A series of racist and anti-semitic incidents have appeared to divide conservatives. Racist text messages among the Young Republicans, White House staffer Paul Ingrassia’s “nazi streak” texts, growing bigotry manifesting online among conservatives, Tucker Carlson’s remarkably friendly conversation with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and the Heritage Foundation president’s subsequent defense of Carlson have prompted condemnations from some prominent Republicans like Senators Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
If you’ve been online for the past few years, you may have been aware of how bigoted rhetoric has kicked into high gear.
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro called Carlson an “ideological launderer” and stated that, “He takes other people’s hideous ideas. He softens them. He treats them with love and care. And then he provides them with a massive signal boost.”
Indian-American conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza responded to receiving racist abuse on Twitter with, “In a career spanning forty years, I have never encountered this type of rhetoric. The right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimised this type of vile degradation.”
Many more traditional right-wing voices have begun to take notice of the cancerous growth manifesting within the conservative establishment. Young conservatives and older Republicans angered hysterically that their side hasn’t gone extreme enough to defend their interests have established more than just a beach front among their ranks.
We must now investigate exactly how far the cancer has spread and how it was allowed to happen in the first place. Trump and the MAGA movement haven’t exactly discouraged bigotry – quite the opposite, Trump has fomented and exploited racial resentment to his advantage, villainizing immigrants all the way through.
What do our local Republican representatives think about all of this? I asked Rep. Ken Calvert, Rep. Young Kim, Rep. Jay Obernolte, and Rep. Darrell Issa whether they were concerned about the normalization of bigotry among some conservative factions and how they felt about Tucker Carlson’s interview of Nick Fuentes.
Representatives Obernolte and Kim ignored my request for comment even after a follow up request and after I offered to extend the deadline so that they could carefully craft their responses.
A representative for Rep. Issa simply responded: “To be sure a developing situation and I’m sure we’ll weigh in if we can add to the conversation.”
Calvert was the only to provide an actual statement: “I don’t believe there is any place in American politics, in any party, for antisemitism, racism, or calls for political violence. While some are focusing on a podcast conversation by two unelected people, Democrats are celebrating the election of an Attorney General who called for the murder of a political opponent and fantasized about killing children to advance policy goals. It would be nice if Democrats joined us in rejecting these views instead of ratcheting up the violent rhetoric.”
We got one representative rightly condemning bigotry – he then sort of made it about Democrats (Jay Jones also deserves condemnation), but he nevertheless said what should be easy to say. We got two representatives outright ignoring the questions and one providing a non-answer. How hard is it really to condemn bigotry? My questions to them were quite simple and straightforward: there seems to be a lot of bigotry rearing its head among conservatives. That’s a bad thing right?
After Representatives Kim, Obernolte, and Issa demonstrated such difficulty condemning racism, sexism, or general bigotry, I began to wonder whether these were truly difficult questions. So I began calling and asking friends and family. To my surprise, people kept immediately condemning racism without hesitation – extremist liberals, certainly.
It seems that it’s not a difficult question after all. What is it about condemning racism that is so difficult for our three local conservative friends? What’s stopping them and what is scaring them away from simply saying, “I abhor racism and bigotry”?
Are they concerned that their comments would anger President Trump or their MAGA and Republican base? Why would MAGA or Republicans be upset with their representatives for denouncing racism and anti-semitism, it should be the bare minimum expectation.
Perhaps what the hesitance to denounce racism tells us is that modern conservatives may not be too far away from the essence of Nick Fuentes’ message. Afterall, there is substantial overlap between what Fuentes advocates for and the national conservatism movement and Project 2025.
Like Fuentes, Project 2025 and national conservatives think that the central problem with our country is immigration and the neglect of Christianity as central to politics and public policy – as I’ve written about before, the goal appears to be a white Christian nation. Multiculturalism and globalism are public enemy number one and two for both Fuentes and national conservatism and the vision has only one mode by which to come into existence: purification.
The Republican establishment and conservative movements have been hijacked by racist extremists to such an extent that local representatives may be too afraid to do something as simple as denouncing racism. It’s up to all of us to let them know that racism and sexism will never again be the status quo in our country, irrespective of how cowardly they may be or how many social media followers a white supremacist like Nick Fuentes amass.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.