The Alt-Right to Heritage Foundation Pipeline: A 10-Year Journey
Extremist rot goes up and down on the right
Two weeks after Tucker Carlson’s scandalous interview with white supremacist, Jew-hating, misogynist “influencer” Nick Fuentes, the MAGA right is still grappling with the fallout—particularly after the Heritage Foundation’s (of Project 2025 fame) president, Kevin Roberts, defended Carlson and took a swipe at Carlson’s “globalist” critics. Meanwhile, some conservatives seem to be waking up to the fact that large segments of the right now normalize Fuentes-style hate. American Conservative’s Rod Dreher, a prominent blogger on the “national conservative” right, reports that a “D.C. insider told him that ‘between 30 and 40%’ of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes.” Dreher, who is appalled by the rise of this “malign movement,” reports that this estimate was “confirmed multiple times by Zoomers who live in that world.”
Many Republicans have been patting themselves on the back for their party’s willingness to take on antisemitism in their midst, given the backlash against Roberts. Yet, writing in The Bulwark, Gabriel Schoenfeld counters that none of the Republicans assailing Roberts are confronting Donald Trump’s friendship with Carlson or his coziness with other antisemites—including his own dinner with Fuentes as a guest of fellow antisemite, Kanye West, at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. And Commentary’s Abe Greenwald, no one’s idea of a liberal, points out the JD Vance problem: “Vance, Donald Trump’s most likely heir apparent, is entangled with the Jew-haters, takes pains not to cross their red lines, and clearly feels the need to stay in proximity to their camp.” Vance, Greenwald notes, has dismissed concerns about Fuentes and his “groypers” followers (who style themselves after a cartoon frog meme) as stupid “infighting” on the right.
The Heritage Debacle: Only the Latest Episode in a Dark Drama
The Heritage debacle comes on the heels of two stories in Politico last month of Republican public figures saying odious things in group chats—everything from racist mockery of Black people to jokes about gas chambers and praise for Nazis. Participants in these extraordinarily vile exchanges included a state senator from Vermont and staffers for other state legislators as well as a White House staffer who had been nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel. While a number of Republicans condemned such rhetoric, Vance conspicuously refused to join their ranks. Instead, he dismissed the outrage over bigotry-riddled chats among Young Republican activists as “pearl clutching.” Kids “tell edgy, offensive jokes,” he scoffed.
I’ll get into these chats more later, but first, note that some of the “kids” in the chat were as old as 35; the cutoff age for membership in the Young Republicans is 40. Moreover, while the tone of the comments was ostensibly sarcastic (e.g., “Great. I love Hitler” in reference to a Young Republicans chapter promising to “vote for the most right-wing person” to lead the national organization), it’s a type of humor sometimes known as “kidding on the square”: a joke that may also reflect the speaker’s real views.
A decade ago, this “ironic bigotry” stance was raised to an art form by then-Breitbart News reporter Milo Yiannopoulos, who claimed that defying taboos against racism, sexism, antisemitism, and other bigotries was a good way to fight “political correctness.” Yiannopoulos, who first gained visibility in 2014 during the “Gamergate” controversy, began with racist and sexist provocations under the guise of edgy, tongue-in-cheek humor. The fact that he was a gay man with a British accent and a glamorous bad-boy persona probably helped him get away with it for a while, even in mainstream media circles. During the 2016 election campaign, he became a vocal supporter of the white supremacist “alt-right”—a self-styled “alternative” to the mainstream right, supposedly emasculated by taboos against racism and other bigotry. He even joined a Twitter mob hurling antisemitic abuse at the Jewish right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro (currently one of Carlson’s strongest critics) in response to Shapiro’s announcement of the birth of his son. Yiannopoulos’s contribution to this sewer was a Twitter post claiming that the baby had “come out half-black,” implying that Shapiro had been cuckolded by a Black man—one of the alt-right’s obsessions.
Even so, Yiannopoulos was not disavowed by the “legitimate” right until nearly a year later, after a video emerged in which he appeared to condone sexual relationships between underage boys and adult men. The scandal led to his disinvitation from the Conservative Political Action Conference and dismissal from Breitbart. Praise for pederasty crossed the line; praise for neo-Nazis and white nationalists had not.
