The GOP and Nazis—This Is Nothing New

By David Corn  December 3, 2022

White nationalist and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, who dined with Donald Trump and antisemitic rapper Kanye West last week at Mar-a-Lago. William Edwards/AFP via Getty

Donald Trump’s dinner last week at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, a neo-Nazi, white nationalist, Holocaust denier, and Hitler devotee, and Kanye West, an antisemitic and unhinged rapper, triggered an uproar, as a past GOP president and current 2024 Republican contender mainstreamed far-right extremism and hatred. In response to public pressure to denounce his tablemates, Trump defiantly refused, releasing statements claiming that he had not known anything about Fuentes prior to the dinner and that West had made no antisemitic comments at the soiree. (Well, that’s something.) Trump just couldn’t bring himself to condemn his bigoted visitors. After all, they’re his fans, and Trump wasn’t going to dump on his adorers just because the libs demand it. Bend the knee? What signal would that send to his diehard supporters?

This episode was outrageous and exceptional: The titular head of the Republican Party supping with miscreants. GOP officials were subsequently forced to react and did so to differing degrees of decency. (See below.) But as bonkers and upsetting as this incident was, it was not the first time the Grand Old Party experienced a Nazi problem. The Republican Party has been here before.

As I chronicled in my recent book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, the GOP in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s recruited full-fledged Nazis—Eastern Europeans who had collaborated with Hitler’s army and who had emigrated to the United States after World War II—to help its efforts to court ethnic voting blocs. This group included known antisemites and fascists. Their past histories as Nazi allies did not matter. They were now self-proclaimed anticommunist champions and welcomed into the GOP tent and even celebrated. Unfortunately, there’s nothing new about Republicans hobnobbing with Nazis.

Here’s an excerpt from the book that explains this relationship:

*     *     *

On May 17, 1985, Reagan entered the ballroom at the Shoreham hotel in Washington, DC, to the applause of four hundred luncheon guests. Less than two weeks earlier, he had faced a red-hot controversy: On a trip to Germany, he had stopped at a military cemetery where Waffen-SS troops were buried. The visit had provoked much outrage—especially after Reagan said that Nazi soldiers “were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.” Yet at this gathering of the Republican Heritage Groups Council, there was little ire over the Bitburg stop. That was hardly shocking. The council, a collection of assorted ethnic Republican clubs that operated as an auxiliary of the Republican National Committee, was, like the [far-right, extremist] World Anti-Communist League, loaded with Eastern European emigrés who were antisemites, racists, and Nazi collaborators.

The leadership of the GOP heritage council was actually dominated by genuine fascists. Its founding chair, Laszlo Pasztor, had been an official of the Hungarian pro-Nazi party during World War II. Its executive director, Radi Slavoff, had been part of a Bulgarian fascist group. The head of a Cossack GOP unit in the council, Nikolai Nazarenko, had served in the German SS Cossack division and once declared Jews his “ideological enemy.” The leader of the council’s Romanian group was accused of being a recruiter for the Iron Guard, another fascist group. The chief of its Slovak GOP chapter was a Nazi sympathizer. And there were others.

The GOP had a Nazi problem, as bizarre as that seemed. A few reporters and researchers knew about it. But for some reason, it had never been big news.

This GOP-Nazi hookup began when Pasztor, who came to the United States in the 1950s, joined the ethnic division of the GOP. He worked on Nixon’s 1968 campaign and afterward was asked to organize the Republican Heritage Groups Council. Among his recruits were anticommunist right-wingers from Eastern Europe who had been Nazi collaborators. “In setting up the Council, Pasztor went to various collaborationists and fascist-minded emigré groups and asked them to form GOP federations,” wrote Russ Bellant, a researcher who spent years investigating the council. “. . . [It] wasn’t an accident or a fluke that people with Nazi associations were in the Republican Heritage Groups Council. In some cases more mainstream ethnic organizations were passed over in favor of smaller but more extremist groups.”

