#fascists #neoNazis #ChristianNationalists
"For some, the civil war on the right has become a battle for souls
Last week a Georgian owned the internet — parts of it, anyway — and it wasn’t Jon Ossoff for a change.
After spreading the word that he was going to 'name names, connecting many of the 'white nationalists, Christian nationalists and neo-Nazis rising on the right,' conservative WSB radio host and blogger Erick Erickson dropped a piece titled 'The Midwestern Fuhrerbunker Driving the Right Off the Cliff.'
'A group of white guys have subtly inserted themselves into conservative institutions and church organizations,' Erickson wrote. 'They all embrace racial grievances. To varying degrees, they embrace white nationalism, antisemitism and even Nazi sympathies. They are getting added to conservative institutional boards, attempting to purge churches, and are desperate to indoctrinate young conservatives into fascist ideology. They even surround the Vice President of the United States.'
He was not the only conservative drawing a line against elements of the far right last week. There was widespread condemnation of Bo French, a Republican candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, for posting a photo of a group of South Asian-American students celebrating after the University of Texas’ big win over Ohio State, with the comment that it showed 'how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners.' That even prompted the Texas Republican strategist Karl Rove to write a Wall Street Journal piece announcing he’s going to vote for French’s Democratic opponent.
But for sheer ad hominem bile, it would be hard to top the furious online reaction to Erickson, 'an insecure, obese, middle-aged man with braces,' 'the Right’s hall monitor,' 'a washed-up, degenerate old man,' 'effectively no different than any other leftist,' the 'Godhaters’ pet evangelist,' one of the of so-called conservatives who are 'traitors of the worst kind, and must be purged from the movement entirely.' That’s just a sampling.
One reason for these attacks on the Macon-based conservative commentator is that he really did name some names, beginning with that of Charles Heywood, a far-right retired businessman who, Erickson wrote, has used his wealth to infiltrate conservative organizations like the Claremont Institute and drive them toward a more radical vision with a secret network of like-minded followers.
After Erickson was booked as a panelist on the Sunday news show This Week, an organization representing one of those name sent a letter to the chief counsel of Disney Entertainment warning of repercussions if Erickson were to refer to their client as a Nazi, which would make him vulnerable to the 'growing phenomenon of assassination culture,' a term which has been taken up in right-wing circles following the murder of Charlie Kirk. The subject didn’t come up Sunday morning.
'It’s pretty simple: If you’re calling people Nazis who are not Nazis after what happened to Charlie Kirk, you’re trying to get them killed,' one of Erickson’s critics wrote."
https://saportareport.com/for-some-the-civil-war-on-the-right-has-become-a-battle-for-souls/columnists/tom-baxter/tom/