By admin Here’s a grim reality that few would have predicted in the 1990s: Neo-Nazi rhetoric and ideology have found a place in American political discourse. You don’t have to believe America is fascist to become alarmed that crackpot rhetoric has found its way into the national dialogue. Review the ravings of Timothy McVeigh, watch footage of a neo-Nazi rally, or even sit down with a 1998 movie like American History X, the story of a skinhead played by Edward Norton, and you will discern a disturbing pattern. Beyond epithets, the vocabulary of lunacy and hatred is now part of our vernacular.
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“The Great Replacement” theory is boilerplate Republican lingo and dogma. Although it originated with a French nationalist, it was David Lane, cofounder of the white supremacist organization The Order, who was responsible for its American coinage. He included it in his 1995 textual vomit, the White Genocide Manifesto. Today’s leading proponent of the Great Replacement Theory is Vice President JD Vance, who recently told Angie Nixon, a Black woman running for the U.S. Senate in Florida and a natural-born citizen, that the vice president excoriated her for being aligned with democratic socialism. He told her to “get the hell out of the country.” Meanwhile, Vance has also developed a habit of whining about “institutionalized anti-white discrimination,” a longtime staple of neo-Nazi recruitment campaigns.
It is common for Vance, his supporters, and his dotard superior, Donald Trump, to denigrate their critics and adversaries as “globalists.” The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee explain that “globalist” originated in white supremacist circles as a pejorative to identify those who were directly involved in the “great replacement” and “new world order.” The most frequent targets of the thinly veiled conspiracy theory were Jews. In the contemporary right-wing media ecosystem, a “globalist” is anyone who opposes the “real America,” “Christianity,” and even “God.” George Soros, the Jewish financier and philanthropist, even at 96 and rarely seen, remains the most influential and dangerous “globalist.”
“Cultural Marxism” is another popular expression of derangement in mainline right-wing politics. Pundits, ranging from Fox News’s Sean Hannity to internet staples Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, use the term to castigate everything from gender studies programs at major universities to Disney films with gay characters. Owens has claimed that “satanic pedophiles who work for Israel” rule over the common people. While few reach her levels of psychosis, “cultural Marxism,” according to one scholar of political extremism, has become the “conspiracy theory of our time.” It is strikingly similar to Nazi propaganda that warned Europeans of “Cultural Bolshevism” deriving from Jewish intellectuals. Decades after the fall of the Third Reich, the term, which first became popular within the White Power Movement, has been broadened to condemn multiculturalism and social liberalism.
A cacophony of neo-Nazi rhetoric is broadcast globally with the amplification of Elon Musk, who not only uses the terminology himself, but shifts the algorithm on X to promote brazen racism and antisemitism. The trillionaire is also one of the most effective manipulators of widespread white anxiety, stoking delusions of persecution and censorship. Far-right bloviators, with audiences numbering from the hundreds of thousands to millions, pounce on those who argue for pluralism, multiculturalism, even decency, denouncing them as “woke.” The result: Legions of young white men now believe that support for “free speech” equates to approval of demeaning insults of racial minorities, gay and transgender people, and women.
The left once functioned as a bulwark against recrudescence of hatred, but in recent years has demonstrated a tendency to parrot neo-Nazi nomenclature. In their zealotry to denounce all things Israeli, progressive podcast hosts, such as Emma Vigeland, Jennifer Welch, and Hasan Piker, along with their large numbers of devoted listeners, have taken to deploying the terms “Zionist” and “Zio” as slurs. The origin of “Zio” as a pejorative traces back to none other than David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who, between plastic surgery recovery periods, still makes time to slander Blacks, Jews, and immigrants of color.
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The accusation that “Zionists,” whether through AIPAC or alleged Israeli influence, control the US government, subverting democracy in service of themselves, is found on the left and right. The remix of the “Jewish cabal” conspiracy, now prevalent in online discourse, was once the hallmark of the White Power Movement. During the 1980s, David Lane’s organization, The Order, committed a series of terrorist acts to fight “ZOG,” the “Zionist Occupied Government.”
Christian Picciolini, a former neo-Nazi who, in the 1990s, was the leader of Chicago-Area Skinheads (CASH), the largest neo-Nazi street gang in the U.S., and would later become an inspiring anti-racist advocate and deradicalization specialist, has discussed how he and other hate movement leaders advised young supporters to “trade their boots for suits.” Instead of turning themselves into societal pariahs, they should insinuate themselves in American institutions, from law enforcement to local government, spreading their beliefs through more socially palatable means than swastika tattoos and vandalism.
It doesn’t require much paranoia to speculate that the “boots for suits” strategy has succeeded beyond its proponents’ wildest dreams. The neo-Nazis have seen their terminology enter the national vocabulary. Their language and influence are visible everywhere, poisoning debate and turning generations of young men into vessels of cruelty, paranoia, and prejudice. Far more destructive than hate speech, the racial profiling and violence of ICE demonstrate that, under the authority of President Trump, it functions as a white nationalist paramilitary.
This is not a fascist nation, and there are no Brownshirts in the streets, brawling in the lead-up to an important legislative election, as was so common in Weimar Germany. But the lexicon of hate is in our broadcast world and political discourse in ways that Ernst Rohm or Joseph Goebbels might recognize even if today’s technology would have been inconceivable to them.
As pundits focus on the midterms, remember that a long-term struggle transcends the immediate stakes of congressional control: Pushing neo-Nazi politics toward a foul corner, where it belongs, out of the public square. This demands sustained focus and vigilance. Election results, even if they are awful for MAGA this year, are far from conclusive about the prospects of hate in America.
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