In 1971, investigative columnist Jack Anderson reported on the Nazi pasts of several GOP ethnic advisers, including Pasztor. Yet the Republican Party had taken no steps to bounce anyone from its heritage council. The GOP was accepting assistance from full-fledged and unrepentant Nazis.

At the Shoreham hotel event, Nazarenko, the head of the GOP’s Cossack group, told Bellant that he was in touch with various Nazi organizations, explaining, “They respect me because [I was a] former German army officer. Sometimes when I meet these guys, they say, ‘Heil Hitler.’” He also insisted Jews did not die in German gas chambers. At heritage council meetings, Florian Galdau, a member of the pro-Nazi Romanian Iron Guard and leader of Romanian-American Republican Clubs, routinely charged that the KGB controlled the Democratic Party.

During the 1985 luncheon, Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., the GOP chair, gushed about the heritage council: “All of you in this room . . . were such a vital, integral part of the great victory we achieved on November 6 last year.” Michael Sotirhos, the chair of the council, told Bellant the group had been “the linchpin of the Reagan-Bush ethnic campaign” in 1984, recruiting eighty-six thousand volunteers. Before this crowd that included emigré fascists, a grateful Reagan said, “The work of all of you has meant a very great deal to me personally and to our party.”

*     *     *

This GOP-Nazi link was not as high-profile as Trump breaking bread with Fuentes. It prompted no splashy headlines or extensive media commentary. But it showed the Republican Party’s willingness to cynically partner with fanatics of hate to pocket votes.

The not-so-beautiful relationship continued. During the 1988 campaign, media reports revealed that the ethnic advisory board for the George H.W. Bush campaign included known antisemites and neo-fascists. On that roster were prominent members of the Republican Heritage Groups Council, such as Pasztor and Galdau. And Bellant disclosed that Bush had campaigned at an event cosponsored by the Nazi-sympathizing Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. The Bush campaign dismissed these reports as “little more than politically inspired garbage” and called them a dirty trick. The GOP-Nazi connection did not become a campaign issue. Bush’s attack on Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis as unpatriotic and anti-American drew far more attention.

The GOP got away with cozying up to these Nazis in the Reagan and Bush days. Trump is catching more flack now because he shared a meal with celebrity antisemites. As with so many of the excesses of today’s Trumpified Republican Party, they are not entirely new. As I note in my book—and in numerous promotional appearances for American Psychosis—the Republican Party for the past seven decades has exploited and encouraged far-right extremism. Trump didn’t invent this, but he has intensified and escalated such efforts and placed them in the spotlight at center stage. In recent weeks, there has been a debate over the extent to which Trump’s MAGA movement can be characterized as fascist. Trump’s dinner with a notorious fascist and a prominent antisemite certainly provides evidence for the fascist-AF argument. But the Republicans have previously played footsie with fascists. They just had the good sense to not seat them at the head table.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Dumbass Comment of the Week

There was, yet again, no shortage of material this week. Both Donald Trump and Elon Musk led the way. Pushing the baseless claim that the recent election in Arizona was marred by fraud, Trump declared that Republican “Kari Lake should be installed Governor of Arizona.” Installed? That’s not how democracy works. His demand was yet the latest troubling indicator of his authoritarian impulse. And Musk also showed he did not understand basics of American life when he groused, “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?” You’d think a CEO of major companies would understand that a corporation electing not to advertise on a platform that has opened its door to antisemites, racists, and other extremists has nothing to do with free speech. After all, advertising is paid speech. Sure, Musk was just being his cheeky, red-pilled self. But it’s tough to see how such alt-right posturing will help him slow the rush of advertisers leaving Twitter. He’s providing us a good lesson about capitalism: sometimes market forces cannot counterbalance stupid.

Speaking of Lake and Arizona, she has been encouraging MAGAites to rise up and fight back against the election count that showed her a loser. “This is our moment to stand up, stand in this gap, and stand for America,” she said. “We have to push back. God did not put us here because it was easy. He put us strong fighters with courage and bravery at this moment in history to restore faith in our elections.” Let me get this straight. God cares about our election system. Okay. Yet rather than use his or her or their power to compel electoral workers to run an election well, he focuses on anointing the loser to overturn the results. That seems quite inefficient for an all-powerful entity. 

