GOP group panics after mailers go out with white supremacist messaging

The Tennessee Young Republicans – a Tennessee GOP-affiliated group of young conservatives – issued a statement Monday night distancing themselves from remarks and mailers issued by one of its chapter presidents that included openly white supremacist messages.

Austin Lee, the apparent president of the Tennessee Maury County Young Republicans chapter, uses the slogan “Save White America,” and on Tuesday, admitted to having sent out mailers to “thousands of conservatives” in his area. His remarks were flagged Tuesday by the progressive outlet the Tennessee Holler.

In one mailer, Lee calls for local residents to join the Maury County Young Republicans to help halt “wars for Jews,” place “men in charge,” work to “expel the invader,” and “stop the Great Replacement,” a far-right theory that suggests powerful figures are enacting immigration policies to purposely shrink and “replace” the white population.

In another mailer, Lee urged his “fellow American patriots” to “solve” the “problem” of “nonwhite foreigners” who had “invaded our country and are replacing White Americans.”

In its statement, the Tennessee Young Republicans (TYRF) claimed it had not authorized the mailers to be sent out and did not review its contents.

“The views expressed therein DO NOT constitute the views or an official position of the TYRF,” the statement reads, signed off on by the TYRF executive committee.

In a bizarre remark, Lee also referred to Tennessee Republican state Rep. Scott Cepicky as a “Jewish representative," despite Cepicky not being Jewish. In another social media post published Monday, Lee touched on what he referred to as the “Jewish issue,” flagging what he considered to be “one way in which Jews are bad for us.”