Tag: neo nazis
Matt Rinaldi

Texas GOP Rejects Ban On Association With Neo-Nazis And Antisemities

"Texas GOP executive committee rejects proposed ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Two months after a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser was caught hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas have voted against barring the party from associating with known Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers.

In a 32-29 vote on Saturday, members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee stripped a pro-Israel resolution of a clause that would have included the ban— delivering a major blow to a faction that has called for the party to confront its ties to groups that have recently employed, elevated or associated with outspoken white supremacists or antisemitic figures.

In October, The Texas Tribune published photos of Fuentes, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, entering and leaving the offices of Pale Horse Strategies, a consulting firm for far-right candidates and movements. Pale Horse Strategies is owned by Jonathan Stickland, a former state representative and at the time the leader of a political action committee, Defend Texas Liberty, that two West Texas oil billionaires have used to fund right-wing movements, candidates and politicians in the state — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Matt Rinaldi, chairman of the Texas GOP, was also seen entering the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was inside for nearly 7 hours. He denied participating, however, saying he was visiting with someone else at the time and didn’t know Fuentes was there.

Defend Texas Liberty has not publicly commented on the scandal, save for a two-sentence statement condemning those who've tried to connect the PAC to Fuentes’ “incendiary” views. Nor has the group clarified Stickland's current role at Defend Texas Liberty, which quietly updated its website in October to reflect that he is no longer its president. Tim Dunn, one of the two West Texas oil billionaires who primarily fund Defend Texas Liberty, confirmed the meeting between Fuentes and Stickland and called it a “serious blunder,” according to a statement from Patrick.

In response to the scandal — as well as subsequent reporting in the Tribune that detailed other links between Defend Texas Liberty and white supremacists — nearly half of the Texas GOP’s executive committee had called for the party to cut ties with Defend Texas Liberty and groups it funds until Stickland was removed from any position of power, and a full explanation for the Fuentes meeting was given.

The proposed demands were significantly watered down ahead of the party’s quarterly meeting this weekend. Rather than calling for a break from Defend Texas Liberty, the faction proposed general language that would have barred associations with individuals or groups “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial.”

But even that general statement was not enough to sway a majority of the executive committee. In at-times tense debate on Saturday, members argued that words like “tolerate” or “antisemitism” were too vague or subjective, and could create future problems for the party, its leaders and candidates.

“It could put you on a slippery slope,” said committee member Dan Tully.

Supporters of the language disagreed. They noted that the language was already a compromise, didn’t specifically name any group or individual and would lend credence to the Texas GOP’s stances in support of Israel.

“To take it out sends a very disturbing message,” said Rolando Garcia, a Houston-based committee member who drafted the language. “We’re not specifying any individual or association. This is simply a statement of principle.”

Other committee members questioned how their colleagues could find words like “antisemitism” too vague, despite frequently lobbing it and other terms at their political opponents.

“I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists and RINOs (‘Republicans in Name Only’) don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is,” committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham told the Tribune after the vote.

House Speaker Dade Phelan similarly condemned the vote Saturday evening, calling it “despicable.”

The Texas GOP executive committee “can’t even bring themselves to denounce neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers or cut ties with their top donor who brought them to the dance,” Phelan wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “There is a moral, anti-Semitic rot festering within the fringes of BOTH parties that must be stopped.”

Before the vote, executive committee members separately approved a censure of outgoing Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, over his lead role in the investigation and impeachment of Paxton.

Saturday’s vote is the latest sign of growing disunity among the Texas GOP, which for years has dealt with simmering tensions between its far-right and more moderate, but still deeply conservative, wings. Defend Texas Liberty and its billionaire backers have been key players in that fight, funding primary challenges to incumbent Republicans who they deem insufficiently conservative while and bankrolling a sprawling network of institutions, media websites and political groups that they’ve used to incrementally pull Texas further right.

The party’s internecine conflict has exploded into all-out war since the impeachment and acquittal of Paxton, a crucial Defend Texas Liberty ally whose political life has been subsidized by the PAC’s billionaire funders. After Paxton’s acquittal, Defend Texas Liberty vowed scorched-earth campaigns against those who supported the attorney general’s removal, and promised massive spending ahead of next year’s primary elections.

