The Dictatorship
The Nazism taboo in America is broken
In a year defined by President Donald Trump’s attempt to turn our nation into an authoritarian kleptocracy, one of the most disturbing events of the year was not a reactionary policy or a speech, but in fact the results of a focus group which were published Friday.
City Journal, which is published by the influential right-leaning think tank the Manhattan Institute, conducted a focus group of 20 “mostly Trump voters, overwhelmingly Christian, a mix of college and non-college, ranging from late teens to twentysomethings edging into thirty,” based in and around Nashville, Tennessee. The discussion, designed to examine the attitudes of Gen Z conservatives, covered lots of questions, ranging from the economy to feminism to foreign policy. But the most striking answers were related to questions about white supremacist figures — and demonstrated how many young people on the right are marinating in a media atmosphere of the most noxious, racist extremism imaginable, with no obvious pathway back to making such bigotry taboo again.
In today’s right-wing political culture, Trumpism is growing contiguous with Fuentes-ism.
When the moderator asked how many of them knew Nick Fuentes — a white supremacist livestreamer who has, among other things, called Adolf Hitler “really f**king cool,” described Chicago as “n—r hell,” argued in favor of a return to racial segregation, doubted the Nazi Holocaust, opposed interracial marriage and said women shouldn’t have the right to vote — more than half of the respondents raised their hands based on Fuentes’ name recognition alone. Several participants, identified only by their first names, described him in approving or ambivalent terms.
George said, “I agree with a lot of his points. He definitely doesn’t care about how it’s gonna be reacted to, which I respect, but I also think it can be kind of dangerous.” Another, Ally, said, “At its core I believe a lot of what he says, but I think the delivery is kind of poor.” Atticus said, “I dig him… He’s definitely going after more of the shock value with some of his stuff. But as far as general beliefs or values, I sort of agree.”
Andrew, who elsewhere in the focus group said he “really liked” Fuentes, attempted to defend Fuentes as “joking” much of the time, but also expressed earnest support: “I feel like his viewpoints would have been mainstream not that long ago. If he’s saying something like most women want to be raped, well, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ sells like hotcakes to women, so I feel like that’s just a fact.” Ethan described Fuentes as overly polarizing, but said “He has some interesting opinions, I think specifically about race.” Colin said, “I think he reminds me of the Andrew Tate Republican Party, where he’s really good at addressing a common problem, but the solutions aren’t the solutions to go by.”
There were a few notes of disapproval. Brice said Fuentes “is very dangerous for our side of things,” and Ashley said “I think being too radical pushes people away and makes them look for truth elsewhere.” Notably, neither of these comments contained substantive condemnation, appearing more strategic instead. (Note: City Journal said the transcript it provided was partial, which means other comments might have been excluded.)
The focus group became even more alarming when the moderator asked, “What do you think of Adolf Hitler?”
Ashley said, “I think he was a great leader, to be honest. I think what he was going for was terrible, but I think he showed very strong leadership values.” Andrew said, “I think we should have a stronger executive branch. I don’t think we should be killing people or doing mass genocide, obviously, but I do think we should have a strong executive….. I support national sovereignty, and Hitler was a nationalist. He was like, we have to take Germany back for Germans. And I feel like we should do that in America. We should take America back for our native population.”
Brice, who described himself as Jewish ancestrally and Christian by faith, said, “I’ve actually read ‘Mein Kampf.’ The end conclusions that he came to: absolutely abominable. But I strangely understood where he was coming from as far as wanting to improve the national state of Germany.” Only Lauren offered full-throated condemnation: “He made all of those people suffer, and I want to do ungodly things to people who do things like that.”
The moderator followed up by asking how the group felt about Jewish people.
Atticus said, “They’ve got Hollywood on lock.” George queried, “Don’t they own, like, a ton of the media, and, like, just kind of everything?” Andrew said, “I would say a force for evil.” Only Brice diverged, saying he believed Jewish people were “No different than black people, Asian people, or any other people here today.”
