Republican White supremacy exposed through Trump’s agenda

From leaked chats to Trump’s political record, the Republican Party’s embrace of White supremacy is no longer hidden — it’s the strategy, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

IN 2005, PRINCE HARRY, then aged 20, caused an international scandal when newspapers published leaked photos showing him dressed in a Nazi costume at a fancy dress party.

Juxtapose this outrage against the news this week that prominent Young Republicans engaged in a group chat where they professed their love for Hitler, called Black people “monkeys”, appreciated rape and discussed gassing people they disagreed with.

As shocking as this leaked group chat is, we should be unsurprised that people who consider themselves future leaders of the Republican Party espouse Nazi (and deeply misogynist) views. To understand how White supremacy is central to the Trump MAGA movement, you only have to look at the Trump Administration’s political actions.

It feels wrong to have to reiterate just how heinous Nazism is, but apparently, it needs to be said.

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I learned at school and from my parents about the rise of the Nazi Party, World War II and the Holocaust. I remember our class watched Schindler’s List, the true story of a German businessman who saved hundreds of his Jewish workers. We read The Diary of Anne Frank, the true story of a family who hid in an attic for two years to try to escape capture in Nazi occupied Netherlands.

I remember that in learning the history of Nazism, how as young people, we felt a loss of innocence. We were devastated at the realisation that such evil, such mass-scale murderous horror could be inflicted on innocent people, all in the name of racial hatred. We understood the pure evil of Nazism, a movement that murdered 6 million Jewish people and other vulnerable minorities to try to fulfil their white supremacy agenda.

Although much of the world still feels this way about Nazism, over the past 20 years – the past ten particularly – the ideology of White supremacy and Nazism has been making a dangerous political comeback.

There is a resurgence of White supremacist Nazism in contemporary hard-right-wing political cultures across Western society, including Australia and in the UK. This White supremacy movement is growing as right-wing political leaders not only continue to normalise and legitimise White supremacist views, but to pursue White supremacist policies.

Just how central White supremacy is to the culture of the Republican Party has been made clear by pulling back the curtain on the Young Republicans’ group chat. Vice President JD Vance – looking panicked – tried to pour water on the scandal by claiming the adults who openly discussed their love for Hitler and their enjoyment of rape were just kids – “young boys” – doing stupid things by telling “edgy offensive jokes”.

The fact is, far from being teenagers making jokes on the internet, this chat group consisted of adult men, and some women, in their late twenties and early thirties who were vying to lead the Young Republican organisation.

More importantly than these few Republicans who have been caught in the act of pro-Nazi discussion (imagine how many haven’t been caught), is that these people are not outliers in the Republican Party, a party which has strategically embraced, legitimised and normalised White supremacy as an electoral strategy and as a political agenda.

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In 2017, during Trump’s first term as President, White nationalists and neo-Nazis protested the removal of a confederate statue in Charlottesville, with some in the crowd chanting “Jews will not replace us”.

Thirty-two year old Heather Heyer was killed in an act of terrorism by one of the White supremacists when he rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters. After this occurred, Trump downplayed what had happened, famously saying there were “very fine people” on both sides of the conflict.

To continue his strategic cosying up to and legitimisation of White supremacists and Nazis, in 2022, Trump invited White supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye (formally Kanye West) who is known for his antisemitic views, to dinner at his Mar-a-Lago home. Trump has also hired multiple people in his administration who have publicly declared their antisemitic views — in other words, White supremacist racism.

Yet, at the same time as the Republican President proudly courts the support of Nazis and White supremacists, the party likes to claim that they are not a racist movement. These denials were exemplified by the statement made by the Young Republican organisation after the pro-Hitler chat became public.

The statement said:

‘We are appalled by the vile and inexcusable language... Such behaviour is disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican and stands in direct opposition to the values our movement represents.’

The values the Republican movement represents? Which values are those? The ones that see I.C.E. agents violently dragging immigrants out of their homes – including young children – and disappearing them to offshore prison camps? The values which have seen the movement go to war against diversity, equity and inclusion, lest someone who is not White, challenge their historic marginalisation in American society?

How about the decades-long efforts by the Republicans to suppress Black voters and to disenfranchise them through gerrymandering?

These, and many more, are not just the words of Republicans in group chats, but the actions of a White supremacist political party who use racist hatred and division to gain power and then enact White supremacy through their actions in government.

There was a time not that long ago when it would have seemed impossible to imagine that a political party as outwardly racist and pro-White supremacy, as embracing of Nazism, as the modern Republican Party would be able to exist in mainstream politics. Just wearing a Nazi costume was a huge scandal in 2005, let alone holding Nazi views.

Yet, in the dystopian present, not only does this political party exist, but it wins elections. It is a sad lesson in how degraded civilisation has been in the last 20 years.