Racist Ideology Consumes Today’s Republican Party

It’s a “one big beautiful” cesspool of hate. Americans signaled their distaste in the midterm elections.

Dog Whistles

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been recently accused of using a white supremacist trope as part of a social media campaign to recruit ICE agents.

According to Newsweek, a DHS post shared on X on Monday titled  “Which Way, American Man?” was an apparent reference to a 1978 book titled “Which Way, Western Man?” by avowed white supremacist William Gayley. The book was later republished by the Neo-Nazi group National Alliance.

Of course, this is not the first time the White House and DHS have dabbled in racial dog whistles. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that:

Posts have refered to neo-Nazi literature, ethnic cleansing and QAnon conspiracies, mused about deporting nearly a third of the US population, and promoted lyrics from an anthem bellowed by the far-right militants Proud Boys.

The authors are not in society’s fringe. They are in the offices of the White House and the departments of Homeland Security and Labor, using official government accounts.

Notably, some recruitment ads for ICE agents begin with the racist trope WE’LL HAVE OUR HOME AGAIN.

The GOP has a Nazi Problem

The Republican Party’s dalliance with neo-Nazi ideology, even if it’s sometimes performative, is not some one-off, distant, cherry-picked observation. It is every which way, and it’s getting worse. Respected New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie has documented the most egregious examples that come not from personal social media accounts, but through official government platforms. (Hatch Act violations are mounting.)

Senate Candidates Get Hands Dirty

Two candidates for the US Senate have recently gotten into hot water when their staff members revealed their true nature. Republican Senate nominee Mike Collins of Georgia had to account for a former staffer who posted Nazi-themed images on social media, including a photo of himself in full Ku Klux Klan dress.

Ohio Sen. John Husted, a Republican running for reelection, was forced to fire his political director after learning he used a photograph of a Nazi soldier as his social media profile picture.

Both Republican candidates lost on election day.

Labor Department Nazification

Remember when the US Department of Labor was heralded for protecting workers’ rights? Those days are apparently over. Last January, the labor department posted a video titled “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember Who You Are, American,” reminiscent of the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Führer,” or “One people, one realm, one leader.”

All Men Are Created…Unequal?

Inside the Trump administration, the focus is on Paul Ingrassia, the acting general counsel of the General Services Administration (GSA). Politico reported on a series of questionable remarks gleaned from his social media and text message accounts. “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time,” Ingrassia mused in 2024. “We should celebrate white men and western civilization.”

In another text message, Ingrassia revealed a core belief. “The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal,” he said. “We need to reject that part of our heritage.”

Nominated in May 2025 to be Special Counsel of the United States, Ingrassia removed himself from consideration when the texts were made public.

Why This Is Happening

Until recently, white supremacists and their enablers lived on the fringes of American society. Back then, the institutionalist Republican Party was able to establish guardrails on the far right’s most craven rhetoric and activity. There were exceptions: Avowed neo-Nazi David Duke joined the Republican Party and won nearly 40% of the vote in the 1991 Louisiana governor’s race. The next year, Pat Buchanan made a strong showing against President George H.W. Bush in the Republican presidential primaries while espousing Holocaust denialism.

Central to their aim of gaining respectability in the age of Trump, white supremacist Republicans abandoned labels like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis in favor of more respectable identifiers like “white nationalists,” the “alt-right,” and “race realists.” Of course, whatever label they use, their core belief remains white racial superiority. They want to put an end to multiracial pluralistic democracy.

The Ringleader

Donald Trump rose to national prominence while promoting a racist “birther” conspiracy that claimed our first Black president was not born in this country and was therefore not eligible to be president. Trump has steadily promoted the “Great Replacement Theory,” positing that white people are becoming “extinct” and “forced out of their own countries” by non-whites. The conspiracy theory identifies the perpetrators as “global elitists, bankers, and financiers such as George Soros,” who is Jewish.

Salon has a good take on the ringleader:

Trump described the white supremacists who rampaged in Charlottesville, injuring dozens of people and killing Heather Heyer as ‘very fine people.’ His followers carried Confederate flags into the US Capitol on January 6, wore Nazi and Ku Klux Klan and other hate regalia to his rallies, and assaulted black and brown police and other law enforcement [officers] with racial slurs.

Taken all together, today’s GOP is simply a white identity party. No other issue comes close to motivating the Republican rank and file.

Coda: Stephen Miller

One would think that after the drubbing they took in the midterm elections, Republicans would pivot to something more accommodating to the political center. Donald Trump seems to have doubled down: He promoted Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s mass deportation program, to White House chief of staff.

Miller doesn’t even hide his affinity for white nationalism. Over the course of Trump’s six years in office, Miller has promoted white nationalist literature, reveled in racist immigration stories, mourned the loss of Confederate statues and symbols, and trafficked in conspiracy theories about “white genocide.”

The examples are so numerous that I will only provide a link to his most hateful transgressions. One example can serve as a summation: At an October 2024 Madison Square Garden rally for then-candidate Trump, Miller declared, “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

And so it goes.