After the moderator asked Andrew to clarify his comments on Jews being “evil,” he doubled down, and then the moderator asked others to respond, prompting a bit of pushback: Ashley said Jews and Christians were similar, biblically speaking; Ally rejected “any classification of a whole people group,” adding, “I just don’t think you can say this entire people group is bad.” But Lauren raised what appeared to be an antisemitic trope about sexually corrupting Jewish cabals: “Israel has a lot of connections to sex and human trafficking, and that doesn’t sit well with me.”
Some of us may have been underestimating how much fascistic energy has bubbled up from more grassroots quarters of American political life.
I was blown away reading this transcript. The venomous Fuentes appears to be just another right-wing pundit who maybe rage-baits a bit too much. Jews are described as sly puppeteers. Hitler is not seen as the apex of genocidal barbarism, but rather a nationalist leader who can be at least partially empathized with.
We’ve known for a long time that the right has been growing more extremebut this focus group really made it sink in: in today’s right-wing political culture, Trumpism is growing contiguous with Fuentes-ism, and the long-standing taboo against Nazism in America is broken.
Here’s another way of thinking about it: For a long time American scholars and journalists have been debating whether or not Trump matches the definition of a fascist; but some of us may have been underestimating how much fascistic energy has bubbled up from more grassroots quarters of American political life. And with the overwhelming majority of participants describing themselves as getting their political news from social media, independent podcasts and YouTubers — and hardly any professional institutional media — it’s difficult to see how to guard against it getting worse. Trolls, demagogues and grifters are whispering into the ears of our youth (and not just on the right), and sabotaging our capacity to adhere to democracy.
Let’s be clear that a focus group is not a poll — we cannot quantify how widespread these attitudes and behaviors are. The point of putting them together is to get a snapshot of a specific subset of the population to gauge the more complex elements of their belief systems that surveys cannot capture. But what these young red state conservatives said doesn’t defy what we know about what’s happening on the right, it confirms it.
Data points supporting the idea that the Nazi taboo is broken are everywhere. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — whom multiple focus group participants said was a media figure who best represented their views — recently conducted a softball interview with Fuentes which allowed Fuentes to present himself as a more innocuous pundit than he is. That interview has in turn roiled the American rightrocking right-wing institutions like the Heritage Foundation as they have struggled to figure out how close of a relationship they should hold with Carlson. The Trump administration employs a man who described himself as having a “Nazi streak” in a text message. In October Politico obtained leaked Telegram messages showing young Republican leaders describing Black people as monkeys and sharing messages that include “I love Hiter.”
A number of prominent right-wingers are openly acknowledging that something has gone rotten. Rod Dreher, a conservative writer, recently described a trip to Washington, D.C., in which he said a “D.C. insider” told him that he estimated that between 30% and 40% of Gen Z Republicans in Washington are Fuentes fans and reported that other young Republicans agreed with that estimate. The point isn’t whether that number is accurate — there’s no way to confirm it on the record — but rather that it reflects a perception within the right that Fuentes is ascendant. Vivek Ramswamy, who ran for president in 2024 and is running for governor of Ohio in 2026, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times recently decrying Fuentes’ growing influence on the right.
The presentation of this focus group by The Manhattan Institute — the group that employs the right-wing disinformation agent Christopher Rufo — should also leave us feeling concerned.
In the introductory synopsis to the focus group findings, the author, Jesse Arm, writes “moral stigmas — racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny — no longer reliably do the work they used to.” But he appears to put the blame for those things on the left, saying that, “After a decade of hearing the same accusations leveled at everyone from John McCain to Mitt Romney to Donald Trump, some see allegations of bigotry as table stakes.” Arm also downplays the extent of extremism surfaced in the focus group by saying there was “one true believer who agreed with Fuentes’ worldview and espoused explicit authoritarian and anti-pluralist views” who was “an outlier.”
