Paul Gosar’s unapologetic bigotry is on full display
A lot is changing in Arizona. Women have been put in their apparent place, thanks to a territorial-era abortion law that dictates what we can – or more, specifically, can’t – do with our bodies.
Public education is on the outs, as our state’s leaders celebrate the failure of a petition drive that would have allowed voters to decide whether public money should go to offset a portion of the private school tuition tab of wellto-do Arizona families.
And we could well be on the cusp of electing a slate of statewide candidates who sneer at democracy – a farright crowd that will do whatever it takes, once they win power, to maintain their grip on our beloved state. Yep, a lot is changing.
Isn’t it reassuring, then, to know that there are still some things that never change?
Take Rep. Paul Gosar.
Next to state Sen. Wendy Rogers, Gosar is perhaps Arizona’s most unapologetic bigot, a congressman who constantly defends the indefensible. (And will be reelected in a landslide.)
On Friday, he was at it again, eloquent in his defense of Nick Fuentes, a guy who believes that America needs to protect its “white demographic core” and that the Holocaust was invented to make white people feel bad.
One who believes the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was “awesome.”
The Department of Justice and the Anti-Defamation League call Fuentes a white supremacist.
Gosar calls him a friend.
The congressman took to Twitter to tout a movie trailer for “The Most Canceled Man in America,” a documentary that frames Fuentes as a target of the government after his involvement in the Jan. 6 riot and earlier election protests.
“The persecution against Christians and Conservatives by the Biden Regime brings great dishonor to our country,” Gosar wrote, in a since-deleted tweet promoting the movie. “If Americans do not have the freedom to dissent, then they have no freedom at all.”
Oh pooh, Rep. Gosar.
Americans certainly have the freedom to dissent. We do it constantly, incessantly, obsessively. We just don’t have the freedom to overturn democracy or the freedom to surround police officers and beat them senseless with flagpoles and whatever else is at hand.
It’s difficult to see Fuentes as Gosar does, as a “young conservative Christian.”
Fuentes burst onto the scene a few years ago and has become one of the nation’s most prominent white nationalist, sexist, all-around lowlifes.
He’s a Holocaust denier who
preaches that the whole mass genocide thing was cooked up to make white people feel guilty. He supports segregation and thought the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. – the one where a counterprotester was run down and killed – was “incredible.”
He speaks in glowing terms about the Jan. 6 insurrection — the one designed to overturn the 2020 election results in Arizona and elsewhere. The one at which he urged his supporters “not leave this Capitol until Donald Trump is inaugurated president.”
“While I was there in D.C., outside of the building, and I saw hundreds of thousands of patriots surrounding the U.S. Capitol building and I saw the police retreating ... I said to myself: ‘This is awesome,’ ” Fuentes said last year at his America First Political Action Committee conference.
He waxes on about downtrodden white people and a worldwide plot to get rid of us, both here and abroad.
“White people founded this country,” Fuentes told his cheering supporters, called groypers, last year. “This country wouldn’t exist without white people, and white people are done being bullied.”
Not long ago, Fuentes gave this sage advice to one his followers who called his America First livestream show to ask how he should “punish” his wife for “getting out of line:”
“Why don’t you give her a vicious and forceful backhanded slap with your knuckles right across her face – disrespectfully – and make it hurt?” Fuentes replied, while pantomiming a punch.
Fuentes readily admits his goal is to grow his brand of white nationalism and antisemitism, moving it into the American mainstream as if it is something normal, as if it is something acceptable.
“My job, and the job of the groypers and America First, is to keep pushing further,” he said, in a May 2021 episode
of his livestream show. “We – because nobody else will – have to push the envelope. And we’re gonna get called names. We’re gonna get called racist, sexist, antisemitic, bigoted, whatever ... and when the party is where we are two years later, we’re not gonna get the credit for the ideas that become popular ... But that’s OK. That’s our job. We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party, and if we didn’t exist, the Republican Party would be falling backwards all the time, constantly falling backwards, receding into the center and the left.”
For nearly two years, Gosar has been helping Fuentes is in his quest.
“There is some hope, maybe, for America First in Congress,” Fuentes said last year. “And that is thanks to – almost exclusively – to Representative Paul Gosar.”
Gosar, at least, is open in his hardright views.
Indeed, he distinguished himself last year as the keynote speaker at Fuentes’ white nationalist conference, waxing on about immigration and Donald Trump’s loss and social media censorship.
“This,” he told the young crowd, “is the era of America First.”
This year, Gosar again spoke to the group. He also has expressed outrage the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection would dare to probe the level of Fuentes’ involvement in trying to overthrow the 2020 election.
“The phony January 6th Committee’s partisan witch-hunt continues as they have now set their sights on young conservative Christians like Nick Fuentes,” Gosar wrote, earlier this year on Gab, a social media site for the far right.
Now, Gosar’s Twitter touting a documentary about poor, picked-upon Fuentes, who wants to take America one giant goosestep to the far, far right.
Give the congressman credit.
Here in a state that is witnessing the demise of women’s rights, public education and democracy?
At least, Gosar is open about the direction in which he wants us to go.