“a friendlier Nazi Germany”
Amanda Moore went undercover in late 2020 as a far-right extremist. She attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit. By August 2021, she was attending a Proud Boys riot in Portland with a neo-Nazi. The far-right threat, Moore felt, was “misunderstood by much of the press and far more dangerous than what was being reported.” What began as an idea for a podcast and a couple of blog posts became an 11-month journey into the heart of American darkness.
The press underestimates the white-nationalist threat because these groups are careful to conceal their real agenda. They work as congressional campaign staffers and work to form congressional caucuses, all while “meeting with leaders of far-right political parties in Italy and Hungary” and heading up local Young Republican clubs.
“Some have worked hard to scrub themselves from the Internet or to curate their online personas; others operate in the shadows, so that people do not even know to look for them,” Moore explains in The Nation. “But they network with each other, calling in favors and introductions. They’ve created a social maze that’s almost impossible to trace—unless you are invited to become one of them.”
Moore was.
At just 29 years old, Gavin Wax, the president of the New York Young Republican Club, has already been working for years to push the Republican Party to the right and encourage those on the far right to enter mainstream GOP organizations. In 2016, Wax was the editor of Liberty Conservative, an online libertarian magazine. Alongside palatable pieces on libertarian candidates and policy, Wax published racist work by the white nationalist James Allsup. Ultimately, the magazine shifted so far right that multiple contributors quit. And since 2019, when he was elected president of the club, Wax has led a MAGA-style takeover of the previously moderate NYYRC. He was also the national spokesman for Republicans for National Renewal, an organization whose mission is to infiltrate the GOP with “hard core conservatives” and “unabashed America First patriots.”
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Working from within the system isn’t a strategy unique to Wax, who did not respond to my requests for an interview. Wax’s tactics have become a model for how to seize power. Increasingly, young far-right activists appear just reasonable enough to be let in the door, and once inside the establishment, they recruit people to the movement. Wax’s former colleague James Allsup did this well. After Allsup became a GOP precinct committee officer in Washington State, one neo-Nazi said on a podcast, “We can’t all be Andrew Anglin [the founder of the neo-Nazi outlet The Daily Stormer], but 10,000 of us can be James Allsup.”
Moore cautions that these groups are different from MAGA foot soldiers.
“Almost without fail, the boomer conspiracy theorists who populated QAnon conferences were quick to say January 6 was a peaceful day. But the fascists and those with ties to white nationalist groups were proud of storming the Capitol.”
The latter have no illusions that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. That’s for the dupes at TPUSA. White nationalists like Alex Nelson view “the steal” as cover for defending their allies arrested over the Capitol assault.
In July 2021, I met Alex Nelson for the first time at a cocktail reception during Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa. I was standing in line for a glass of wine when Nelson asked me what my vision for America was. To avoid encouraging people, I was always careful not to be more extreme than the people I met, so I deflected and asked what he wanted for the country.
“Uh… like a friendlier Nazi Germany,” Nelson responded.
Nelson was disappointed that more Capitol rioters failed to stand their ground against the FBI on Jan. 6.
“None of them fought back. None of them Ruby Ridged themselves,” he told Moore.
Ashli Babbitt was not enough and too female, one supposes. White nationalism needs more Horst Wessels and a more martial marching song than Y.M.C.A.
Soon after the Portland event, Moore found herself doxed on Telegram, the fringe-right social media site. “Amanda Moore is a 33 year old communist infiltrator in the DC area,” someone wrote and included pictures. She revealed herself on Twitter and included photos of herself with far-right figures including former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
Read the entire thing in The Nation. They walk among us.