The Manhattan Institute is not endorsing the participants’ worldview, but it was also clearly not trying to sound the alarms. It did, however, seem confident that the group was an authentic representation of the state of today’s right-wing youth — a group of Americans who increasingly are intrigued by the most vicious and destructive among us.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer for MS NOW. Sign up for his newsletter.
The U.S. has carried out “large-scale strikes” against multiple Islamic State targets in Syria along with partner forces, U.S. Central Command said on Saturday.
The attack is a part of an operation launched on Dec. 19, when U.S. forces struck “more than 70 targets” in central Syria as retaliation for the killing of three Americans by an ISIS gunman in early December.
“The strikes today targeted ISIS throughout Syria as part of our ongoing commitment to root out Islamic terrorism against our warfighters, prevent future attacks, and protect American and partner forces in the region,” CENTCOM said in a statement.
Tom Barrack, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Syria, announced on Saturday that he met with Syria’s new leadership in Damascus “to discuss recent developments in Aleppo and the broader path forward for Syria’s historic transition.”
The deadly attack in December marked the first fatalities of U.S. troops in the country since former President Bashar al-Assad was ousted last year. Three other U.S. service members were injured in the attack in December, and a state-run news agency reported that two members of the Syrian security forces were also wounded.
President Donald Trump said at the time that the attack by ISIS took place “in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them.” He also said Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, whom he had met in November at the White House, was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last month that the operation was “a declaration of vengeance” over the deaths of the American service members.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
In the wake of Renee Nicole Good’s death, Americans are asking, with heightened urgency, what authority ICE and CBP agents have when they engage with U.S. citizens. And as with many areas of the law, the answer is largely, “It depends.”
Can ICE use deadly force on U.S. citizens – or ever?
When it comes to the use of force, and specifically, the use of firearms, ICE has its own specific policy that was last updated in 2023. That policy was filed in the Chicago-area litigation over ICE and CBP’s treatment of protesters, clergy, and journalists. (Interestingly, on ICE’s website, that same policy is almost entirely redacted.) This policy does not vary depending on the subject’s immigration or citizenship status. Here’s what it says:
First, the policy authorizes the use of force “only when no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist and may use only the level of force that is objectively reasonable in light of the totality of facts and circumstances confronting the officer at the time force is applied.” But the policy is equally clear that an officer does not have to meet force with equal or lesser force, does not have to wait for an attack before using force, and does not have any duty to retreat to avoid the reasonable use of force.
Second, where feasible and without creating any greater threat to his own safety or that of others, an ICE officer must attempt to “de-escalate by the use of communication or other techniques during an encounter to stabilize, slow, or reduce the intensity of a potentially violent situation without using physical force, or with a reduction in force.”
Third, ICE policy is also clear that officers have a “duty to intervene to prevent or stop a perceived use of excessive force” so long as it is safe to do so. It further states that a failure to intervene and/or report such incidents is itself misconduct — and potential grounds for discipline.
What’s the guidance if U.S. citizens are given orders by ICE?
Short of using force or deadly force, however, can ICE give orders to U.S. citizens? For example, it appears that ICE agents directed Renee Nicole Good to get out of her car shortly before she was killed.
ICE can give orders to U.S. citizens, but again, only in limited circumstances that are directly tied to the ICE agent’s immigration-related authority. For example, ICE can give orders to U.S. citizens — or even detain them temporarily — if they are obstructing or interfering with immigration enforcement activity.
These situations are often very subjective. U.S. citizens do have significantly more freedom in their interactions with ICE than non-citizens. For example, according to guidance issued by the ACLU and the City of New Yorkamong others, if ordered or detained by ICE, a U.S. citizen can ask, “Am I free to leave?” and they should then be allowed to leave on their own free will.
Can ICE agents search a car without a warrant?
ICE agents also have the authority to search a car without a warrant in limited scenarios. The Fourth Amendment includes the automobile exceptionwhich allows federal agents to search a vehicle without a warrant if there’s probable cause to believe there’s evidence to a crime or contraband. Because a car can be driven away quickly, it may not be practical to secure a warrant beforehand without jeopardizing the investigation.