Around the same time Yiannopoulos became a cheerleader for the alt-right, I got a disturbing firsthand glimpse of this toxic movement’s growing influence while attending a dinner with the officers and core membership of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter at the University of Michigan. Every single person at the table not only turned out to be a Donald Trump supporter but a Yiannopoulos fan. To my dismay, their comments also left no doubt that nearly all were involved in alt-right online spaces.
Fast-forward nine years, and the results are on display in chat threads publicized by Politico’s two bombshell reports.
The first one revealed leaders of Young Republican groups in Telegram chats in which they:
Discussed sending their opponents to gas chambers with comments like, “Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic.”
Disparaged Black and female airline pilots with remarks like, “If your pilot is a she and she looks ten shades darker than someone from Sicily, just end it there. Scream the no no word.”
Snarked about Black people and watermelon and mocked NBA playoffs with references to “watch[ing] monkey play ball.”
The man who made those last remarks, Peter Giunta (the “I love Hitler” guy) was then chief of staff to New York state Assemblymember Mike Reilly and had been a top contender to lead the Young Republican National Federation.
There was also banter about hotel room “1488”—a number with symbolic significance for Nazi groups, referring to a 14-word Nazi slogan and a numerical code for “Heil Hitler.” When a chat member suggested undermining a rival candidate by falsely linking her to “pro-Nazi” propaganda, another person quipped that being too anti-Nazi “will lose the Kansas delegation.” Three members, including two Young Republicans from Kansas, responded with a “laughing face” emoji.
The chat also included moments when members ostensibly expressed approval of the hardcore bigotry of fellow activists. William Hendrix (then a communications assistant for Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a rabid nativist) said that he liked the Missouri Young Republicans because “Missouri doesn’t like fags.” In a discussion of a teenage Republican network, Giunta praised one group in New York state for being “mega based”—internet slang for authentic and bold—because “they support slavery and all that shit.”
Antisemitism also appeared: Giunta referred to a delegate at the Young Republicans national convention as a “fat stinky Jew.” Another participant, Brianna Douglas, then a national committee member of the Vermont Young Republicans, commented on the naïveté of “expecting the Jew to be honest” when referring to a procedural error made by a Jewish national federation official that could give one state’s delegation a boost.
One might think these ugly messages were cherrypicked from years of conversation. In fact, the collection from which they came—leaked by New York conservative activist Gavin Wax—covered just seven months.
The second Politico report involved Paul Ingrassia, the White House liaison at the Department of Homeland Security and Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel (an agency tasked with investigating federal employees’ whistleblower reports and complaints of mistreatment). Ingrassia made blatantly racist remarks in a Jan. 2024 text-message chain involving several Republican operatives and influencers, several of whom pushed back, chiding Ingrassia for coming across as “a white nationalist” or as having “a tinge of racism.” In fact, “a tinge” is putting it mildly: Ingrassia not only railed against Martin Luther King Jr. Day and other “moulignon holidays”—the Italian slur for Black people—but blamed the social problems affecting Black Americans on racial inferiority: “Blacks behave that way because that’s their natural state … You can’t change them,” he wrote, adding, “Proof: all of Africa is a shithole, and will always be that way.” Also, from Ingrassia: “Never trust a chinaman [sic] or Indian. NEVER.” And: “We need competent white men in positions of leadership. … The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal … We need to reject that part of our heritage.”
When another participant remarked that “Paul belongs in the Hitler Youth,” Ingrassia took it in stride: “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.”
Whither the MAGA Right?
The good news is that even the Trump-era GOP has certain red lines when it comes to racism and antisemitism: the backlash to Kevin Roberts’ defense of Carlson was so severe that Roberts had to issue an abject apology. Likewise, in last month’s scandals, Ingrassia was forced to withdraw his Office of Special Counsel nomination when it became clear that he could not secure Republican votes to be confirmed. The Young Republican National Federation had to issue a statement expressing dismay at “the vile and inexcusable language revealed in the Politico article” and calling for those involved to “immediately resign from all positions within their state and local Young Republican organizations.” The New York state Republican Party voted to disband the New York chapter of the Young Republicans where Giunta was chair, citing the “vile language” in the chat as well as mismanagement. Giunta also resigned his post as chief of staff to New York state Assemblymember Reilly, and several other chat participants lost their jobs as well.
