Copyright Bainbridge Review
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The fallout is still happening after approximately 3,000 pages of leaked Telegram messages from Young Republican leaders revealed racist slurs, antisemitic praise for Hitler, misogynistic rape jokes, and violent fantasies about political opponents. The texts, first reported by Politico, were part of a “RESTOREYR WAR ROOM” chat of about a dozen Gen Z and millennial Republicans, some of whom held jobs in elected officials’ offices or in government posts. The exchanges mixed politics with personal matters, laced throughout with offensive language that was shocking for its volume and groupthink. The Kansas and New York Republican Parties disbanded their Young Republican organizations in response to the controversy. Vermont Republican Samuel Douglass, the only elected official who participated in the group, apologized for his xenophobic and antisemitic comments and resigned from his position. Several other participants involved in the text exchanges have either been forced out of their positions or have voluntarily resigned. Notably, Vice President JD Vance downplayed and dismissed the scandal as young kids doing stupid things, though these “young people” ranged in age from 30 to 42 years old. Vance seemingly had no problem dismissing such antics by these bigoted young political operatives as harmless and edgy. Yet, just last month, Vance demanded that people be reported to their employers for making far fewer incendiary comments about Charlie Kirk’s death. The hypocrisy abounds. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a congressional investigation into the “vile and offensive text messages,” noting the committee is already investigating Harvard University’s response to antisemitism on its campus. In his letter, Newsom criticized Vance for failing to condemn the comments in the group chat, saying this demonstrates that Trump administration agencies “cannot be trusted” to undertake such an investigation. Newsom wrote, “If Congress can investigate universities for failing to stop antisemitism, it must also investigate politicians’ own allies who are openly celebrating it.” Good points from the governor. As MSNBC host Chris Hayes noted, this kind of virulent hatred has become all too familiar in Donald Trump’s Republican Party, and it’s becoming clear that people running the GOP at the ground level are also immersed in this cesspit of bigotry. That’s what makes such a situation so troubling. Language often whispered among like-minded people is no longer confined to groupthink – it’s strategically organized. Perverse fantasies of mass death of non-White Christians and non-heterosexual people have moved from the periphery to group chats and items on staff meeting agendas. These aren’t so-called male bravado or slips of the tongue. They are statements of intent and nothing short of a determined goal. One can only imagine the outcry if a group of political operatives had shared virulently anti-white, anti-heterosexual, and anti-Christian rhetoric and discussed various devious, sinister, and other untoward efforts to marginalize, humiliate, and outright harm them. The right-wing blogger sphere would have gone into 24/7 super overdrive, attacking the culprits (rightly so), demanding apologies from Democratic lawmakers and immediate terminations and almost certainly expressing hostile racial commentary. For people of color, whose bodies have historically been routinely raped, assaulted, lynched, objectified, and targeted in one manner or another, there is nothing humorous about such rhetoric. It’s the sound of a shot being fired: first the laughter, followed by “the fire next,” to paraphrase James Baldwin. Many people prefer to deflect and deny how such sinister thinking moves from private chats into the public sphere. The danger isn’t just what they say when they think no one else is watching. It is what they do and say when they think everyone around them quietly concurs. It’s a chilling reality that these same people could be your neighbor, your colleague, the man or woman who attends the same health club as you do, the “Christian” pastor (Joel Webbon, anyone? ), your primary physician, or your children’s teachers. We currently reside in a political climate conducive, if not outright hospitable, to enforcing and ratifying such draconian policies. This unsettling state of affairs, particularly given this current political tide, will require our most stringent collective effort to stem and reverse. Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.
