Tag: wendy rogers
How Can Jews Still Support A Republican Party Infested With  Anti-Semites?

How Can Jews Still Support A Republican Party Infested With  Anti-Semites?

The anti-Semitic outbursts of Kanye West have exposed again the increasing tolerance of foul bigotry within the Republican Party and among its "conservative" mouthpieces. With West now touted as a new Black GOP voice (despite or perhaps because of his admitted mental illness), his sickening threats against Jews were quickly excused by the likes of Tucker Carlson, the top Fox News host whose own embrace of explicit anti-Semitism appears imminent.

Over the past few years, nearly every day has seen an anti-Semitic outrage perpetrated by some figure or organization associated with the Republicans; as the intensity and frequency of these offenses grows, the response by the party and its officials, never robust, has only become weaker and more cowardly.

The question is what Republicans — not the burgeoning caucus of neo-Nazis who call themselves Republicans, but actual conservatives — will do about this cancer on their party. It is a question especially pertinent to the handful of American Jews who have provided substantial financing for the Republicans, and for the man who has stimulated so much hate, former President Donald J. Trump.

When Trump initially excused the murderous Nazi rioters in Charlottesville, Virginia, he upset at least some of the Jewish Republicans who had supported him, such as the financier Stephen Schwarzman and the investment banker Gary Cohn. They felt the disdain of the overwhelming majority of Jews who want no part of Trump or Trumpism.

And yet many of those same Jewish Republicans continue to support the party as its extremism endangers their community and every other minority in the United States. It is curious indeed that someone like the hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay and therefore a target of fascist violence, would continue to subsidize this social poison.

Despite the fact that his own daughter and grandchildren are Jewish, Trump revived the "America First" slogan first popularized here by Hitler's agents and supercharged the return of fascist movements, with their animus against Jews, Blacks, gays and anyone else deemed "different." Having recently donned a "Q" pin to advertise his affinity for the conspiratorial, anti-Semitic and violent QAnon movement, the former president clearly understands that these hideous elements are crucial to his base. But the blame for this menace can no longer be attributed to him alone. Too many other Republicans are directly implicated or complicit.

In Arizona, much of the Republican apparatus is tainted by anti-Semitic rhetoric and ideologies, in particular state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who sucks up to the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and his America First Political Action Committee, and Rep. Paul Gosar, the member of Congress notorious for posting homicidal images of himself murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden. Mark Finchem, the party's nominee for secretary of state this year, is touting his endorsement by the openly anti-Semitic social media site Gab and its founder Andrew Torba, whose speeches explicitly echo the German Nazi Party.

In Pennsylvania, the Republicans nominated for governor a Christian nationalist state senator named Doug Mastriano, who hired Torba to send Gab's anti-Semitic subscribers to his campaign. He followed up with a bit of unsubtle Jew-baiting of his Democrat opponent Josh Shapiro.

In New York, the Republicans chose Carl Paladino, a raving racist, for an upstate congressional seat; his endorsement of Adolf Hitler as "the kind of leader we need" didn't bother Rep. Elise Stefanik, third-ranking Republican in the House, enough to evoke comment, let alone a disendorsement. And let's not forget Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the lunatic anti-Semite and apostle of QAnon violence who was nevertheless backed by nearly every House Republican last year when Democrats moved to strip her committee assignments.

The roster of white nationalists, fascists and neo-Nazis who identify as Republicans goes on much longer and includes such prominent party figures as Trump adviser Steve Bannon. There is now an entire wing of the party, bidding for dominant status, that bills itself as "nationalist" and promotes the authoritarian anti-Semitic leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban, as a Republican role model. That wing even has its own financier, the gay tech billionaire Peter Thiel, whose attraction to white nationalism may someday make him the Republican version of Ernst Röhm.

Whatever has motivated decent Republicans, including those of Jewish descent, to continue supporting what is rapidly becoming the party of fascism and anti-Semitism, they must stop and reconsider. If they imagine that they are using the far Right to achieve a political agenda of lower taxes or less regulation, they ought to recall how that worked out a century ago, when German conservatives, aristocrats, and nationalists thought they were manipulating Hitler and his movement to thwart socialism.

Those willing instruments of Nazism are stained forever — and that legacy of disgrace will be shared by the Republicans who are now enabling fascism in America.

Study: Hundreds Of GOP Elected Officials In Extremist Facebook Groups

Study: Hundreds Of GOP Elected Officials In Extremist Facebook Groups

There have been powerful indicators of the full-bore radicalization of the Republican Party in the past year: the 100-plus extremist candidates it fielded this year, the apparent takeover of the party apparatus in Oregon, the appearance of Republican officials at white nationalist gatherings. All of those are mostly rough gauges or anecdotal evidence, however; it’s been difficult to get a clear picture of just how deeply the extremism has penetrated the party.

