U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) listens to House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. James Comer (R-KY) during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on "The Urgent Need to Address the Gun Violence Epidemic," on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 8, 2022.
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie says the decaying Republican Party has finally lost the strength that for years kept dangerous party infestations at bay. And now the GOP is pest-ridden with a certain element that rhymes with “Swazi,” or maybe “Stasi.”
“This is not slander or pejorative or innuendo; it is the plain truth of the matter, a conclusion drawn from simple observation,” said Bouie. “And the problem has been getting worse. Consider a few of the people staffing the Trump administration.”
Bouie points to Paul Ingrassia, the former acting general counsel of the General Services Administration, who withdrew his nomination after offensive remarks from his social media and group chats got out.
“I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it,” said Ingrassia in a 2024 text. He said in another message: “We need competent white men in positions of leadership,” and “The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal … We need to reject that part of our heritage.”
There’s also Nate Hochman, a young Republican operative fired from Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential campaign for promoting a DeSantis video that used a Nazi symbol. He’s now in the White House, serving as a speechwriter for Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“And there are the young staffers responsible for the Trump administration’s social media presence, who use their large and influential platform to share Nazi-inspired rhetoric and post Nazi-inspired memes,” said Bouie. “In January of this year, for instance, the Department of Labor posted a video with the caption ‘One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American,’ a line that echoes the Nazi slogan of ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer’: ‘One people, one realm, one leader.’”
Social media accounts for the Department of Homeland Security “show a steady stream of memes and images drawn from neo-Nazi and white supremacist agitprop,” added Bouie.
“Keep in mind that these are not staffers’ private accounts; these posts are reaching the public through the official organs of the U.S. government,” said Bouie. “ … In Georgia, the Republican Senate nominee Mike Collins has had to answer for a former staffer who posted Nazi images online as well as a photo of himself in full Ku Klux Klan regalia. And Collins’s son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, is a white nationalist and online influencer with a history of posting Nazi imagery.”
This, he said, is a problem for young Republicans their 20s and 30s.
“That is no coincidence; it is clear that among the young staffer and operative class of the Republican Party are people with neo-Nazi sympathies and white supremacist views,” said Bouie. “Last year, for example, leaked messages from a group chat of Young Republicans from chapters across the country — who ranged in age from 18 to 40 — included racial slurs, support for Nazi ideas and a declaration of admiration for the leader of the Third Reich, all framed as jokes.
The party has attracted racist elements since the Nixon years, but Bouie said the institutional Republican Party was “strong enough to keep these views, and the underlying forces that fueled them, away from its center of gravity.” But that’s no longer possible in the days of the “total collapse of the traditional Republican establishment.” Now it is incapable of policing its boundaries since President Donald Trump “opened the floodgates of the party to the far right.”
Now the illness is spreading, said Bouie, as indicated by the way House Speaker Mike Johnson defended Brandon Herrera, the winner of the Republican primary for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, who is also a far-right YouTube personality, who has published videos “that feature Nazi imagery and Nazi military anthems, joke about the Holocaust and showcase Nazi weapons.”
“Perhaps there will be some seismic shift that derails the far-right capture of the Republican Party. But this feels like wishful thinking,” said Bouie. “If the past decade is any guide, then the fever, if that is what we want to call it, is only going to get worse.”
