They say, “Give a man a mask, and he will show you his true face,” and young republicans did exactly that. The 2,900 pages of Telegram chats, shared among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans between early January and mid-August, chronicle their campaign to seize control of the national Young Republican organization on a hardline pro-Donald Trump platform.
Many of the chat members already work inside government or party politics, and one serves as a state senator. They referred to Black people as monkeys and Palestine supporters as “the watermelon people.” They also mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide, and lauded Republicans who they believed supported slavery.
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the n-word and variations of a racial slur more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.”
Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic, and violent rhetoric circulate freely. The Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders. The Republican leadership is arguing that this incident betrays a serious problem in their ranks. This time, looking the other way isn’t an option. They’ve cast it as a moral, political, and even a quite literal hazard.
The Growing Calls for Republican Leadership to Step Up
Vice President Vance spoke to the Republican Party’s leadership and offered them two paths ahead. They could either denounce the increasing examples of racist, antisemitic, and extremist rhetoric in their ranks or they could deflect them away.
Vance has made it clear that he prefers the latter path. He suggests that the Republican Party follow Trump’s strategy of “deflect, never admit wrongdoing, and move on.” The approach made political sense. But increasingly, prominent conservatives are rejecting Vance’s tack.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz called it a “growing cancer” and “poison” of antisemitism on the right. Speaking at the 5th Annual Night to Honor Israel, he said, “I’m here to tell you in the last six months, I have seen antisemitism rising on the right in a way I have never seen in my entire life.” While he lied that the problem had been worse on the left, he said it was foolish to ignore it on the right.
Plenty of other conservative influencers have made similar arguments. In some cases, the Republicans grew a spine and explicitly rejected calls like Vance’s to stay focused on the left.
Right-wing author James Lindsay called the leaked young Republican group chat “the tip of a very nasty iceberg.” GOP strategist David Reaboi said that “most of the Right’s loudest voices have no problem at all with Nazis.” Filmmaker and a prominent MAGA supporter, Dinesh D’Souza, cited hateful anti-Indian messages he was receiving, saying, “The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation?” Seth Dillon, the CEO of Babylon Bee, said the right should be “treating our cancer and killing it before it kills us.”
However, it is easy to see the pattern here. Vance, Cruz, D’Souza, and others are still pretending that this vile racism, anti-semitism, and hatred towards women is something new. History has shown us that the GOP’s ideology is rooted in Nazism, White Supremacy, and Racism.
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When Will the Republicans Stop Pretending?
Republican leadership is framing the incident as a new phenomenon, mainly to deflect accountability for longstanding issues within the party. They are shifting the blame and focus to the left to hide their historical tolerance of such extremist language and behavior.
This narrative allows them to distance themselves from scandals publicly and avoid acknowledging deeper, systemic problems tied to their base and past political strategies. Throughout U.S. history, racism and antisemitism have been an integral part of the Republican Party. Leaders like Reagan and Bush Sr. included former fascists and Nazis as political stakeholders, proving that these tendencies are not new or isolated.
Historians also point to Trump-era shifts since 2016, where the party actively incorporated far-right, extremist views into the mainstream. They have been much more accepting of racism and antisemitism among their ranks.
One big example would be Marjorie Taylor Greene. In 2020, the House’s highest-ranking Republicans distanced themselves from MTG after Politico uncovered hours of Facebook videos in which she expresses racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic views.
The candidate at that time, Marjorie Taylor Greene, suggested that Muslims do not belong in government and thinks black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party.” She called George Soros, a Jewish Democratic mega donor, a Nazi. She also shamelessly added that she would feel “proud” to see a Confederate monument if she were black because it symbolizes progress made since the Civil War. Despite this, MTG went on to win a House seat from Georgia’s 14th congressional district.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, historians, and mainstream news outlets have documented the party’s history of employing racist tropes and signals to appeal to certain voter blocs. They especially point out the normalization of “Trumpism,” which brought previously fringe ideology into the party’s core.
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Trump is the Problem
Trump is someone who has shamelessly or even proudly incorporated far-right, extreme elements into his official circles. Trump nominee Paul Ingrassia said he had “a Nazi streak” and made racist comments. He was recently withdrawn after some GOP senators pushed back.
There have been other Trump appointees and nominees with extreme and inflammatory social media histories. Many Trump appointees and GOP members of Congress have appeared at gatherings of white nationalists. A Ron DeSantis presidential campaign aide in 2023 shared a video with a neo-Nazi symbol.
Trump also has a history of downplaying racist and anti-semitic acts under his presidency. That includes his downplaying of a racist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, his frequent use of antisemitic tropes, and his comment, according to his former chief of staff John Kelly, that Adolf Hitler did some “good things.”
What we are witnessing is not the emergence, but the normalization of racism and antisemitism on the political right. The GOP stands at a crossroads: it can either continue deflecting blame onto the left or take meaningful action to confront the issue. Until the party addresses its deeply rooted problem, Americans should reject the GOP and Trumpism at the ballot box.
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