Using social media as a kind of proxy for their real-world outreach—a reasonable approach, since there are few politicians now who don’t use social media—the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights decided to get a clearer picture of the reach of extremist influences in official halls of power by examining how many elected officials participate in extremist Facebook groups. What it found was deeply troubling: 875 legislators in all 50 states, constituting nearly 22% of all elected GOP lawmakers, identified as participating members of extremist Facebook groups.

“The ideas of the far right have moved pretty substantially into the mainstream,” Devin Burghart, IREHR’s executive director, told Dana Milbank of TheWashington Post, “not only as the basis for acts of violence but as the basis for public policy.”

This is pointedly true when it comes to “replacement theory,” the white-nationalist conspiracist narrative claiming that a nefarious cabal of globalist elites is deliberately manipulating immigration to replace white people in Western society with nonwhites—a set of beliefs that fueled Saturday’s domestic-terrorist attack on the Black community in Buffalo.

“Replacement theory” proponents, Burghart said, come from a broad bandwidth of far-right movements, and have been spread widely over the past year since Fox News’ Tucker Carlson began championing the claims. It’s also been ardently promoted by mainstream Republicans, particularly members of Congress:

  • Elise Stefanik of New York, the number three House Republican: She’s running ads accusing Democrats of “a permanent election insurrection” in the form of an immigration amnesty plan that would “overthrow our current electorate.”
  • Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus: He has claimed “we’re replacing … native-born Americans to permanently transform the political landscape.”
  • Matt Gaetz of Florida, a notorious Trumpist congressman: tweeted that Carlson “is CORRECT about Replacement Theory.”
  • J.D. Vance, who won the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate in Ohio: He claims that “Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with … more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”
  • Ron Johnson, the GOP senator from Wisconsin: He claims that Democrats “want to remake the demographics of America to ensure ... that they stay in power forever.”

IREHR researchers defined “far-right” groups as those advocating for changes that would significantly undermine political, social, and/or economic equality along class, racial, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, immigration status, or religious lines. Groups fighting government mask and vaccination rules and other public health efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus were also included, as were 23 anti-abortion groups. It identified 789 of them.

The study identified 875 state legislators serving in the 2021-2022 legislative period who had joined these extremist Facebook books, only three of whom were Democrats. The remaining Republicans who had joined these groups constituted 21.74 percent of all Republican lawmakers in the country, and 11.85 percent of all legislators.

The states with the highest percentage of extremist legislators were Alaska (35 percent), Arkansas (25.19 percent), Idaho (22.86 percent), Montana (22.67 percent), Washington (20.41 percent), Minnesota (19.4 percent), Maine (18.28 percent), and Missouri (18.27 percent). The state with the highest total numbers of these legislators was New Hampshire (62), followed by Pennsylvania (40), Minnesota (39), Missouri (36), Arizona (34), Montana (34), Maine (34), Georgia (32), Washington (30), and Maryland (27).

As the report explores in detail—particularly in its profiles of individual extremist legislators, such as Washington state’s Jim Walsh and New Hampshire’s Susan DeLemus—these lawmakers’ far-right politics naturally translate into extremist legislation. The report connects them with a surge in legislation seeking to limit access to the ballot, restrict the rights of LGBTQ people, to limit “critical race theory” and otherwise control what public school children can learn about America’s legacy of racism, as well as to severely restrict abortion rights in their states.

“All of that stuff has been incubated in these networks,’’ Burghart said. “That rhetoric in this context becomes public policy quite quickly and those ideas not only move from the margins to the mainstream but now they’ve been codified into law in some places."

In all, the report identifies some 963 anti-human-rights bills introduced in legislative bodies by these lawmakers.

As Charlie Pierce observes at Esquire:

The point is that there is an internal coherence to all the rightist causes, as well as enthusiasm that hasn’t been there in previous incarnations. And, because of this coherence, there is a more solid political bloc that can influence the “establishment” Republicans, or intimidate them. But, in any case, it is a bloc that cannot be ignored.

Nor are the report’s authors optimistic, considering that even this clearer view of the penetration of extremism within the ranks of elected officials is still very rough and likely misses a great deal of this kind of activity: “IREHR researchers,” it notes, “believe the findings almost certainly understate the breadth of the problem.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Arizona Republican Official Urges Holocaust Denier To ‘Run For Office’

Arizona Republican Official Urges Holocaust Denier To ‘Run For Office’

Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who spoke at last week’s white nationalist America First Political Action Conference, called on white nationalist and Holocaust denier Vincent James Foxx to “run for office.” Rogers also recently forwarded a piece from VDare, a white nationalist website that is dedicated to warning readers about the supposed dangers of nonwhites.

Foxx is a white nationalist streamer and writer. He is also a Holocaust denier who has said that “the Holocaust is weaponized” against white people; attacked Jewish people because they supposedly “not only control Hollywood, congress, and the media, but they control social media as well”; and claimed that the impeachment of former President Donald Trump was “The Jew Coup.”

