How right-wing 'brutality' became 'a main political strategy': analysis

The GOP over the last decade, Reuters noted in March, has transformed into a "Republican electorate that is more isolationist, more skeptical of globalization, more suspicious of the electoral process and more likely to view Democrats as a threat than it was when former President [Donald] Trump launched his first run for the White House in 2015."

University of Virginia Center for Politics analyst J. Miles Coleman said the stark changes "reflect an electorate that has become more populist, both feeding off of Trump's populism and influencing the broader party." Now, he added, "It's hard to see the (party) going back to nominating Mitt Romney-type candidates."

In a Tuesday, May 7 op-ed published by MSNBC, columnist Charlie Sykes discusses the right-wing's shift through the eyes of conservative ghost writer Nancy French.

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French's new book, Ghosted: An American Story, according to Sykes, is "a powerful and horrifying account of how a once fringe movement, the alt right, has come to occupy the central seat of the Republican Party."

The book reveals "the vicious racist attacks against her and her family after she and her husband, David French, a well-known conservative commentator who is now a New York Times columnist, broke with Trump," the Bulwark founder notes.

Sykes writes:

In late 2015, online trolls seized on the existence of their daughter Naomi, who the Frenches had adopted from Ethiopia, as an attack tactic. In her book, French recalls the moment she saw the picture online: a photoshopped image of 7-year-old Naomi “in a gas chamber, with Donald Trump — wearing a Nazi uniform — pulling a lethal gas lever.”

There was more. Other online trolls photoshopped the girl’s face onto images of enslaved people and identified her with racial slurs that don’t bear repeating here.

French writes in her book, "The alt right tried to inflict as much personal pain as they could on us, in the most intimate ways possible. These radicalized Trump supporters harassed us, mocked us, maligned us, and believed we should lose our jobs, and — at least according to our email inboxes — our lives."

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"This casual racism and brutality was not pushed by a fringe element,” French emphasizes. "It had become the main political strategy of many conservatives. These people spouting conspiracy theories and shouting invectives were now embedded, wrapped up, and intertwined with mainstream Republicans."

Sykes notes:

In 2019, the Trump-supporting magazine American Greatness published a blatantly racist poem titled 'Cuck Elegy,' which accused 'parasites' of surrendering to the 'mocha-skinned' and 'low-life reprobates.' In case the references were too subtle, the magazine accompanied the poem with a photo of David and Naomi French.

The same year, "the Aspen Institute featured a panel that included both French and Christopher Buskirk, the editor and publisher of American Greatness, titled 'Can the Republican Party Survive the Alt Right?' (In the spirit of transparency, I helped moderate that panel.)," Sykes emphasizes. "French writes that Aspen’s decision to invite the publisher of American Greatness to talk about the alt-right 'was akin to asking an arsonist to give advice on putting out fires,' adding, 'but they did not ask me for my advice.'"

Sykes' full op-ed is available at this link.