'We’re going to flood the zone': White House mingles at conference 'filled with extremists'
The Guardian reports the Friday National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. hosted a wide variety of far-right religious extremists, from men-only secret societies to theocratic right-wing pundits and associations.
Other event speakers were closely associated with the secretive Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), an invitation-only, Christian ultra-nationalist network with “undercurrents of neo-fascist accelerationism,” according to a Middlebury Institute report.
Mingling and mixing among the theocrats, however, were Trump officials.
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“NatCon is filled with extremists touting white nationalism and conspiracy theories,” said Heidi Beirich, the chief strategy officer and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “What is notable is how Trump administration officials and allies are key players in the event, showing that it is near impossible today to distinguish the far right from the administration.”
One speech by White house “border czar” Tom Homan contained warnings for the city of Chicago, which Trump is threatening to douse with federal agents and national guard troops, as he already has in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
“I said two months ago, we’re going to flood the zone and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Homan told the crowd. “In Chicago, it’s coming. So, watch what happens in the very near future.”
The Guardian reports Trump’s deputy attorney general, Harmeet Dhillon, gave her own speech in which she characterized the justice department’s civil rights division as “the president’s shock troops.”
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“We’re the front guard. We are going to go first and clear the way for others to do their work,” said Dhillon, who has assigned civil rights lawyers to investigate anti-genocide campus protests and perceived “anti-Christian bias.”
Other administration figures speaking at NatCon included Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and Small Business Administration leader and former senator, Kelly Loeffler.
These Trump officials shared screen time with leading figures of the so-called “new right,” an anti-democratic and ultra-nationalist far-right movement “whose reactionary views have undergirded the Trump administration’s actions,” according to the Guardian. They also shared space with Society for American Civic Renewal Co-founder Charles Haywood — a regular engagement farmer on X — who recently posted: “Has a single (subcontinent) Indian ever accomplished anything of truly major note in the modern period?”
The Guardian reports the conference also featured “prominent faces from the universe of thinktanks surrounding the Trump administration who have signed on to, or even devised the Project 2025 agenda that has provided a blueprint for Trump’s actions in its first months.” This included Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, whose speech “leaned into male grievance and anti-immigrant sentiment,” according to the Guardian.
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Read the full Guardian report at this link.
