost on a man that demands it from everyone else. And I think most in the party know by now that unless you want the cult putting the crosshairs on your back, you better stay in line.
Trump is really looking forward to the time he has enough power to celebrate his first “accidental” defenestration of a political opponent. That’s how you know you’ve finally made it as a dictator.
got me thinking, does that make Trump chaotic evil ?
Neutral evil. He seeks power for himself, but doesn’t follow the rules of others. Chaotic evil is more often unconcerned with building structures of power. They may build networks but structures of power are binding, even if just to one’s will.
The crosshairs are not figurative. Not sure the general public has understood this yet.