The Biden White House is responding to news a far-right wing Republican Congressman has hired a staffer who has ties to a neo-Nazi.
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who has been accused of associating with white nationalists and whose own siblings reportedly have said he is a white supremacist, hired Wade Searle as his digital director. Searle, Talking Points Memo reported this week, has ties to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. Fuentes is the antisemitic Christian nationalist and white supremacist who founded the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), has a cult-like following of supporters called “groypers,” and infamously dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago late last year.
“President Biden is adamant that we deny hate any safe harbor,” Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates told TPM in a statement. “No elected leader should ever tolerate these disgusting and pathetic views. Bigotry, white supremacy, antisemitism, and violence are obscene and un-American.”
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“The dangerous agenda this person chooses to associate with — including by promoting an extremist who openly praises Nazism and Hitler — could not be more opposed to the fundamental values of our nation,” Bates said. “As Americans we need to stand up for the rights and dignity of all people, and against this repulsive, weak-minded poison.”
TPM notes its May 14 report “detailed evidence that Searle has attended a Fuentes rally and indications he was involved in a series of interconnected social media pages with the aliases ‘ChickenRight’ and ‘Chikken.’ The various ChickenRight accounts, which can also be linked to an intern in Gosar’s office, were filled with extremist statements including attacks on Blacks, Jews, and other minorities. As ‘Chikken,’ Searle has also been identified by a defector from Fuentes’ organization as a key member of the neo-Nazi leader’s inner circle.”
Reporting on the Searle news, the Arizona Mirror also focused on Rep. Gosar’s history of white nationalism.
“On Holocaust Remembrance Day in April 2022, Gosar shared and then later deleted a meme that has roots in neo-Nazi and white nationalist culture. The meme, which featured Gosar with a red filter, invoked an aesthetic known as ‘DarkMAGA,’ which advocates for conservatives and former President Donald Trump to be more hardline and violent with their rhetoric.”
“’Remember when our government sent planes to Afghanistan and brought over 100,000 Afghans in less than a week?’ Gosar wrote. ‘We have in the range of up to 40 million illegal aliens in our country. They can be deported by planes, trains and buses. We could easily deport 6 million each year.'”
“Many groypers quickly jumped on the 6 million number, which is the approximate number of Jews killed during the Holocaust and quote tweeted the meme using antisemitic language and celebrated Gosar’s embrace of ‘#DarkMaga,'” the Mirror added. “Many others also saw the tweet as a call to action and violence.”
Meanwhile, in 2021, Rep. Gosar was censured by the House of Representatives, which at the time had a Democratic majority, for posting an anime video that depicted him murdering U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and attacking President Joe Biden.
Image of Rep. Paul Gosar by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license