The Self-Sabotage of the Conservative Movement

The Young Republicans leak exposes the right's complacency with bigotry

THE SELF-SABOTAGE OF THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT

The Young Republicans leak exposes the right’s complacency with bigotry

Marcus Watkins

We conservatives entered 2025 riding high on the momentum of the 2024 election. It was a resounding victory that wasn’t just about policy wins, but about expanding our tent. For the first time in decades, the Republican Party made historic gains among minority voters: Latino support surged to over 50% in key states, Black voter turnout for Trump hit record highs in urban areas, and even Asian American communities showed a noticeable rightward shift, drawn by our promises of economic opportunity, school choice, and border security.

These weren’t flukes; they were the fruits of outreach efforts that emphasized shared American values over division. But now, barely nine months into the Trump-Vance administration, a leaked Telegram group chat from Young Republican leaders has ripped the veil off of something extremely ugly on the right. The 2,900 pages of messages, exposed by Politico on October 14, 2025, reveal not just isolated idiocy, but a casual comfort with racism, bigotry, and antisemitism that threatens to squander our hard-won gains. If we don’t confront this rot head-on, we’ll commit an act of extraordinary self-sabotage, handing our opponents a gift-wrapped excuse to paint us all as irredeemable.

The leak reveals a grotesque picture of young GOP operatives, many in their 20s and 30s, holding positions in state chapters from Kansas to New York, trading slurs like trading cards. Black people were derided as “monkeys” and “the watermelon people”; Latinos and Asians faced ethnic epithets; gay individuals were slurred relentlessly; and Adolf Hitler was not just invoked but celebrated with lines like “I love Hitler” and jokes about gas chambers, slavery, and even rape as “epic.” These weren’t anonymous trolls in a basement; participants included elected officials, campaign staffers for Republican lawmakers, and aspiring national leaders. One, Vermont state Sen. Samuel Douglass, resigned in disgrace on October 18, 2025. The Kansas Young Republicans chapter was disbanded overnight, and New York’s was suspended amid firings and resignations. The national Young Republican Federation demanded immediate ousters, calling the language “vile and inexcusable.”

While these were definitely steps in the right direction, this scandal isn’t an aberration, it’s a symptom of a deeper malaise infecting the right’s online ecosystem. Social media platforms like X, Telegram, Facebook, and Gab have become breeding grounds where influencers and fringe voices normalize the unthinkable. What starts as “edgy” memes (white supremacist dog whistles, Holocaust “jokes,” or casual N-word drops) has escalated into a culture where bigotry feels like insider currency. We’ve seen it before: the alt-right’s 2016 rise, QAnon fever dreams, Nick Fuentes’s rise to popularity, and now this. Influencers with massive followings amplify it, chasing engagement through outrage. Far from fringe, these attitudes seemed to have seeped into the mainstream GOP, where “owning the libs” excuses moral shortcuts. Many in these chats aren’t die-hard Neo-Nazis, but performative edgelords who’ve internalized a trollish cruelty as conservatism’s new normal. The result? A party that won minorities by promising inclusion now risks alienating them with echoes of an ignorance that would make the Klan grin with pride.

This complacency isn’t just ethically bankrupt; it’s politically suicidal. The 2024 gains among Latinos, Blacks, and Asians were built on trust. A trust that we see each other as fellow Americans, not punching bags for juvenile hate. Exit polls showed minority voters crediting Trump for inflation-fighting and resistance to a chronically corrupt establishment, not racial resentment.

However, leaks like this fuel the left’s narrative: Republicans as a party of white grievance and racism. Imagine a Latino family in Texas, newly energized by our border message, scrolling X and seeing Young Republicans joking about “raping” opponents or gassing foes. Or a Black entrepreneur in Detroit, drawn by tax cuts, stumbling on Hitler fandom from future GOP leaders. These aren’t hypotheticals; they’re backlash waiting to happen. If we let this fester, we’ll forfeit the diverse coalition that delivered our mandate, reverting to a shrinking white base while Democrats regroup with targeted outreach.

Worse, our response, or lack thereof mirrors the left’s worst hypocrisy, a lesson we should have learned but clearly haven’t. For years, conservatives rightly excoriated Democrats for coddling far-left extremists: the Squad’s flirtations with antisemitism, socialism, campus militants shouting down speakers, or BLM activists and sympathizers excusing the most destructive riots in American history as “mostly peaceful” or even defending looting. We called it out relentlessly.

