The Republican Party Is Full-on Embracing Anti-Semitism and Bigotry

At a Thursday night fundraiser, Pennsylvania Senate nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz gave a speech in front of one of Adolf Hitler’s cars, which appeared in the background of attendees’ photos. Also attending the event, which yes, was at a museum, were National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fl.) and Nevada Senate Nominee Adam Laxalt. I wrote that one possibility for how the hell this happened was that it was “an intentional wink to the fascist elements of the Republican party.”

Just days later, Republicans are doing a lot more than winking.

The Holocaust–minimizing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was on hand at former President Donald’s Trump’s Sunday rally for Arizona’s Republican nominees, including Kari Lake and Blake Masters, where she told supporters that immigrants are “replacing your jobs” and “replacing your culture.” The language is pulled straight from the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory, which Gwen Snyder described in a Jezebel feature as “a mainstream-friendly laundering of neo-Nazi white genocide conspiracy theory from the 1970s, which contends that a secret Jewish elite is conspiring to replace white people with people of color.”

But Republican leadership doesn’t seem to care about this vile racism and anti-Semitism—they probably even welcome it! Greene recently sat directly behind House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) at an event, and the Associated Press said top Republicans’ embrace of her “signaled a stark normalizing of the most extreme elements in the Republican Party.”

Then on Sunday, when Kanye West tweeted an extremely anti-Semitic rant, several Republicans defended him. West had suggested on Instagram Friday that Jewish people were “controlling” Sean “Diddy” Combs, and after the platform locked his account, he moved to Twitter and said early Saturday that he planned to go “death con 3 [sic] On JEWISH PEOPLE.” The platforms have removed the posts and frozen his accounts.

Fox & Friends co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy implied that freezing West’s accounts was “totalitarian,” per Mediaite. “We’re in this weird era where people can’t just say what they want to say,” Campos-Duffy said. “This idea you have to just shut down his account is just, it’s totally totalitarian, totally anti-American. It’s just wrong.”

Another elected Republicans who defended West: Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, who was last seen badgering the doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape survivor and suing to block LGBTQ kids from free school lunch programs. Rokita wrote on Twitter Sunday that West was being attacked not for anti-semitism, but for his “independent thinking.”

Rokita later claimed he was only defending West’s “White Lives Matter” shirt, not the anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. That makes it all better, right?

In other Republican hero news: Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, called Elon Musk “the Henry Ford of our time.” Oopsies, the Detroit car pioneer was a raging anti-Semite—a point that ADL and Greenblatt himself often make. Greenblatt later apologized. (The group also considers criticism of the Zionist apartheid of Palestinians to be anti-Semitic.)

But the comparison isn’t that far off, considering that Musk regularly parrots talking points from the Great Replacement Theory.

That leaves us with this tweet from the House Judiciary Republicans, the worst political Twitter account to exist. It still hasn’t deleted this tweet celebrating West, Musk, and Donald Trump.

It’s more than a bit worrying that Republicans appear to think embracing white supremacy and anti-Semitism, specifically, is good politics for them. But they’ve been leaning into fascism for quite some time.