Last year, white nationalists attempted to rebrand themselves as a modern “America First” movement, in order to successfully infiltrate the Republican Party and force it to adopt their racist policies. Led by podcasters Nick Fuentes, Vincent Foxx, and others, the America First crowd (also called “groypers”) publicly harangued conservative thinkers.

And now, they’re working to elect a handful of extremist politicians to Congress.

White nationalists adopting the “America First” title is unsurprising given the phrase’s dark, sordid history in American politics. In 1940 the America First Committee, an isolationist organization, was founded with the sole purpose of keeping America out of World War II. Some of its most prominent members expressed antisemitic and pro-Nazi sentiments.

One such member, industrialist Henry Ford, published The Dearborn Independent, a virulently antisemitic weekly newspaper. Its articles were eventually collected in a publication called The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem. Ford so inspired Adolf Hitler that Hitler mentioned him by name in his autobiography, and later awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.

Another member, aviator Charles Lindbergh, gave an anti-war speech in Des Moines, IA on September 11, 1941. In it, he blasted the people he believed were pushing the U.S. to war with Germany, including the Jews and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration,” Lindbergh declared.

Today, several politicians have embraced the “America First” label, and are running for Congress in order to enact policies that restrict or end immigration, and ban abortion and pornography. One such politician, blogger Peter D’Abrosca, was forced to drop out because he was unsuccessful in getting his name on the ballot.

Still, where D’Abrosca failed, others are moving forward with the goal of shifting the GOP even further right on issues of race, immigration, and civil liberties. And all of them have significant ties to white nationalists or other extremists.

Joshua Foxworth is currently running in Texas’ 14th congressional district on an anti-immigrant and anti-affirmative action platform. On two occasions — October 8 and December 15, 2019 — Foxworth has made guest appearances on a show hosted by white nationalist and antisemite Vincent Foxx.

Foxx runs The Red Elephants, a California-based alt-right media collective, and has appeared on explicitly white supremacist shows such as Wolfman’s Activism & Entertainment and Red Ice TV. On his Telegram channel, Foxx has claimed that black people disproportionately commit violent crime and that women “shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”

On November 15, 2019, Foxx complained, “If the argument for LGBT representation in media and culture is to reduce bullying, then what’s the argument for increased representation of straight mixed race couples? The only explanation can be an agenda.”

During his October 8th appearance Foxworth condemned so-called “red flag” laws, and echoed the white nationalist “great replacement” theory by claiming that “in less than ten years Texas will go blue” because of immigration. In December he told Foxx that “everything is downstream of immigration” and called himself a “big believer in that demographics is destiny.”

He also advocated placing the U.S. military on the southern border in order to defend “our lands from these foreign invaders who are just freely walking in.”

Foxworth is also a fan of YouTube philosopher Stefan Molyneux, a white nationalist who routinely promotes discredited race science. On December 16th, 2019, Foxworth tweeted, “I am still seeking interviews with any legitimate media – especially @StefanMolyneux and similar podcasts where we can get into the issues.”

On December 28th their interview, titled “Immigration Flipping Texas!?!,” aired on Molyneux’s Freedomain Radio channel.

During the interview Molyneux ludicrously claimed that “states are flippin’, counties are flipping because, you know, mass migration is a form of gerrymandering.” Foxworth told Molyneux that his district is “safe for another two or three election cycles,” but that “five or six Republican congressmen” in Texas opted not to run for reelection because of demographic changes.

On Twitter Foxworth has likened immigration to an “invasion” which will cause “Texas, Florida, and the nation” to “go forever ‘blue’ in less than a decade.” He has also repeatedly reached out to the racist “groyper army,” whitewashing them as a movement that “oppose[s] the moral bankruptcy that our ‘leaders’ support” and the “abandoning of our nation and people in favor of foreign workers and values.”

He currently follows multiple white nationalist and alt-right Twitter accounts, including Red Ice’s Lana Lokteff, #Killstream‘s Ethan Ralph, Nick Fuentes of America First, Faith Goldy, Scott Greer, Paul Ramsey, and VDARE. Recently Foxworth authored an article for VDARE, a white nationalist hate group, in which he attacked affirmative action as an “economic drain on America.”

