Politico published an article on Tuesday that revealed leaked chats from leaders of Young Republican groups across the country. The messages included extremely racist and antisemitic rhetoric, comparing Black people to monkeys, and one that simply read “I love Hitler.” And if you read some of the political analysis that’s followed, this is just a peek at the future of the Republican Party. But I’ve got some bad news for anyone who didn’t get the memo. The future is now.
Politico’s follow-up article ran with the headline “The leaked Young Republicans’ messages could be the future of politics.” Washington Post went with the headline, “Are these young Republicans the future? If so, the party’s in trouble.” Steve Schmidt, co-founder of the ex-Republican group The Lincoln Project, characterized the texts and what they represent as the “future.”
“They have been marinated in the stew of a sick society,” Schmidt said this week on his podcast The Warning. And Schmidt is absolutely right about the sick society part. But my concern isn’t that it’s the future of the Republican Party. It’s the reality we’re witnessing every single day here in 2025.
It makes sense that people don’t want to believe what they’re seeing with their own eyes. Billionaire Elon Musk gave two Nazi-style salutes on Jan. 20, the day Trump was inaugurated for the second time, and it was frankly surreal to watch.
How could the richest man in the world be showing his support for the Nazis? Musk would come out much later and finally deny that he was giving a Nazi salute, but we all know what we saw. It wasn’t ambiguous. It wasn’t meant to say “my heart goes out to you,” as he tried to claim. It was a clear message, and he did it twice. There’s no mistaking that.
Not long after Musk’s salutes, two more people at CPAC in February did it, including former top Trump advisor Steve Bannon. They push the limits, see how far they can go, and then do it again.
Part of the reason people are talking about this disgusting racism and antisemitism as “the future” is that the organization with the leaked group chats is called the Young Republicans. But these aren’t teenagers. They’re largely men and women in their 20s and 30s. As Politico notes, the Young Republican National Federation, which has about 15,000 members, is for people 18-40 years old. Just wee children, really.
The Republican Party of today controls all the levers of power. They have a majority on the Supreme Court, they have the White House, and they control both the House and the Senate. What are they doing with that power? Making overtly racist and antisemitic content for public consumption, seemingly getting bolder with each new tweet and official statement.
Just this week, white supremacists on X noticed an Instagram video posted way back in August that included song lyrics like “Jew me” and “kike me.” The video was just 13 seconds long, meaning that use of the obscure version of that Michael Jackson song, along with those particular words, was extremely deliberate.
Border Patrol deleted the video from Instagram and Facebook, sending Gizmodo a petulant statement after the fact: “We deleted the post and will update with different music. End of story. Now focus on the violent criminal illegal aliens.” But that’s not the end of the story. Far from it.
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