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.
Social safety net? Damn commie
Doing a mini-rant myself: heard a few clearly upper-middle class boomers on the train the other day complaining about minimum wage “is supposed to be for kids living with their parents” (even though it actively supports way more adults. Also just removing 1/4 of those workers during the pandemic created a cheap-labor meltdown but we’ll just ignore that i guess), not for “supporting 6 children” (even though it does) or “buying a $500k house” (their example was $25/hour. Exactly how out of touch are they that they think $25/hour can pay for a $500k house)