Lauren Witzke is running for U.S. Senate in Delaware against incumbent Sen. Chris Coons. She announced her run on Twitter, crediting Peter D’Abrosca for inspiring her anti-immigrant “America First” platform. Witzke told D’Abrosca that she is “advocating for a bill proposing a 10 year moratorium on all immigration.” D’Abrosca responded by officially endorsing her candidacy.

In July 2019 Witzke joined fellow pro-Trump conservatives Scott Presler and Dylan Wheeler for an event known as the “Trump 2020 Tour.” Presler was once the “lead activism strategist” for the anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America, while Wheeler is an antisemite and supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Adherents of the QAnon theory believe that President Trump is planning to round up wealthy, Satanic pedophiles — many of whom are connected to the Democratic Party. They further believe that a mysterious man named “Q” is dropping hints about this plan on anonymous message boards like 8chan.

Like Wheeler, Witzke subscribes to this belief, sometimes tweeting the hashtag #WWG1WGA — an abbreviation for the pro-QAnon slogan “where we go one, we go all.” She has also retweeted several pro-QAnon Twitter accounts, including “firefighter prophet” Mark Taylor and Praying Medic:

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Her extremism is not limited to deranged conspiracies about pedophilia, however.

Like her fellow America First candidates, Witzke believes that pro-immigrant policies have been put in place by “the left” to “import votes.” On December 29, 2019, Witzke criticized Governor Kim Reynolds (R-IA) for choosing to resettle refugees. “You’re selling out your own people…And for what?” she wrote.

On December 17th, she plugged the anti-immigrant book Open Borders, Inc.: Who’s Funding America’s Destruction by far-right author Michelle Malkin. Malkin has a lengthy track record of demonizing immigrants, refugees, and Muslims, and is an unabashed supporter of Nick Fuentes and the groypers.

On January 11th, 2019, Witzke retweeted the pro-groyper account @GroypSC. The account often tweets racist and antisemitic content.

She currently follows Faith Goldy, Vincent Foxx, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, antisemite E. Michael Jones, Peter Brimelow, Nick Fuentes, Red Ice TV, Bronze Age Pervert, Scott Greer, and an account that re-posts content from the white nationalist website American Renaissance.

James Tulp is a far-right talk radio host running in Mississippi’s 3rd congressional district. Like Joshua Foxworth, Tulp made an appearance on white nationalist Vincent Foxx’s YouTube show where he touted his anti-immigrant bona fides. Tulp said he was inspired to run by recent ICE raids in Mississippi and the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act.

He vowed to put an end to so-called “chain migration,” which he said is bringing in “unskilled” and “illiterate” immigrants from “Third World countries.” And he demanded to know where the right-wing equivalent of the Democrats’ “Green New Deal” was. “Where’s our ‘Green New Deal’? Where’s our end to birthright citizenship plan?” he asked.

Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, but Tulp wants to “introduce legislation” to end it. He also stated on Twitter that he wants to “declare English our national language to foster national cohesion and identity,” and vowed he would “sign on as cosponsor to English Language Unity Act day 1!” He tagged the organization ProEnglish in a follow-up tweet.

ProEnglish, an anti-immigrant hate group founded by the late white nationalist John Tanton, responded by promoting Tulp’s campaign in a short bulletin. “Mississippi congressional candidate James Tulp is running for office in Mississippi District 3, and he has posted his support for official English on his campaign website,” it read.

Tulp has demonized immigrants as “[p]easants from the third world” who will “always work for less than American citizens.” And he’s promoted the “great replacement” theory, writing that, “None of the debates we’re having on guns, abortion, free speech, or capitalism will matter if the population is replaced with third-worlders who will vote Dem 80% of the time.”

On December 31st, 2019, he declared his support for militarizing the southern border. “Raise your hand if you want to move our troops from the Middle East to the Southern Border,” he tweeted.