Trump’s Thanksgiving dinner with West and Fuentes, not surprisingly, prompted many weaselly responses from Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell led the way, saying, “There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy. Anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgement, are highly unlikely to ever be elected President.”

Did you notice McConnell did not directly condemn Trump or state that he would not support him in his 2024 presidential bid? His comment was more of a pundit’s prediction: This won’t play well. No shocker from the guy who wouldn’t denounce Trump for using racist language to insult his wife.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the QAnonish, conspiracy-theory-peddling extremist whose influence within the House GOP caucus seems to be increasing, had one of the most absurd reactions to Trump’s dinner with the bigots. She tweeted: “Of course I denounce Nick Fuentes and his racists [sic] anti-semitic ideology. I can’t comprehend why the media is obsessed with him. Do you actually report real news or just use CNN for your political activism?”

This comment came from a House member who in February spoke at a conference Fuentes organized, where he praised Hitler and the crowd cheered for Vladimir Putin. At the event, Greene, who once amplified social media posts calling for the assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said she was “tragically heartbroken” to be part of the current Congress and that “everything this Congress does—is evil.” (So Fuentes, fine; Congress, bad.) After she was criticized for participating in that conference, Greene dismissed the complaints as “identity politics” and an effort to “cancel” her. She added, “The Pharisees in the Republican Party may attack me for being willing to break barriers and speak to a lost generation of young people who are desperate for love and leadership.” She claimed she had not been aware of Fuentes’ white nationalist views. Still, she did not disavow him. Yet now she decries his racism and slams the media for paying too much attention to Fuentes. Not too long ago, though, she thought he was important and validated him by attending his pro-fascist conference.

Meanwhile, Fox host Tucker Carlson continued to claim there is a conspiracy to weaken men: “So clearly, you know, political forces hijack professional sports as a way to brainwash the young men who watch professional sports. That’s, of course, the entire point of it. Strategic.”

I’m surprised he didn’t mention George Soros’ plot to infiltrate the NBA on behalf of antifa. Which brings us to a sad moment and to this week’s winner. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, the 27-year-old congressman from North Carolina who was defeated in a GOP primary after serving one term, made what was billed as his last House speech this week. He’s been a favorite of the DCotW judges, a fellow with a penchant for pushing the envelope for stupidity and who made bizarre claims about lawmakers engaging in sex parties. We’re sorry he will no longer be such a productive contributor to this feature.

In his Capitol Hill swan song, Cawthorn chose to rail about a pressing problem confronting the nation: metrosexuality’s attack on masculinity:

Our young men are taught weakness is a strength, that delicacy is desirable, and that being a soft metrosexual was more valuable than training the mind, body, and soul. Social media has weakened us, siphoning our men of their will to fight, to rise in a noble manner, to square their jaws and charge once more into the breach of life to defend what they love. So on this precipice of disaster, I ask the young men of this nation a question: Will you sit behind a screen while the storied tales of your forefathers become myth, or will you stand resolute against the dying light of America’s golden age? Will you reclaim your masculinity? Will you become a man to become feared, to be respected, to be looked up to? Or will you let this nation’s next generation be its final generation?

I half-expected Cawthorn to end with a shout: “Incels of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your parents’ basements!” It was hard, I confess, not to imagine Cawthorn rehearsing the speech at home in a particular get-up:

Madison, we hardly knew ye. Congratulations and happy trails.

The Mailbag

Readers were appreciative of the recent issue that featured a what-I-did-on-my-vacation-to-Italy report. Mark Heinicke wrote:

At last a post that kept me smiling throughout! I love all your stuff, but this was a nice break from the usual. I'm happy to say that I knocked on 200+ doors for Abigail Spanberger here in Virginia's 7th congressional district, and her win was a sweet treat to savor on Thanksgiving… Of course, in a sane world she would have won by 20 points instead of 5, but as they say, a win is a win is a win. 

