Republicans’ Youth Extremism Problem Is No Longer Fringe

Ultimize. The New York Times has a new report from Stephanie Saul about a split among college Republicans, and the story is not about whether someone used the wrong pronoun at a campus bake sale. It's about young Republican organizations inviting white nationalists, flirting with Nick Fuentes' groper world, and watching the next generation of conservative politics decide whether the poison is something to reject or something to put on a recruiting flyer. At Salisbury University, Maryland College Republicans hosted Jared Taylor, described in the report as a self-described white advocate, where he warned that white people face extinction. I'm sorry, but when your youth outreach strategy starts sounding like the comment section under a 1938 propaganda film, maybe the problem is not both sides. We're told constantly that America's problem is that we have both political parties captured by extremists, and they're equally captured. That's what I'm told time and time again. I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying it. Not because Democrats are perfect— they're not— not because there are no bigots, antisemites, cranks, narcissists, campus radicals, professional slogan shouters, or morally confused people anywhere on the left. Of course there are. Every large political coalition contains some fools, some zealots, and some people who should have their phones taken away before noon. But the whole "there are bad people everywhere" is not analysis. That's what you say when you don't want to be analyzed and you don't want to analyze what's really going on. The real question is, where is extremism being normalized? Where is it being rewarded, excused, promoted, and moved closer to power centers? And right now, the answer is not ambiguous. Stephanie Saul's New York Times report lays out a fight inside the college Republican politics world. On one side are young conservatives who understand that inviting white nationalists onto campus is politically toxic and morally grotesque. On the other side are people who seem to believe the Republican future should be built by putting a campus blazer over old-fashioned white identity politics. This is not just one weird campus event. The report says groups at Harvard, Georgetown, the University of Illinois, the University of Florida, elsewhere have been tied to racist speakers, rhetoric, or social media posts. The College Republicans of America, described as the fastest-growing college Republican group, named Kai Schwemmer as political director despite his reported past ties to Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist and Holocaust-denying far-right figure. Now, to be fair, the National Group says it disavows racism, antisemitism, and bigotry. Well, good, but say it louder. Say it every day. Say it when it costs you something. The question is not whether a press statement contains the word disavow. The question is whether people who flirt with white nationalism keep finding new ladders inside Republican politics, and this is where the both sides argument collapses. In October 2020, Politico reported on leaked Young Republican chats— I reported on it here as well— involving leaders from several states. Those chats reportedly included racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, and violent messages, including praise for Hitler. Yeah, one of these college Republicans said, "I love Hitler," had references to gas chambers, racial slurs, and jokes about rape. ABC News reported that Republican leaders, including Governor Phil Scott, condemned the messages as vile, racist, bigoted, and anti-Semitic, and called for resignations. Okay, fine. Then in March 2026, the Miami Herald reported on a Florida International University-linked conservative student chat that also included racist, antisemitic, sexist, and homophobic messages. Reuters and the AP reported that the chat was tied to Miami-Dade Republican politics and included top conservative student leaders. FIU said campus police were investigating in coordination with law enforcement. Again, This doesn't mean every Republican is secretly David Duke with better dental insurance. It does mean something is happening in the bloodstream of the right. And then look at the top. Donald Trump didn't create every racist in America. That'd be giving him too much credit, and he already does that. He gives himself credit for everything. But Trump has spent years making dehumanizing language mainstream. He said immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country. He's called political enemies vermin. Historians and commentators have repeatedly noted the authoritarian echoes in that language. You don't have to say every Trump voter is a fascist to say this: when the most powerful Republican in America talks like that, it sends a permission slip. It tells young men marinating in grievance that their hatred is not shameful, it's patriotic. It's not bigotry, it's civilization. It's not racism, it's heritage. It's not anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, it's just asking questions. And now, after the horrifying shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the most recent, we have to be very careful with facts and still be honest about what the facts show. According to APN Reuters, two teenage gunmen opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego on May 18th, killing 3 men including a security guard before dying from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Authorities are investigating it as a hate crime or possible hate crime. AP reported that authorities pointed to generalized hate rhetoric, while Reuters said no clear motive has yet been officially confirmed. So people are trying to be fair here. Other reports, including The Telegraph and The Times, reported anti-Semitic writings and symbols associated with white supremacy, Nazi imagery. This was found at the scene. So no, we should not jump ahead of investigators and pretend we know every thought in the killer's heads, but we also should not be idiots. When people attack a mosque, leave hate messages, and reports describe Nazi or white supremacist symbols. The problem is not that America has too many woke diversity seminars, okay? This is hatred. This is good old-fashioned right-wing hatred. This is the kind of hatred that has been fed, laundered, coded, softened, joked about, and then periodically denied by people who say, how dare you connect this to politics? Well, how dare you pretend politics has nothing to do with it? Now let's talk about antisemitism because this is where the conversation becomes morally serious and often intellectually dishonest very quickly. Yes, antisemitism exists. Yes, antisemitism exists on the left. Yes, some