Yet when the shoe’s on the other foot, too many on our side make insincere appeals to the principle of “free speech,” while ignoring the poison. The left’s refusal to police its fringes, tolerating antisemitic tropes from “progressives” or anti-American rants from the most energized of their base, eroded their moral authority and drove moderates away. We’ve mocked them for it, but now we’re doing the same: unity at any cost, principles be damned.

Vice President JD Vance’s limp-wristed deflection was pathetic. On the Charlie Kirk Show, Vance dismissed the chats as “what kids do,” scolding critics for “pearl clutching” over “stupid jokes” in a group of supposed college-aged youths, who in reality, were mostly adults and should know better. He pivoted to Democratic Virginia AG candidate Jay Jones’s 2022 texts about “two bullets” for a rival, calling them “far worse” than praise of Hitler or gas chamber fantasies.

This isn’t leadership; it’s evasion. Vance refuses to “join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence,” he posted on X, equating our internal rot with isolated Democratic scandals. But here’s the hypocrisy that sticks in the craw: Just last month, after Charlie Kirk’s tragic assassination in September 2025, Vance guest-hosted Kirk’s show and urged a doxxing crusade against critics. “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out... and hell, call their employer,” he endorsed firings of pilots, teachers, and even a Secret Service agent for “inappropriate” posts. So much for the principle of free speech!

Professors and journalists faced punishment for mere criticism, all in the name of “civility.” Now, faced with our own side’s venom, Vance brushes it off as youthful folly. If criticizing Kirk warranted cancellation, why does joking about genocide get a pass? This double standard isn’t just weak; it’s corrosive, signaling that accountability applies only to enemies. Vice President Vance should have just sat this one out.

Then there’s Matt Walsh, the Daily Wire firebrand whose response embodies the right’s unity fetish gone wrong. In his October 14th, 2025 X thread and podcast episode, Walsh decried Politico’s reporting as an “egregious hit piece” on “edgy jokes” taken “wildly out of context.” He lamented conservatives “tripping over themselves to denounce and disavow,” insisting we stop “playing by rules the Left sets but doesn’t even follow.” Unity, he preached. He said “we must all stick together.” But unified with whom, Matt? With the Hitler fans? The rape-joke peddlers? The N-word enthusiasts? The people who spend all their time crying “Black Fatigue?” Walsh’s plea isn’t for principled conservatism; it’s for a big tent where “owning the libs” is the only condition for inclusion.

The GOP is unfortunately devolving into a party of no principles, where the barrier to entry is just anti-woke rage. Everything else, whether it is racism, antisemitism, or misogyny be damned, as long as you’re “MAGA.” This isn’t strength; it’s surrender to the fringes.

It’s past time we learned the left’s bitter lesson: Ignore the extremists, and they metastasize. Democrats lost the working class by pandering to coastal elites; we can’t afford to lose minorities by overlooking and winking at bigots.

Vital change starts at the top, with President Trump and JD Vance leading the charge. Trump, who once condemned David Duke, must now purge the poison and publicly denounce these chats, enforce zero-tolerance policies in the RNC, and amplify minority voices who’ve been our bridge-builders. Vance should retract his deflections, apologize for the hypocrisy, and commit to rooting out hate in GOP youth programs and groups. No more “whataboutism,” “ no more “edgy” excuses. We police our own, or we perish as a viable majority party.

The 2024 victory was a mandate for inclusive conservatism (jobs, security, and freedom for all Americans). Let’s honor it by drawing a line: BIGOTRY HAS NO HOME HERE. If we don’t, the right’s biggest enemy won’t be the left; it’ll be the mirror.

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Marcus Watkins is an advocate for conscious conservatism. He’s a member of Michigan’s 13th congressional district and serves on the finance and outreach committees. He writes about various topics including politics, culture, self-improvement, current events, and sports. He is also the Founder, Director, and Administrator of Jazz R Us and a contributing writer at both Wrong Speak Publishing and American Free News Network. His previous piece for the Journal of Free Black Thought was “The Dangers of Sanitizing Black America’s Story.” He publishes a Substack and tweets here.