Tulp also wants to crack down on abortion and pornography — which Fuentes, Fox, and their supporters militantly oppose.

After the Supreme Court left in place a Kentucky law mandating invasive transvaginal ultrasounds prior to an abortion, Tulp crowed that it was “Great news!” On December 6th, 2019, he tweeted, “I don’t recall ever coming across the right to murder babies [in the Constitution].” Three days later he pledged to request that the DOJ “enforce obscenity laws to stop the explosion of pornography.”

While Tulp has said advocating for restrictionist policies on legal immigration “does not make you a ‘white nationalist’ or ‘holocaust denier,'” he promotes people who fit into those categories. For example, Tulp said Vincent Foxx “is doing a great job highlighting America First candidates across the country.”

He also follows a slew of white nationalist and far-right accounts, including VDARE, Vincent Foxx, ProEnglish, Jaden McNeil, Charles Murray, Stefan Molyneux, Nick Fuentes, the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA, J. Owen Shroyer, Mark Dice, Lauren Southern, The Columbia Bugle, Mike Cernovich, and Faith Goldy.

Jarome Bell is a self-described 27-year Navy veteran who is running for Virginia’s 2nd congressional district. Bell’s anti-immigrant “America First” platform, and apparent desire to pit African-Americans against immigrants, has earned Bell the support of white nationalists, including Vincent Foxx.

Foxx placed Bell on a list of candidates to support in 2020, alongside Joshua Foxworth, Kris Kobach, Steve King, Jeff Sessions, James Tulp, and Peter D’Abrosca.

On December 21st, 2019, Bell tweeted that “Blacks are being replaced by Illegal Aliens from Lat. America & Asia.”

On the 31st he tweeted that “American women” were “replaced in the work force by cheap immigrant labor from south of the border and Asia.” That same day he claimed “Democrats want to flood America with non-English speaking illegals whose educations and whose place in America are both paid for by U.S. workers.”

Like the other “America First” candidates, Bell not only promotes the claim that U.S. citizens are being “replaced” by immigrants, he has proposed a moratorium on all immigration. As he wrote in a December 29th tweet, “I advocate for a COMPLETE HALT of ALL immigration not to be less than a 5-10 year period.”

Bell has also promoted overt racists.

When Ashley Rae Goldenberg, a far-right Twitter user, went on a tirade about interracial relationships, Bell retweeted her. Goldenberg is a supporter of the groyper movement, and has appeared at events and on shows favorable to white nationalists, such as Ethan Ralph’s #Killstream.

Bell retweeted white nationalist Scott Greer, a former deputy editor of The Daily Caller who also wrote for Richard Spencer’s Radix Journal, and remarked, “Globalists would have is all living in favelas if it meant cheaper labor costs.”

On December 17th, Twitter user @HarvestSkies tweeted that “Non-white voters vote overwhelmingly for left wing candidates” and that “unless all immigration … is stopped, America will become permanently blue.” They included a series of electoral maps purporting to show that if only white men voted almost every state would be red.

Bell retweeted this message uncritically, and added, “Not only changing demographics. Our legislators, both federal and state, put non-Americans first every day, way ahead of veterans and the poor.”

@HarvestSkies has complained about white people being called “racist” for “literally not wanting your race to go extinct and not wanting your nations to be flooded with people who don’t share your values or culture.” On another occasion they said that white people should work to “preserve your race and culture” and oppose “degeneracy.”

In a January 15th video for VDARE TV, Faith Goldy — who was fired by Rebel Media for appearing on a Neo-Nazi podcast and who recited the white supremacist 14 Words — declared that Americans must “make [immigration] moratoriums great again.” She also promoted Jarome Bell’s 2020 campaign.

Bell retweeted a clip of the video and told his followers to “Help me and @FaithGoldy make #ImmigrationMoratorium a household phrase in 2020!”

On Twitter Bell follows Ethan Ralph, Vincent Foxx, Michelle Malkin, Mike Cernovich, The Columbia Bugle, Nick Fuentes, and Faith Goldy.