He recently spoke at AFPAC, where he pushed the white nationalist “great replacement” theory and said that “Western white culture is the majority culture, to which even non-whites assimilate into today in many western countries, and they’re better off for it.” The Twitter account AZ Right Wing Watch noted Rogers' exhortation, which was made on Telegram.

Foxx is based in Idaho and said that he has “deep connections” to the Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin (R), who spoke at AFPAC. McGeachin is now a candidate for governor.

Rogers has become a major Republican validator for the white nationalist movement, promoting its efforts while receiving rhetorical and financial support from top Republicans including Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Trump himself. (Rogers has been incessantly lying that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.)

On February 2, Rogers used her Telegram account to forward a post from VDare.com, which claimed that President Joe Biden’s administration has been “shipping the illegals in (illegally and impeachably).” VDare also embedded a video from openly bigoted commentator Laura Loomer supposedly showing how “illegal immigrants invade Central Florida.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled VDare a white nationalist hate group and wrote that it “regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race 'scientists,' and anti-Semites.”

VDare features posts with such headlines as: “One Problem With These Hispanic Immigrants Is Their Disgusting Behavior”; “Come Back, Stonewall Jackson! Hispanic Gangs Invade Shenandoah Valley”; “Indians Aren't That Intelligent (On Average)”; “America Does Not Need ANY Immigrants From Africa”; “Roll Over, JIHAD -- There’s Also HIJRA, Muslim Conquest By Immigration”; “National Data: Haitian Immigrants Pretty Useless -- But Haiti Still Needs Them More Than We Do”; and “OK, Let’s Give Them Reparations—If They Go Back To Africa.”

Rogers' promotions of VDare and Foxx are further examples of her love of the white nationalist movement. Last weekend, she spoke remotely at the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist gathering that was organized by Holocaust denier and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. During her speech, Rogers said: “I truly respect Nick because he’s the most persecuted man in America.” Rogers has frequently praised Fuentes and said that she loves him.

Rogers has repeatedly praised Fuentes’ racist followers, known as “groypers,” including saying that “I love the Groypers because the Right Wing Watch hates them” and asking the “Groyper army” to help her. The Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy recently explained: “The self-styled online ‘army’ that Rogers was imploring to rally to her aid is a collection of white nationalists who often use online trolling tactics against people they don’t like. Their goals broadly include normalizing their extreme and racist views by aligning them with Christianity and so-called ‘traditional’ values.”

She also has repeatedly appeared on TruNews, an anti-Semitic outlet that warns viewers of “seditious Jews.” Additionally, Rogers has expressed support for the violence-linked QAnon conspiracy theory and is a proud member of the Oath Keepers, a militia group with a history of violence.

The Arizona Republican has pushed toxic rhetoric, including calling for “more gallows”; praising the Confederacy; and claiming that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “is a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Arizona GOP Governor Defends Backing White Nationalist Candidate

Arizona GOP Governor Defends Backing White Nationalist Candidate

While Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey attempted to distance himself from the violence that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 by condemning the day and immediately issuing a statement describing the occurrence as "a sickening day" that "no American will ever forget,” his actions don’t match his words. Ducey called for perpetrators to be prosecuted. However, at the same time he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to elect candidates and lawmakers who boosted the same conspiracy theories that led to the violence that occurred; attended the "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington, D.C.; or openly supported the January 6 insurrection.

Among those he heavily supported is state Sen. Wendy Rogers. Rogers is a far-right Republican who not only advocates on behalf of Donald Trump and his claims that the election was “stolen,” but had a reputation for spreading false conspiracy theories, including one claiming that antifascist activists were responsible for the violence on January 6.

When asked about his support for Rogers on Thursday, Ducey defended his independent expenditures, which spent half a million dollars to support her. Despite her white nationalist ideology, he said he was “proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish” in the 2020 election, adding that “she’s still better than her opponent, Felicia French.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, a national organization that advocates for acceptance and equality, Rogers is at the top of the list of extremist politicians.

“We’ve just released an analysis of extremist rhetoric in the elections this year, and Wendy Rogers is at the top of that list,” Tammy Gillies, Anti-Defamation League regional director for San Diego and Phoenix, said in January.

The analysis came after Rogers shared a message on Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Twitter that said: “Celebrate Lee-Jackson Day.” The tweet included photos of confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, who fought against the Union to preserve slavery, NBC News 12 reported.

In other tweets, Rogers has referred to herself as being “pure blood” and claimed that such individuals are being “replaced and invaded” by “illegal immigrants.” The theory is called the Great Replacement Myth.

“Words matter,” Gillies said. “And words motivate people. Anti-Semitic tropes and hateful language can lead to actual physical violence, and we’ve seen that over and over again.”

Not only has Rogers publicly supported the Stop the Steal movement, but she has also proudly said she is a member of the Oath Keepers militia, according to NBC News. The list of right-wing conspiracies she supports is endless.

She even supported an event that looked to “cancel Hannukah” and only celebrate Christmas in the country. Clearly, she is someone you do not want to support.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos