Young Republicans' leaked chats reflect Trump's racist influence

Oh, the all too familiar woes of a leaked Republican group chat. A new scandal dropped Tuesday, revealing egregious text messages from Young Republican leaders. 

As originally reported by Politico, people in the group casually used the N-word, advocated for sending people “to the gas chamber,” and openly aired other extremely homophobic, racist, sexist, and antisemitic remarks. 

“If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked fr fr,” Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans, texted to his colleagues.

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Walker’s foresight could have been helpful, especially for the many people in the group who were either relieved of their roles or had job offers rescinded. As it turns out, blatant racism doesn’t bode well with employers—even if they’re Republican.

And however shocking this might be, this kind of language—once thought to be culturally on its way out—is swinging back into the mainstream. 

But why?

According to Joe Feagin, a Texas A&M sociology professor who has studied racism for 60 years, it has to do with the emergence of President Donald Trump’s extreme language and bullying tactics.

“The more the political atmosphere is open and liberating—like it has been with the emergence of Trump and a more right wing GOP even before him—it opens up young people and older people to telling racist jokes, making racist commentaries in private and public,” he told Politico. 

Since Trump’s emergence as a politician, Americans have become seemingly desensitized to his bigoted words and actions. Somehow, the country was able to overlook the 2016 leaked audio of Trump bragging about how he can grab women “by the pussy” because he’s a “star.”

Then there was his debate against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, when he blamed U.S. drug epidemics on “some bad hombres.”

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But it’s also Trump’s crude humor and proclivity to call opponents demeaning nicknames that have emboldened people on the right to use bigoted language. 

Even Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has no issue promoting similar bigotry in official government proceedings, including using “fat” to derogatorily refer to military troops.

"No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. No more debris. As I've said before and I'll say it again, we are done with that shit,” Hegseth said during a September speech.

Ultimately, this is a massive jump backward in a decades-long effort to denormalize hate speech, with the right feeling emboldened to make jokes and comments at the expense of people’s races, genders, and religions. 

And instead of pushing back, young people are also feeling pressured to let it slide—or even to laugh along.

So where is this train going? And, more pressingly, will it slow down before impending impact?

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