Then came the news of the Stickland and Fuentes meeting — a political bombshell that sharply intensified infighting and prompted some in the Texas GOP to question the party’s proximity to racists and extremists. In the wake of the Tribune’s reporting, Phelan and other House Republicans called on their colleagues to donate money they received from Defend Texas Liberty to pro-Israel charities.

Many of the PAC’s beneficiaries have been defiant in the face of those calls, instead accusing Phelan of politicizing antisemitism and attempting to discredit the Tribune’s reporting and downplay the scandal.

Ahead of Saturday’s vote, Defend Texas Liberty-backed Reps. Nate Schatzline (R-Fort Worth) and Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) briefly spoke to the executive committee.

The day prior, Sen. Bob Hall — an Edgewood Republican who has received $50,000 from Defend Texas Liberty — was also at the Austin hotel where executive committee members were meeting, and in a speech condemned attempts to cut ties with the group based on what he called “hearsay,” “fuzzy photographs” and “narratives.”

“If you want to pass a resolution, I would make it positive,” Hall said to executive committee members on Friday. “We don’t need to do our enemy’s work for them.”

Hall reiterated that stance in an interview with the Tribune, calling the Fuentes meeting a “mistake” but claiming that there was “no evidence” that Stickland or Defend Texas Liberty are antisemitic.

“I've had meetings with transgenders, gays, and lesbians,” Hall said. “Does that make me a transgender, gay or a lesbian?”

Asked if he was comparing gay people to white supremacists or Hitler admirers like Fuentes, Hall responded: “I’m talking about people who are political hot potatoes.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.


Elon Musk

It's The Antisemitism, Stupid: Why Advertisers Are Fleeing Musk's 'X'

X has rolled out a series of pathetic excuses for why ads for brand-conscious blue chip companies keep appearing alongside antisemitic content on the social media platform once known as Twitter. But they all ignore the obvious and central issue: Its owner, Elon Musk, is a right-wing extremist who has made X a hub for white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Media Matters reported on November 16 that ads for Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) were appearing on X next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. That report followed Musk’s personal endorsement of a post that accused Jewish communities in the U.S. of “dialectical hatred against whites” and blamed them for “flooding their country” with “hordes of minorities” — a recapitulation of the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory which motivated the 2018 massacre of worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

Within hours, IBM announced that it would pull its ads from the platform, saying the company “has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination.” X’s ad sales associates are reportedly worried that other major advertisers will follow.

X’s leaders, who clearly fear that the company’s public association with bigotry threatens its already perilous financial position, are furiously spinning the situation in hopes of containing the fallout.

An anonymous X executive said that its system is not “intentionally placing” particular ads alongside bigoted posts and blamed “Media Matter’s researcher” for “actively looking for this content” in a statement to Axios.

And Musk himself drew attention to a user’s “analysis” that similarly argued “the root cause of X having antisemitic content next to Ads seems to be that X’s automated Ad Adjacency tools aren’t able to determine if the content in images is antisemitic.” That user added, “Media Matters is just scrolling down on user profile of Antisemitic Accounts until they see an ad.” (Musk responded, “Media Matters is an evil organization.”)

Let’s stipulate that Musk and the X executive are correct that X’s ad targeting tool is apparently a piece of garbage that companies can’t count on to keep their advertisements from appearing alongside Holocaust denial, pro-Hitler content, and other bigotry (this is a very strange acknowledgement for them to make publicly!). Let’s also stipulate that Media Matters senior investigative reporter Eric Hananoki is a dazzlingly effective and diligent researcher whose work will absolutely ruin your day.

The “root cause of X having antisemitic content next to Ads” is that there’s a ton of pro-Hitler, Holocaust denial, white nationalist, and neo-Nazi content on X for the ads to appear alongside.

That’s not a coincidence.

Musk rolled out the red carpet for bigots when he took over the platform last year. He has personally reinstated the accounts of white nationalists and neo-Nazis, refused to enforce X’s policies barring antisemitic content, engaged with a bevy of hatemongers on the platform, and apparently paid shared ad revenue to a pro-Hitler account. The entirely predictable result has been an immediate and sustained surge of bigoted content on X, as the worst people on the internet adopted the platform as a safe space to promote their despicable views.

