Trump-backed candidate sounds alarm on rising MAGA racism in NYT op-ed

Vivek Ramswamy used to be a darling of the far right. A biotech entrepreneur from Cincinnati, he went from his own presidential candidacy in 2024, to Donald Trump surrogate, to co-heading Trump's Department of Government Efficiency task force, and now he's running for governor of Ohio on a MAGA platform.

But his Indian-American heritage has become a huge target for attack in right-wing circles — and on Wednesday, he released a New York Times op-ed warning that this rising racism is on the brink of tearing the conservative movement apart.

"Americanness isn’t a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry. It’s binary: Either you’re an American or you’re not. You are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation," wrote Ramaswamy. "As Ronald Reagan quipped, you can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman; but anyone from any corner of the world can come to live in the United States and become an American ... This is what makes American exceptionalism possible."

The problem, he warned, is that a growing contingent of right-wing activists and strategists no longer believe this, and instead subscribe to an "identitarian" vision of America based on ancestry and ethnicity, where outsiders don't belong.

"The divide between these two views is more foundational than policy divides between Republicans and Democrats," wrote Ramaswamy. "Older Republicans who may doubt the rising prevalence of the blood-and-soil view should think again. My social media feeds are littered with hundreds of slurs, most from accounts that I don’t recognize, about 'pajeets' and 'street s------s' and calls to deport me 'back to India' (I was born and raised in Cincinnati and have never resided outside the U.S.)."

Indeed, he warned, the "online right" class spreading this hate and taking over thought in GOP policy circles reminds him of exactly what he hates in the left.

"As one of the most vocal opponents of left-wing identity politics, I now see real reluctance from my former anti-woke peers to criticize the new identity politics on the right," wrote Ramaswamy. "This pattern eerily mirrors the hesitance of prominent Democrats to criticize woke excess in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, even though most Democratic voters clearly never believed that math is racist, or that hard work and the written tradition are hallmarks of whiteness. That’s a big part of why Kamala Harris lost in such spectacular fashion. If the post-Trump G.O.P. makes the same mistake with our own identitarian fringe, we will meet a similar fate."

Republicans need to forcibly condemn white supremacists like "Groyper" founder Nick Fuentes, Ramaswamy concluded, and focus on policies to lift everyone up like affordability reforms, so young conservatives won't get radicalized.

"The uplifting truth is that the solution to identity politics needn’t be one camp defeating the other, but instead achieving together a national escape velocity to more promising terrain," he wrote.