The Conservative Political Action Conference is the premier gathering of right-wing activists and politicians in America every year, and it serves as a bellwether for the direction of the conservative movement. This year Nazis showed up.
According to an NBC News report, “a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed ‘race science’ and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” (Hitler’s Nazi Party was officially called the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”) The reporter of the article has video of one of them giving a “heil Hitler”-style salute in the lobby of the hotel where the conference took place and of other members of the group reportedly used the N-word.
It’s not always possible for the hosts of major political gatherings to perfectly regulate who enters them — but there are always choices on how to react when, say, Nazis arrive.
This is a critical frog-in-boiling-water moment for the right: The mainstream organs of American conservatism are apparently acclimating to Nazis in their pot. That this group was able to mingle with participants at a high-profile conference, wasn't kicked out of CPAC, and wasn't appropriately condemned is a sign of how contiguous mainstream conservatism has become with white supremacist politics today.
The clique of white supremacists who showed up at CPAC is embedded in extremist activist networks. One member of the group attended the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and another was a former member of the white supremacist “Rise Above Movement” and reportedly “touted associations” with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist firebrand who has denied the Holocaust. Another white supremacist influencer at the conference was Jared Taylor, a eugenics advocate who hosts the annual American Renaissance Conference, which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a hub “where racist intellectuals rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.”
CPAC’s statements in response to NBC’s reporting has not been comforting. CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp said on X that “NBC’s claim that there was a Nazi presence at CPAC 2024 is false, misleading, and grossly manipulative” and added, “When we come across someone at CPAC peddling any kind of anti-semitism, we deal with them immediately.” But the statement does not respond to any of the specific details in NBC News’ report, it doesn’t acknowledge or attempt to rebut photo and video evidence of these individuals and their behavior, and these individuals were not kicked out, according to the reporter. (Notably the statement also says multiple times that CPAC is supportive of Israel, as if support for Israel is synonymous with opposing antisemitism or any other kind of bigotry. It’s not; in fact, the conflation of the two can rely on antisemitic tropes.) Another more recent CPAC statement also refuses to acknowledge what happened by calling it “fake news” and implies that Democrats are the real Nazis.
It’s not always possible for the hosts of major political gatherings to perfectly regulate who enters them — but there are always choices on how to react when, say, Nazis arrive. CPAC has kicked extremists off the premises of its conferences before. Last year, for example, Fuentes, the Holocaust denier, was removed from CPAC and condemned. But this year, Fuentes’ allies were able to stick around. It’s not clear exactly why this group of racist trolls was allowed to roam the premises, but it’s a sign of the times that this group was able to blend into the crowd. And instead of evicting them or vigorously disavowing affiliation with the white supremacists in attendance, the conference’s leader succumbed to glib denialism. That in effect provided the white supremacists with cover.
None of the explanations for why this was allowed should induce optimism about the direction of this country. Perhaps Schlapp’s inattentiveness to the group arose from a sense of resignation that the extremist elements are too great in number and too interwoven with the fabric of the GOP to be monitored and expelled. Or maybe it marks a tacit acceptance of these elements in light of Trump’s openly fascistic rhetoric about migrants “poisoning the blood” of America and championing revenge as the raison d’etre of his 2024 campaign.
What we do know is that up to and even through the beginning of the Trump era this kind of news would be seen as a major political liability for CPAC. Today it’s the kind of thing that hardly registers as a story at all.