A meeting between white supremacist Nick Fuentes and a prominent Republican donor has blown up into civil war among Texas conservative groups.
The Holocaust-denying Fuentes took an hours-long meeting earlier this month with GOP donor Jonathan Strickland, then-president of the ultraconservative Defend Texas Liberty PAC, and the fallout from that confab exposed growing concerns about extremism within GOP ranks, reported The Daily Beast.
“Among the concerns were a [Young Republicans of Texas] leader who ‘openly affiliates with antisemites’ online, as well as another prominent member who ‘is a public supporter of Adolf Hitler,’” reported Amanda Moore, who went undercover in the MAGA movement for a year.
The Texas Young Republican Federation (TYRF) voted in August to disassociate from the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) over alleged troll actions by RPT chair Matt Rinaldi, and some smaller groups broke away from TYRF and formed the ultra-MAGA Young Republicans of Texas (YRT).
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Texas’s State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) voted last month to partner with the newly former YRT in spite of concerns about neo-Nazis within their ranks, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton even praised the hard-right group as “the newest generation of Young Republicans" – but the Fuentes meeting with Strickland had raised concerns about GOP leaders in the state.
“Because it has become clear that the YRT has actively recruited and embraced into its leadership individuals who support self-avowed Neo-Nazi White Supremacists, the Republican Party of Texas must separate from this group, as they do not represent the core values of the Republican Party of Texas,” the Texas Executive Committee wrote to the state GOP.
The executive committee raised concerns about a YRT leader who “openly affiliates with antisemites” online, as well as another prominent member who “is a public supporter of Adolf Hitler, making public statements such as ‘National cold brew day AND Hitler’s bday?! It’s a great day indeed’ and ‘I’m antisemitic.’”
“During the rushed SREC vetting process of YRT, concerned activists came forward with troubling information regarding the charter members of the organization,” their letter states. “Those concerns were not given full weight, and now YRT itself admits what many of us suspected all along: the ranks of YRT are infested with avowed antisemites and neo-Nazi sympathizers.”
