I’m not a fan of hot takes, but this time I’m putting my foot down. Nazis are bad.

But apparently some kids missed the public service announcements about it. Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise, the House GOP Whip and third-highest ranking member of the House GOP leadership tried to “groove” on Nazism in 2002, appearing at a convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), which was founded by Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and neo-Nazi David Duke.

Thankfully, now that his appearance has been unearthed, the Scalise spin machine is on it: “Throughout his career in public service, Mr Scalise has spoken to hundreds of different groups with a broad range of viewpoints,” said Scalise spokesperson Moira Bagley. Ahh, yes, and there’s the expected out – he was there, but he only exhaled.

She went on: “In every case, he was building support for his policies, not the other way around.”

Ordinarily, this would sound like a weaselly excuse – ie “The candidate has many speaking appearances on his schedule” – and, for the most part, that’s exactly what Bagley seems to be selling. But she really has no idea what a solid excuse it is this time. Just this once, it doesn’t have to be hot air.

After all, it’s probably not hard to turn a neo-Nazi into a potential Republican voter by telling him that a corporatized, authoritarian, nationalistic, militaristic party is the only thing standing between him and effete, war-losing, left-wing elites who are trying to destroy the homeland via a fifth-column of non-native minorities, college professors, “homosexuals” and other cultural degenerates.

Hell, I’m not even mad about Scalise. I’m just disappointed.

First of all, these people didn’t even have the decency to be an original source of Nazism. They’re just neo-Nazis, which is like hipster Eurotrash for racial violence. (Christ, doesn’t America make anything anymore?) Sure, the neo-Nazis add a few American and novel elements to original Nazism, but they all sound like extra instruments in a cover song.

David Duke peddled all-new Holocaust denial – what with the Holocaust having already happened when he was running for office, unlike in the 1930s when American Nazism was a new scene. There’s the reverence for the constitution in the American strain of neo-Nazism, which you’d expect. And they want to abolish the IRS, a position with which Scalise probably agrees irrespective of whether the agency might also be used as an instrument of Jew/United Nations/Trilateral Commission control. But as for the rest of neo-Nazism’s ideology, it’s just stale: the fifth-column thing, the hatred of unions (unless replaced by ones directed by the “right sort” of people), the love of full employment for male citizens and women working only in the home, the hatred for “homosexuals”. Maybe that was a new trip 80 years ago, but you’d think they could bring something new to the conservatives’ marketplace of ideas already.

Second of all, it’s pretty hard to miss the cultural significance of David Duke, who confirmed that two of his infamous “longtime associates” personally invited Scalise. There weren’t a lot of out-and-proud KKK Grand Wizards who ran for governor of Louisiana, president of the United States and US Senator (twice!) in the 1990s. Jokes about him abounded on late night comedy shows well into the following decade – Letterman, Leno and even on Saturday Night Live. And Scalise was a Republican in Louisiana. Duke’s significance wasn’t even lost on the basketball courts at my southern high school – hardly the most political of places – where a redneck spotted out of his usual camouflage pants and in khakis on class picture day might get called “David Duke”.

Further, as the Washington Post reports, the EURO convention drew both local and national press attention. Blogger Lamar White Jr, who broke the story, notes that the convention took place over two days – meaning that Scalise wasn’t punching in and out of some obscure 90-minute lunch event – and featured promotional materials citing Duke. So Scalise’s spokesperson’s statement that he wasn’t totally aware of the provenance of the event at which he was speaking unfortunately leaves him with the dilemma of appearing either to be a bad liar or a total incompetent.

Scalise even got castigated for such idiocy by no less than Erick Erickson, whose words and deeds usually sound like he’s auditioning for a role in a WWII movie as the piggy Bavarian Gauleiter pinching at dirndls in between faking a WWI injury to keep from getting sent to the front.

Worst of all, Scalise screwed up his neo-retro timing. I just have zero respect for a man hanging out with neo-Nazi groups in 2002 when he should have been focused on saving rock, a new garage renaissance and the post-punk dialogue. If he knew what he was doing, he would have waited – at least until neo-Volkischer and roots-rhetoric came back in.

That is, he should’ve waited to rub shoulders with neo-Nazis at least until 2008 because, in the right atmosphere, the neo-Nazi vibe is downright presidential. For instance, here’s a picture of Ron Paul with Don Black, the founder of America’s #1 White Supremacy website, Stormfront, in 2007. (Black co-founded the site with the ex-wife of David Duke. Gosh, it’s nice at parties when everyone already knows each other.) Paul refused to divest himself of funds raised through Stormfront or their activist support, and they joined in on his money bombs well into 2008. And none of it became buzzworthy or even an ear worm with any of his constituencies: not when Jamie Kirchick summarized Paul’s eliminationist newsletters and included a link to archived scans of them in 2008; not when the Washington Post reported that Paul was deeply involved in production and proofing of his newsletters to create a paleo-libertarian movement; hell, not even when one of his Michigan campaign coordinators turned out to be a neo-Nazi.

None of that would matter in 2014, of course, except that Ron Paul gifted his entire fundraising and grassroots apparatus to his son Rand (including Stormfront moneybombs), who hopes to be elected president in 2016. Rand even added some of his own neoconfederate flavor, with a neoconfederate aide and a spokesperson who publicly posted an image of a lynching. Besides, what’s passing a legacy between father and son? That’s not hate; that’s heritage.

Poor Steve Scalise, it seems, just jumped the gun. People weren’t ready for his sound yet, man. It took years of prep work to make this sort of Übermensch thing socially acceptable, let alone hot – lots of “legalize it!” and “you are economic supermen!” appeals to the balled-and-entitled toddler-fists of the sociopathic libertechian madding crowd to really get mechanized mass-death neo-fascism taken mainstream.

The sad thing is that Scalise diagnosed the need to stylize this toxically reactionary substance back in 1999, three years before going before David Duke’s EURO convention:

The voters in this district are smart enough to realize that they need to get behind someone who not only believes in the issues they care about, but also can get elected. [David] Duke has proven that he can’t get elected, and that’s the first and most important thing.

Scalise’s problem today is that, in 1999 and 2002, the solution to the problem of supporting the same things as David Duke without being him was simply “not being David Duke”. Back then, Duke’s performance was a good roots riff with the wrong kind of front man, and someone needed to deliver the crowd better – but it was too early to go mainstream, even among conservatives. Now, the crowd has started to catch up, but someone like Scalise will be left out.

Scalise’s act was too raw, too amateurish, and his performance lacked enough LEDs or bright white lights – or Web2.o leverage – to ever really cross over to people who love the sound and don’t care too much to look at the roots of it. There are bigger and better acts than Steve Scalise now, who can take this in-everything-but-name act national. Poor man, the only fans left will be the purists. The good news for him, though, is that real fans of his sound are always purists.