But federal agents must have specific probable cause to search a car without a warrant. A hunch or a feeling that the car conceals evidence of illegal activity is not enough for a federal agent to search a car without a warrant. ICE does have broader authority to search vehicles within 100 miles of the U.S. border, but even so, these searches typically require probable cause. Notably, ICE cannot search a car without a warrant simply because they suspect someone may be an undocumented immigrant.
However, car searches are the only major exception. ICE officers require search warrants for all other searches. Without a warrant, both U.S. citizens and non-citizens can say, “I do not consent to a search,” according to guidance issued by immigration rights organizations.
What’s the guidance on U.S. citizens recording or taking photos of ICE during enforcement activities?
Civil liberties groups generally advise that under the First Amendment, U.S. citizens can record or take photos of ICE performing law enforcement activities in public places so long as the recording does not interfere with ICE activity, like an arrest. Bystanders are allowed by law to collect important information, including names and badge numbers of the ICE agent executing the immigration activity.
Some states, including Florida, Tennessee, and Louisiana, have enacted their own laws requiring observers — or anyone else — to move back 25 feet or more from law enforcement or other first responders upon their request. While other, similar laws passed by Arizona and Indiana have been struck down, the constitutionality of these states’ laws has not been determined.
Finally, citizens and non-citizens alike share one fundamental right when it comes to encounters with ICE, or any other law enforcement agency, for that matter: the right to remain silent.
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW’s senior legal reporter and a former litigator.
Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.
“We Love America” is one of CBS News’ “five simple principles” under new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. In apparent defiance of a powerful, unseen enemy that demands they not love this country, the network added on social media, “And we make no apologies for saying so. Our foundational values of liberty, equality and the rule of law make us the last best hope on Earth.”
The strangeness of a straight news outlet — whose job ostensibly is to be skeptical of the powerful, especially the government — feeling the need to distinguish itself by proclaiming “love” for America aside, it’s a reductive, Manichean sentiment. Its opponent is a strawman, and it carries the implication that there’s only one way to love America: their way.
America showed its distaste for the Blame America First crowd and voted for Donald Trump even after he attempted a self-coup, among other national disgraces.
Now, I’m not oblivious to the point CBS News is trying to make. There’s a subset of far-left Americans, particularly in academia and activism, that considers the United States to be inherently illegitimate because of its history of slavery and ethnic cleansing. Some others in left-wing spaces believe capitalism is the root of all evil, that people should be judged by their immutable characteristics in the name of “anti-racism,” that political violence is justifiable (as long as it’s from the left) and that any deviation from their radical values is problematic. I’ve been critical of some of the more prominent figures in this area, whose work I’ve found ranged from the vacuous to the merely unhelpful if justice and equality are the goals.
In 2024, America showed its distaste for the Blame America First crowd and voted for Donald Trump even after he attempted a self-coup, among other national disgraces.
But America’s backlash against far-left activists far exceeds their actual influence in government, business and culture. They did, however, make for great bogeymen in GOP campaign ads — and were often their own worst enemies. As the progressive comedian Marc Maron asked his audience in a recent special, “You do realize we annoyed the average American into fascism, right?”
Still, there are plenty of people, myself includedwho “love America” and don’t subscribe to a childish — and frankly, dangerous — “my country, right or wrong” binary.
The America I love is a representative democracy where the ruling party doesn’t try to stay in power after losing an election or permanently brain-poison its followers with lies about voter fraud. The America I love respects civil liberties and due process under the law and doesn’t make exceptions in the name of meeting mass deportation quotas.
The America I love stubbornly defends freedom of speech. Its government doesn’t try to forbid the use of certain words to describe political opponents or harass news outlets with bogus litigation or ideologically-motivated regulatory threats. The America I love doesn’t deport people for their legitimate political activism.