Congratulations, Mark. In this world of close elections that we live in, any volunteer effort can make the difference.

Bettina Norton emailed:

Your insightful comments on our political shortcomings are well known and invaluable to me, but I never expected an essay on art, contemporary, then Renaissance... What a treat! And yes, your skepticism yet admiration for the Caravaggio-inspired piece is right on. Makes me even happier to be a supporter of yours, minor though I am.

There are no minor supporters of Our Land. By subscribing, you encourage its existence. Many thanks to all who do.

Bette Piacente chimed in:

What a fascinating light you shed on the Italian landscape. I really enjoyed the journey. Thank you also for the rundown on Andor. I have Disney+ and have not seen anything about this new series! I will be tuning in this evening for sure. Thanks for keeping me up to date in all things.

Sure thing, Bette. And reader Nicolas Sinisi also agreed with my enthusiastic endorsement of Andor, the most recent Star Wars spinoff that stars Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, a thief who becomes involved in the growing resistance to the Empire:

An incredible look at the beginning of the Rebellion and its ongoing struggle against the Nazi-esque Empire. Yes, the ratings are disappointing. But the second (and final) season is about to shoot so there’s no risk of cancellation! I think The Mouse can live with lower ratings if it means getting rave reviews. Long live Cassian!

In a recent issue, I called for Herschel Walker to release his medical records, given he has claimed that he was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder) and that this supposedly explains his past episodes of violence. This brought in a bunch of mail.

Carol Moore wrote:

Just finished reading your piece on Herschel Walker’s DID diagnosis and his unfitness for office. Good work, as usual! But I’m surprised you didn’t also address the effects of Walker’s multiple concussions/brain injuries on his behavior, judgement, and self-awareness. As one who worked for 25 years with victims of traumatic brain injury, I clearly see BRAIN INJURY writ large here. I continue to be disgusted by the GOPs parading this man around as a suitable candidate for office when he is so obviously and severely impaired—and those impairments are specifically in the realm of factors that make him utterly unfit to serve. Shame on them. 

Shame indeed. The GOP attempt to bolster Walker for media interviewers by placing Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham by his side has been ludicrous. As for discussing the ailments Walker might have, I focused on DID because he has declared he suffered from it. (He now claims he’s all better.) As a non-doctor, it’s much harder for me to write about other diseases or injuries he might have.

Claire Gavin had this so say:

Thank you for this much-needed, balanced article. My strong reaction is: Where the hell is Rev. Warnock? He should be asking this question and making this case, loudly and clearly. I was surprised you didn't say something along these lines.

I think Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democratic senator in Georgia, and his fellow Ds have calculated that raising Walker’s psychological problems might backfire for them. And in a tight election, you don’t want to make any mistakes. In a few days, we will see if such caution pays off.

Andrea Polk, a psychologist, emailed:

Thanks for your well-reasoned piece on Herschel Walker... I’m writing to add my voice to those of other clinicians for whom the diagnosis of DID is a dubious one. In forty years of providing psychotherapy and assessment to a wide range of patients, I’ve only encountered one who came close to the DID diagnosis. She was also an alcoholic who used an admixture of prescribed and street drugs, acted out sexually with disastrous consequences, and, sadly, died in her early forties. 

Another overused and misused diagnosis, Borderline Personality Disorder, might be more accurate in her case, as I suspect it would be in the case of any patient diagnosed with DID. And yes, she had read Sybil as an adolescent. Her conviction was that she was a “multiple personality” and that her “alters” were responsible for her dangerously self-destructive actions. This became an expedient means of escaping accountability for acting out while intoxicated. If profound trauma were in fact capable of causing such extreme splitting off of identity, the world would be densely populated with wildly dissociated individuals.

As I noted in the article, many experts question whether DID truly exists. Yet Walker has relied on this diagnosis to explain away his violent behavior. That’s why it is necessary for him to release his records: to show whether this diagnosis was valid and whether he has been successfully treated.

