Matt Gaetz boosts neo-Nazi 'Great Replacement Theory' as Republicans turn full fascist
In the wake of sex trafficking allegations that would have forced his resignation in any prior version of the Republican Party before it turned into a bucket of bubbling fascism, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz has been doing his level best to be a deplorable sleazebag in all—and we do mean all—circumstances. He has gone out of his way to broadcast his devotion to the Mar-a-Lago ruler of golf courses and buffets; he has gone on an ersatz promotional tour with top sedition backer Marjorie Taylor Greene, and on and on.
But this is Trump-era Republicanism we’re talking about, so Gaetz was all but certain to cap things off by going full white nationalist. Fox News’ own white nationalist host gave him the opportunity, and Gaetz took it.
What the accused cocaine-party-having sex-trafficking Gaetz is referring to is a neo-Nazi conspiracy theory that Tucker and other white nationalists have been injecting into “mainstream” conservatism with increasing insistence after Trump’s loss and the subsequent fascist attempt at insurrection. “Replacement Theory,” otherwise known as The Great Replacement, is a conspiracy theory claiming that powerful figures (globalists, socialists, Democrats, or the usual “secret worldwide cabal” of “wealthy Jews”) are attempting to bring massive numbers of nonwhite immigrants into the United States in order to dilute the white “essence” of the nation and reduce slab-haired white child rapists and their supporters to minority status.
It’s very literally a conspiracy theory torn from the neo-Nazi corners of the internet. It’s completely batshit, it’s very often paired with conspiracy claims against liberal American billionaire George Soros, and up until Rupert Murdoch and his kin decided to go full fascist, you would never hear such a thing claimed on television because television shows in general tried to avoid giving airtime to obviously unhinged white supremacist groups. It’s the sort of delusional rant that would convince a past version of Fox News to part with an increasingly unstable Glenn Beck; you can promote a lot of nonsense on the news networks, but executives generally drew the line at conspiracy theories that were likely to result in domestic terrorism if an audience believed them.
That line has now been crossed repeatedly, but even Carlson dared no more than play smirking footsie with one of neo-Nazism’s defining conspiracy phrases—until now. Last week the Fox Host explicitly embraced “replacement theory” as supposedly factual, smashing the network’s previous plausible deniability on the subject. Fox News is now promoting a neo-Nazi conspiracy claim; Fox News executives are now signaling they’ll support the conspiracy claims.
If you’re wondering which side of this supposed debate the sex trafficking cocaine-party-with-college-students sedition-backing would-be-election-nullifying helmet-haired treasonbag would take, you haven’t been paying attention. Of course Gaetz was going to come out backing neo-Nazi conspiracies. Gaetz doesn’t give a rat’s ass, Gaetz needs to hitch his wagon to whatever fascist cause he runs across because Gaetz is desperately trying to avoid criminal charges for all that crap he’s done.
No government? No charges. It’s not likely the twit has an agenda any more substantive than that. You’d be hard pressed to be one of Dear Leader’s biggest bootlickers, even after all that the nation has been through in the last half-decade, unless you very specifically don’t care about anything but your ability to keep getting away with crimes.
Dunno what to tell you on this one, America. The adaptation of one of the most infamous and dangerous conspiracy theories of the fascist right is absolutely assured to result in domestic terrorism, just as it has repeatedly in the recent past. Tucker appears at this point to be intending that. Gaetz probably doesn’t give a damn one way or the other; to him, he just needs an unending series of signals he can send to reassure his far-right Florida base that no matter what he might be accused of doing with their daughters, his devotion to remaking America into a fascist nation should be more than enough to allow them to look the other way.