Donald Trump no longer shocks us. The former president's trial over hush money to porn stars was historic, and his courtroom behavior was so ridiculous that he was at risk of being jailed for contempt of court. He called his political opponents “vermin” and said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of America.” His transgressions of American political norms have now become almost cliché.
But when Trump posted a video to his Truth social account on Monday featuring mock headlines about his 2024 reelection bid, including one predicting that “America's next move” would be to “establish a united empire,” it was an otherworldly jolt that suggested a second Trump term would put the country on the path to Nazi Germany.
Trump's leanings toward authoritarianism and fascism are well known — he praised neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, dined with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, and of course incited the January 6th riots — but the “United Empire” video illustrates a different kind of danger if Trump becomes president again.
The Associated Press reported that the reference in the video “appears to refer to the formation of the modern Pan-German state, which united small nations into a single empire in 1871.” A Trump campaign representative claimed the video was posted by a campaign staffer while the candidate was in court. This highlights a larger problem with the current Republican Party that goes far beyond Trump. A generation of young Republican staffers seems to be developing terminal white supremacist brains. And they will be the staffers of the next Republican administration.
It's a problem other Republican candidates have faced: Ron DeSantis' campaign last July fired speechwriter and former National Review contributor Nate Hochman for promoting a pro-DeSantis video that featured Nazi imagery, and dozens of Republican aides in Congress have been exposed by reporters as “groypers,” a term used to describe fans of Mr. Fuentes.
Not all young Republican campaign staffers are fascists. But the far-right is a key part of the GOP political coalition. Trump handily won the Republican primary and likely won the nomination. Having so many extremists in positions of power and influence is the price the party has paid for its deal with MAGA-ism. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar spoke at a white supremacist conference in 2022, and a 2020 investigative report found that at least a dozen Trump administration aides had ties to neo-Nazi and anti-immigrant hate groups.
The contemporary American right may not be monolithic, but it does function like a “popular front,” which traditionally refers to the broad coalition of leftists and liberals that came together in the 1930s to oppose a common fascist enemy, but similar dynamics have existed on the right throughout the 20th century and continue to do so today.
This is not a new dynamic in conservative politics. In the 20th century, the primary organizing principle of the American right was the “popular front” approach. In fact, the popular front of the right gave birth to modern conservatism, uniting a variety of right-wing groups, including such notable figures as Senator Joseph McCarthy, General Douglas MacArthur, and William F. Buckley Jr., as well as lesser known, more radical figures such as magazine publisher Russell Maguire, classics professor Revilo Oliver, and American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Binding this motley coalition was a shared opposition to communism, socialism, and New Deal liberalism.
Radicals and fascist sympathizers existed even among the movement's highest echelons, and other conservatives knew it. Mr. Maguire, a Connecticut businessman and arms manufacturer, bought the American Mercury in 1952 and built it into one of the most influential conservative magazines of its time, railing against the threat of international communism and the creep of liberalism and collectivism. It was perhaps the most widely read conservative magazine of its era, with a circulation of over 100,000 at its peak in the mid-1950s. (By contrast, Mr. Buckley's National Review struggled to reach a readership of 20,000 by the end of the decade.)
But Maguire was also an outspoken anti-Semite who helped distribute a book that claimed a Jewish conspiracy threatened to overthrow America. The American Mercury's editor, journalist William Bradford Huey, defended his professional relationship with the publisher, saying Maguire's money helped spread a conservative message. “If I suddenly heard that Adolf Hitler was living in South America and wanted to donate a million dollars to the American Mercury, I'd go and get it,” Huey told a reporter.
Still, there were political limitations to openly embracing the swastika just a few years after World War II, suggesting that appeals to a “united nation” would backfire on the Trump campaign. Both Maguire and Buckley had employed Rockwell at their magazines in the late 1950s. Rockwell, who embraced Nazism as early as 1951, according to his autobiography, approached Maguire in the late 1950s to fund a “slow, clandestine Nazi buildup” across the country. Unfortunately for Rockwell, Maguire, a billionaire, offered just $1,000. The political cost of organizing under the swastika was too high.
After Rockwell began appearing publicly as a Nazi, he quickly became one of the most hated men in America. Ironically, while many of his political positions were relatively popular in 1960s America – his opposition to the civil rights movement, his support for segregation, and his fierce antipathy to Communism – explicitly linking those policies with Nazi imagery was a dead end. Any covert political influence Rockwell had accumulated while working for The American Mercury and National Review evaporated when he adopted the swastika.
Times have changed. While the far-right was not the decisive political force that propelled Trump to the presidency, Trump has benefited from far-right support in several states and has never paid a clear political price for backing extremists. Despite his long record of political extremism, Trump won more than 74 million votes in 2020 and has consistently held a favorable opinion lead over President Biden in the 2024 presidential election. Modern far-right activists like Fuentes clearly see Trump's campaign as a new opportunity to build power and influence. And unlike past decades, when the far-right was a significant part of the right-wing populist front but never hegemonic, MAGAism is today the dominant current in conservative politics.
If elected, Trump has promised not to rule as a dictator except on day one of his administration, and to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and far-left thugs.” These are not empty words. The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 proposal is a roadmap for using executive power to clean up the federal government and replace current public officials with conservatives.
The best candidates for these roles would be campaign staffers and other activists. With Republican staff ties to white supremacists and neo-Nazis now seemingly commonplace, and the Texas Republican Party recently voting against banning staff association with anti-Semitic individuals and groups, the role of far-right aides in a second Trump administration is of great concern.
A united American empire may still be just a fantasy, but its dreamers may soon become real powers.