The America I love is strong and reflective enough to grapple with even the worst of its own history. It doesn’t ban the teaching of slavery in public schools as a “divisive concept” on the grounds that it will make the children of right-wingers feel bad about their country. That’s what has happened in many Republican-led states and localities in recent years, but, if anything, the decades we’ve spent confronting America’s racist sins — and expanding the scope of civil rights — demonstrate that the country we love so dearly has the capacity to evolve for the better.
But, as the second Trump administration keeps reminding us, America also has the ability to devolve for the worse.
I don’t love that Trump’s America has renormalized gutter racismhelped in large part by the president, the vice president and many of their most influential supportersincluding the richest man in the world (who was also the biggest donor to their campaign).
As the second Trump administration keeps reminding us, America also has the ability to devolve for the worse.
Just this week, Elon Musk posted a “100” emoji to promote an X post that declared, “If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. … White solidarity is the only way to survive.” As of Friday, it had been viewed over 42 million times. Also this week, Vice President JD Vance, who last month touted that in America you no longer have to apologize for being white, said America has a “Somali problem,” a kind of phrasing that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in early 1930s Germany.
I don’t love that Trump’s America allowed Musk’s ludicrously destructive Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to destroy America’s moral and strategic advantage in “soft power,” killing USAID, which cost a pittance of our annual GDP to save millions of lives in poor countries from preventable diseases, and keep warlords and despots from filling the power vacuums.
I don’t love that in Trump’s America the executive branch ignores the Constitution, invades a sovereign country without congressional consultation and deposes its tyrannical leader with no apparent legal justificationwhile deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller touts the virtues of neo-colonialism. And I don’t love that Trump is threatening to seize Greenland from Denmark, our NATO ally, an ambition that seems hellbent on pointlessly destroying the rules-based international order that has made the United States a superpower since the end of World War II.
And I don’t love the fact that Musk and Vance have been enthusiastic boosters of Germany’s ascendant Nazi-sympathizing partythe Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). Nor am I proud of the fact that on Friday a DHS post on Instagram featured a recording of, “By God We’ll Have Our Home Again,” a chilling marching song known to be popular among the Proud Boys and white ethno-nationalist separatists. (I asked DHS for comment on the use of the song, but have not received a response.)
I don’t love that during Trump’s second term, it has become completely normal for masked, secret law enforcement agents to violently accost and arrest people without due process, including American citizens. As I warned in September when Trump’s campaign of extralegal killings of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean kicked into high gear: “President Donald Trump — whether intentionally or not — is laying the groundwork to normalize the concept of the U.S. military’s killing Americans without due process.”
ICE agent Jonathan Ross killing Renee Good in Minneapolis this week shows my fears were not unfounded. The celebratory bloodlust on the right that followed Good’s death tells me the worst is yet to come.
“We Love America” isn’t a journalistic principle, it’s barely a bumper sticker. True patriotism does not mean ignoring your country’s faults or dismissing its critics as haters or disloyal. Loving your country means taking the good with the bad. It means being proud and being embarrassed — or even appalled — when necessary.
You can love America, and also apologize for it. But if loving America means caping for the powerful, whitewashing the racists and believing that military might-makes-right, you don’t love America.
You just love saying you do.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW.
- Insurer CEOs testifying before House health subcommittee Jan. 22
- How John Thune is trying to save the Senate for Republicans
- House passes three-bill spending package with weeks left to avoid a shutdown
- Trump rages about Republicans backing war powers resolution: ‘Should never be elected to office again’
- The 5 Republicans who voted against Trump on Venezuela
- Rand Paul: Bombing Iran ‘is not the answer’
- How artificial intelligence is reshaping the future of war
- US citizens in Venezuela advised to leave ‘immediately,’ beware of militias
- Hegseth’s fight against Kelly moves into untested legal waters
- Minnesota finds itself in an unwelcome, divisive political spotlight
-
The Dictatorship11 months agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
The Dictatorship4 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words
-
Politics11 months agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
Politics11 months agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Politics11 months agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship11 months agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Uncategorized1 year ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics9 months agoDemocrat challenging Joni Ernst: I want to ‘tear down’ party, ‘build it back up’