George Kleinman had a comment after reading American Psychosis:

Your book is a critically important historical analysis of the descent of the Republican Party. You have established with meticulous detail the characters and their decisions that led repeatedly to a series of Faustian bargains. Many former Republicans have been saying that the current Republican Party must be burned to the ground so that a new party—one with a functioning moral compass—may arise.

In their book How Democracies Die, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt—who spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America—found that no democracy has ever survived a major demographic change or when one of its political parties goes rogue. Both are happening in the US today. If the US manages to survive, it truly will be exceptional. I believe that as long as the right-wing media ecosystem is permitted to spread misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop to a population who are incapable of critical thinking, chance for recovery and restoration seem bleak.

These are perilous times for democracy. And disinformation and propaganda are corrosive and purposefully deployed to weaken democracy and yield forms of authoritarianism. (See Trump.) But the recent midterm elections indicate that many American voters have not succumbed to the lies and falsehoods. It is, though, a mixed picture: major election deniers lost elections to statewide offices, but the crazies are now in the majority in the House. Democracy is still in the fight—but a tough battle remains.

Efthimia Kamenakis had this question:

If, as I believe, Trump is a political dead duck, why do the networks continue to cover his every musing? All he wants is attention. Maybe if his every word wasn’t transmitted to the public he might go away. Thinking people opine he is only going to run to avoid jail. But is that true? Can he really avoid jail time in Georgia for his supposedly election rigging? Is it not possible he can be indicted by the Justice Department over the document stealing? What happens if he does get indicted in either or both jurisdictions? Any chance he then becomes the nominee of the R’s? Inflicting total silence on Trump might help R’s make a different decision.

Right now, Trump is the leading 2024 GOP candidate. That’s because no one else has entered the race. And no one else might. That is, no one who has a shot. (I am not counting Rep. Liz Cheney or outgoing Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.) Consequently, what Trump says or does—say, meeting with a Nazi—is worth covering. Besides, there is no way to institute or implement a media ban on a given story. There is no central body of the press to render such a decision or enforce it. And if Trump is indicted—a distinct possibility—he can still run for president and still win the GOP nomination. There’s no easy way to de-Trumpify the GOP. That will depend on Republican voters.

Mary Ann Plant wrote in to ask, “What, no MoxieCam? She keeps my Doodles going!” Well, Moxie has been very busy lately. She’s working on her memoirs, tentatively titled Finding My Bark, and only has time once a week for MoxieCam. Speaking of which…

MoxieCam™

“What’s that, Moxie?”

“A new toy I got from my friend Wendy. A rabbit.”

“An early birthday present. You look pretty good for a dog that’s about to turn 11.”

“What do you mean pretty good?...And what’s 11?”

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

November 30, 2022: What I learned during my Thanksgiving in Italy; why Andor may be the best Star Wars spinoff; and more.

November 17, 2022: Herschel Walker should release his medical records; giving thanks early; The Last Movie Stars reveals Paul Newman’s and Joanne Woodward’s most notable performances—their own lives; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 15, 2022: Is this the end of Donald Trump?; where were you when the Senate was called (I was with Jackson Browne and Tim Robbins); and Neil Young and Crazy Horse keep on riding with a new album; and more.

November 12, 2022: The 2022 midterms and the state of Trumpism; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special Election Edition); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 8, 2022: It’s election day…and it’s the Beatles; and more.

November 5, 2022: Has Biden lowballed the threat to American democracy; American Psychosis in the news; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Kari Lake); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 1, 2022: Elon Musk: a problem, not a solution, when it comes to right-wing extremism; Barack Obama gets it right; Jason Kander’s gutsy and empathetic memoirs; Robert Gordon, RIP; and more.

October, 29, 2022: How Covid disappeared—politically; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Mehmet Oz); the Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.

October 25, 2022: Why Joe Biden and the Democrats should be talking about teeth; Michael Flynn’s greatest hits; the brilliance of Peaky Blinders; and more.

October 22, 2022: Attack ads—why they work (then and now); Tulsi Gabbard’s short, strange trip; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Marjorie Taylor Greene); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.