people use criticism of Israel as a mask for hatred of Jews. Yes, some campus activists have crossed lines from opposing a government's policy into demonizing Jewish people. That's real and it should be condemned. But we are also now told that the Democratic Party is somehow dominated by virulent antisemites. Really? What's the evidence? Often the evidence is that some Democrat somewhere says, "I do not support the specific right-wing military action by Benjamin Netanyahu's government, or I think the Israeli government is violating human rights, or I do not want American tax dollars used to support this particular right-wing policy. Sorry, friends, that's not antisemitism, that's politics. If opposing the policy of a leader makes you a bigot against that leader's religion or nationality, then, well, let's see where that takes us, because then every Republican who opposed Barack Obama's tax policy must have somehow hated America. Every Democrat who opposed George W. Bush's Iraq War must have somehow hated America, been an anti-American bigot. Every conservative who opposed Bill Clinton's tax increases was somehow an anti-American bigot. Funny, but I don't remember that being the standard. Nobody said, "You oppose Bush's invasion of Iraq? Clearly you hate all Christians." Nobody said, "You oppose Obama's healthcare law? Obviously you're anti-American." People understood that you can oppose a government policy without hating an entire people. But suddenly, when the issue is Israel, we are told that any criticism— and I mean any criticism— of an extremist right-wing leader is automatically antisemitism. Sorry, friends, this is not a serious argument, and it's especially rich coming from a political movement where prominent leaders keep insisting, insisting America is fundamentally a Christian nation should be guided by Christian-only principles and should be publicly rededicated through Christian nationalist pageantry. Just this month, Reuters and AP reported on a Trump-backed Rededicate 250 prayer event criticized for blurring church-state lines and centering conservative Christian identity in the story of America. Now listen carefully. Believing in Christianity is not antisemitic. Being a devout Christian is not bigotry. Millions of Christians are generous, pluralistic, decent people who fully support religious freedom. But when a political leader says the United States should be governed as a Christian nation, that's not neutral. That necessarily tells Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Buddhists, Sikhs and everyone else, you may live here, but this country is not equally yours. Sorry, that's not religious liberty, that is religious hierarchy. And if you build a hierarchy with one religion at the top, you don't get to act shocked when people call that bigotry. So here is the distinction: if a Democrat says, I oppose Netanyahu's current policy that is not antisemitism. If a Republican says America is a Christian nation and should be governed through Christian nationalism, that's not merely a tax preference, that is a statement about who owns the country. And yet we're told the first is bigotry while the second is just faith. Hmm. Now, words have meanings. The Democratic Party has many problems. It can be too cautious, it can be too consultant-driven, it can be too afraid of offending people who already hate it. It can drown itself in academic language until ordinary voters need a graduate seminar and a protein bar just to understand a campaign slogan. But the Democratic Party is not built around the idea that America belongs to one race or one religion. The Republican Party increasingly has a visible faction that is flirting with exactly that. Again, not every Republican. Not every conservative, not every Christian, not every Trump voter, but the pattern, the pattern is impossible to ignore. White nationalists speaking on campus, Young Republican chats filled with Nazi praise and slurs, conservative students with racist and antisemitic language, Trump dehumanizing immigrants and political enemies, a mosque attacked in a case authorities are investigating as hate-driven, a growing Christian nationalist movement trying to redefine American citizenship around one religious identity. This is not both sides, sorry. This is one side having a five-alarm fire while the other side is being accused of owning matches. And here's the deeper truth: bigotry rarely announces itself honestly. It almost never says, "Hello, I'm bigotry and I will now destroy your democracy." It says, we're just asking questions. It says, we're protecting tradition. It says, we're defending a certain type of civilization. It says, we're preserving our people. It says, we are a Christian nation. It says, they are poisoning the blood. It says, why are you so sensitive? And then one day, the jokes aren't jokes, the slogans aren't slogans, the chat room becomes a movement, the movement becomes a campaign, the campaign becomes policy, and the policy becomes permission. That's why this matters. The question is not whether one random 19-year-old in a chat said something horrible. The question is whether the adults in the room treat it as a disqualifying moral emergency or it's just an embarrassing public relations problem, because there is a huge difference between a party that has extremists and a party that is becoming comfortable with extremists. There's a huge difference between condemning bigotry and managing bigotry, and there's a huge difference between saying, "That has no place here," and saying, "Please just don't put that in writing next time." So no, I won't accept the lazy bedtime story that both parties are equally consumed by bigoted extremism. This is not nuance. That is surrender disguised as balance. Real nuance means making distinctions. Real fairness means looking at evidence. Real moral seriousness means saying antisemitism is wrong when it comes from anywhere, including from the left or the campus activist or the right or the pastor or the influencer, the president, or the guy in a group chat who thinks Hitler jokes make him edgy. But if one party is arguing over healthcare messaging and the other party has to keep explaining why another young conservative group chat sounds like a bunker podcast from 1944, those are not equivalent problems. America does not need fake balance. America needs honesty. And the honest truth is this: the Republican Party has a white nationalist and Christian nationalist extremism problem. That is not peripheral anymore. It's young, it's online, it's organized, it's ambitious, and it's trying very hard to become respectable. The first step to stopping it is refusing to pretend that the real problem is somehow both sides. I'm TJ Walker, this is Filtered. Thanks for joining me today. Ultimize.