The bad news is that the purveyors of “vile language” and vile ideas still have plenty of defenders. The New York Young Republicans Club has booted out Gavin Wax, who leaked the chat, from his chairmanship and issued a statement expressing sympathy for Young Republicans members “whose reputations and careers were destroyed for private, internal messages.” Some right-wingers also tried to get him fired from his State Department job. Meanwhile, Politico noted that after the initial report was published, the GOP was “split over whether to condemn the texts, redirect focus to violent rhetoric from the left, or both.”
As for Ingrassia, he is out as prospective head of the Office of Special Counsel, but there’s no word on whether he still retains his current administration job. Moreover, Ingrassia’s repugnant views were fairly obvious even before the Politico exposé. He is not only a former attorney but also an enthusiastic cheerleader for “manosphere” influencer Andrew Tate—a self-proclaimed misogynist, rabid antisemite, accused rapist and sex trafficker who has bragged about his crimes on video. In a fawning 2023 social media post, Ingrassia shared a photo of himself with his then-client, whom he hailed as “an extraordinary human being” and “the embodiment of the ancient ideal of excellence: to seek perfection of mind, body, and spirit” in contrast to “our grotesquely decadent society.” Who’d have thunk this guy would turn out to be a creepy bigot?
As for “Fuentesgate,” prominent right-wing pundit Megyn Kelly, formerly of Fox News, is still sticking up for Tucker Carlson (who had spouted quite a bit of thinly veiled antisemitism before the Fuentes interview), while Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire—Ben Shapiro’s own outlet—frets about the right “eating each other.”
The more fundamental problem is that a toxic culture of what Vanity Fair calls “performative extremism” has become pervasive on the right, enabled by a president who engages in thinly veiled racist rhetoric of his own (Ingrassia’s “Africa is a shithole” echoes Trump’s infamous “shithole countries” remark). It is strengthened, too, by the “never give an inch to the left” mentality. And, while it has its roots partly in the culture of trolling, it consistently and increasingly blurs the lines between trolling and authentic bigotry.
Some of the most vocal right-wing critics of the groyperfication of the right don’t exactly have clean hands themselves. Shapiro, for instance, has never taken responsibility for elevating far-right kook Candace Owens, who wasn’t fired from The Daily Wire until she became an open Jew-hater. Dreher praised a 2022 speech by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that trafficked in unabashed “Great Replacement” rhetoric and decried the “mixed-race world” of liberal Western countries as a necessary warning against the “Islamic occupation” of Europe. More recently, he posted a quasi-defense of the racist MAGA hoax about Haitian cat-eaters in Ohio, criticizing skeptics who summarily dismissed the story. Dreher, who voices dismay at a “postliberal” movement mired in race hatred, should also take a long hard look in the mirror.
Will the Politico stories or the Heritage implosion prompt genuine soul-searching on the right about racism and anti-woke “vice signaling”? Some, such as Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, think such a “reckoning” is coming. Perhaps. It’s also possible that if Roberts survives the outrage, the Carlson-friendly forces will quietly win this fight at Heritage. Or that support for Israel will remain the only uncrossable line in the GOP, while more “traditional” antisemitism—as well as racism, misogyny, and nativist, anti-Muslim, or anti-LGBT bigotry—will be treated at most as minor foibles.
The rot in the modern GOP runs deep and starts too clearly from the top to be cured by a groyper purge.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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The problem is that too many of the principled Republicans who saw the problem a decade ago are no longer part of the party. We begged the GOP to put its foot down. When they didn't, we fled.
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulszydlowski/p/the-ugly-underbelly-and-the-right-16-09-14?r=1ea9qb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
To be noticing what was going on a decade ago - as Cathy so astutely was - was to be gaslight, called a cuck or leftist shill, told it wasn’t happening or that you were making it up, or that the “other side” was the problem (even if you were or shy about covering other forms of extremism).
It’s crazy that this has ended up going so far. Crazy, but entirely predictable.