Why is there so much antisemitism on X? Musk’s recent comments suggest the company’s policies are not the result of a principled stance on free speech or a financial necessity, but because Musk himself personally agrees with the hateful rants that bigoted X users churn out. That is certainly the perspective of the white nationalists who responded by praising him for echoing “what we were saying in Charlottesville” and “normalising our ideas.”

Musk himself is the problem. And as long as he is running X, advertisers will find their brands imperiled by his actions, no matter what assurances nominal CEO Linda Yaccarino offers them.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Janae Shamp

Arizona GOP State Senator Promoted Neo-Nazis And QAnon Antisemites

Arizona state Sen. Janae Shamp has promoted antisemitic influencers on her Facebook page. Her sources include a neo-Nazi who previously said he wants a picture of Adolf Hitler in “every classroom”; a Gab user who urged readers to “Fight the Jews on Every Single Issue”; a QAnon influencer who dreamed of the day that Jewish people would be “gone”; and a neo-Nazi radio host who served a prison sentence for issuing violent threats.

In addition to her repeated promotion of antisemites, Shamp has also forwarded QAnon propaganda dozens of times, which Media Matters reported on earlier this week. QAnon itself is steeped in antisemitism. Shamp has not responded to reporters’ questions for comment about her QAnon activity, but she has taken down some of her posts.

Shamp has also compared people who oppose the COVID-19 vaccine to victims of the Holocaust. In one instance, Shamp shared an image of the Jewish badge with the word “unvaccinated” written over it.

She also posted an image comparing the treatment of the unvaccinated to laws targeting Jewish people in Nazi Germany.

Shamp’s sharing of bigoted accounts is part of a larger pattern of Republicans who have promoted antisemitic media figures and outlets. Those officials include fellow Arizona politicians Rep. Paul Gosar and state Sen. Wendy Rogers. Both of them, along with former President Donald Trump, endorsed Shamp's campaign.

The following are numerous examples of Shamp promoting the accounts of antisemites.

Shamp Promoted Neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell’s Anti-Soros Post

Shamp shared an anti-George Soros post that was credited as “Via Gab - @RealBlairCottrell.” (The writing was originally posted on a QAnon-themed Telegram account.) Blair Cottrell is a pro-violence neo-Nazi who has written of Hitler: “There should be a picture of this man in every classroom and every school, and his book should be issued to every student annually." He has also said, “The Jews are as small physically as they are degenerate in character,” and claimed that Jewish people "infiltrate and subvert entire generations of other nations in a bid for world power.”

The Gab account Shamp directed people to includes Cottrell praising Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers' Party (also known as the Nazi Party). He wrote: “The reason nobody will recreate National Socialism any time soon is because the NSDAP was built from the ground up by a decorated war veteran and thousands of high-stock, stoic German soldiers, frustrated and forced into political action by Germany’s terrible conditions following her defeat in the First World War. … Personally, I don’t even feel like I have the right to call myself a National Socialist. I work hard and am in good condition, however I don’t live morally enough yet.”

Gab itself is a haven for antisemites, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists. It is run by Andrew Torba, who has repeatedly made antisemitic remarks.

Shamp Promoted The Website Of Neo-Nazi Hal Turner

Shamp shared a COVID-19 conspiracy theory article on the website of white supremacist radio host Hal Turner. The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote:

On his radio show, Turner has ranted about “bull-dyke lesbians,” “savage Negro beasts,” “f------,” and even joked about a “portable n----- lyncher” machine. He has a nasty history of threatening political enemies, saying that they deserve to be killed and posting their addresses online. That practice caught up to him in August 2010, when he was convicted of threatening to assault and murder three federal judges.

The SPLC also documented Turner’s history of antisemitism. Publications including The New York Times and NPR have described him as a neo-Nazi.

Shamp Cited InevitableET, Antisemitic QAnon Influencer

Shamp shared election denial content credited to QAnon influencer InevitableET. Vice News wrote that InevitableET (real name Craig Longley) is “a leading and hugely antisemitic voice in the Q community.” The publication reported that he has imagined “the day Trump would leave the White House, suggesting that all Jews would be ‘gone,’ using the antisemitic three brackets ‘echo’ symbol to identify Jewish people. … He has taken part in the ‘Blue the Jew’ movement, where anti-Semites Photoshop images of Jewish people blue, a technique developed on fringe websites to use visual clues to disseminate hateful antisemitic messages while avoiding triggering mainstream platforms’ hate speech rules.” Vice added that Longley promoted the virulently antisemitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Shamp Shared Clinton Conspiracy Tweet From “Groyper”

Shamp shared a tweet from a now-suspended Twitter account named “wxgroyper” that pushed the conspiracy theory that Alabama reporter Christopher Sign’s death was related to the Clintons. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue defines groypers as “a loose network of white nationalist activists and internet trolls who gravitate around several key online influencers. Their goal is to push and normalize white nationalist ideas within mainstream conservatism.” Holocaust denier and antisemite Nick Fuentes is a leader of the groyper movement, which pushes antisemitism.

Shamp Promoted Antisemitic QAnon Influencer Jordan Sather

Shamp shared a quote from QAnon influencer Jordan Sather, who has a history of antisemitism. He has written: “What is the real virus plaguing our world?” He then wrote the echo symbol that’s been used by antisemites to symbolize Jewish people: “(((Them))).”

Shamp Promoted Gab Account Of Antisemite Wyatt, Austere Deplorable

Shamp shared a conspiracy theory post from the obscure and virulently antisemitic Gab account Wyatt, Austere Deplorable. That account, which also supports QAnon, had previously posted antisemitic remarks:

  • “Are we, as Gentiles - Satan's Creation, going to sit back and allow this to happen? Or are We going to Fight the Jews on Every Single Issue and put a END to their plan for world domination? I REFUSE TO BE A SLAVE!!” [Link]
  • “The little jew started all this and now they are trying to sit back and watch the people devour themselves. This is a classic method of the jews. This is the same thing they did in WW2 and in all other historical times, such as the Roman Empire.” [Link]
  • “The jews are very good when it comes to causing wars, frail and afraid when its to carry them. So what do they have to do, is cause Gentiles and other States to fight for them. The jewish oligarchy is pushing Gentile Soldiers to actually do what the jews don't want to do.” [Link]

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Paul Gosar

Why Arizona's Gosar Is A 'Sort Of Hero' To Fascists And Neo-Nazis

In Arizona, far-right Rep. Paul Gosar is a polarizing figure even among fellow Republicans. Traditional McCain and Reagan conservatives have been highly critical of him, but MAGA Republicans who admire far-right figures like Kari Lake, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tend to be Gosar admirers as well.

In an article published by Talking Points Memoon May 30, journalist Haley Orion stresses that Gosar is so far to the right that some white nationalists and Neo-Nazis look up to him.

Orion notes that in an earlier article, TPM reported that Wade Searle, Gosar's digital director, appeared to be "involved with an interlinked group of social media profiles that were deeply enmeshed with white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes' viciously antisemitic Groyper movement."

Orion explains, "While the revelations in the story were significant, they weren't necessarily surprising. The Groypers are deeply hateful and grotesque, but Gosar has never been shy in his flirtation with various factions of the fascist far-right, including the Groypers' leader, Fuentes. Or, as Gosar himself has bragged in the past: 'I’m considered the most dangerous man in Congress.' A large swath of the far-right has, in turn, taken notice, with Gosar becoming a sort of hero in some corners."

In 2021, Gosar set off a major controversy when he posted a video that depicted violence against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Gosar's defenders claimed she was overreaching, but his critics responding that depicting violence against a member of Congress is never acceptable.

Orion stresses that Gosar isn't afraid to associate with extremists.

"Gosar has lent his support to a broad coalition of far-right bigots and Christian supremacists: from the s***posting Groyper neo-Nazis to the camo-clad LARPers and hate groups to the suit-wearing, ultranationalist political elites at home and abroad," Orion notes. "He'll rile up the Arizona chapter of the Oath Keepers, telling them that the United States is already in a Civil War, 'we just haven't started shooting yet,' then repeat the same line in an interview with a well-documented neo-Nazi. He'll even associate with the conspiratorial, and often ridiculous, QAnon movement, tweeting out references to Q-drops — Gosar later said the tweet was sarcastic, though the tweet remains up to this day — and appearing at Q-friendly rallies."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.