Intelligence Dispatch: CPAC & AFPAC
Intelligence Dispatch: CPAC & AFPAC
The various categories of the U.S. Right were on display at a pair of conferences in Florida, and the lines continued to blur between mainstream Republicans and White Nationalists.
Highlights of the reporting and analysis from CPAC and AFPAC:
“…at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of the right wing of American politics, the news convulsing the world seemed oddly distant. Instead, the focus was on cultural grievances, former President Donald J. Trump and the widespread sense of victimization that have replaced traditional conservative issues.” [Reid Epstein and Astead Herndon, The New York Times]
“The speakers at CPAC, the annual megaconference of conservatives, have not gone full Tucker Carlson. They’re not expressing sympathy for Putin or celebrating his lust for conquest. But the onset of the most aggressive test of the West since the end of the Cold War—something that, under previous incarnations of the conservative movement, would have been the issue around which CPAC was organized—has been a back burner issue.” [Jim Newell, Slate]
“There were a few isolated calls for moderation, as when Farage gingerly suggested that Republicans stop focusing on the "negative, backward-looking message" of a stolen election, or when COVID conspiracy theorist Alex Berenson pleaded with CPAC attendees to "Stop trying to ban books. … If you stand for free speech, you have to stand for free speech no matter if you don't like what's being said." But those arguments were drowned out by declarations, delivered like a loyalty oath, that the election was rigged; that "radical librarians" are "grooming" children; and that the most vicious threat Americans face, once again, is right next door.” [Kathryn Joyce, Salon]
“It wasn’t the first such gathering—AFPAC has a history of, like it did here, throwing its own events in conjunction with the longstanding Conservative Political Action Conference. Nor did it host the most extreme sentiments I’ve seen in my reporting on the far-right. But in my experience, the event featured unprecedentedly brazen and openly racist rhetoric given the size of the platform and its proximity to actual GOP officials. Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and with the event happening late on Friday night, Fuentes’s gathering flew somewhat under the radar, despite the potential and dark direction it augurs for right politics in the U.S.—one even more rife with racist thought and rhetoric.” [Ali Breland, Mother Jones]
“Greene’s appearance at AFPAC—while not all that surprising considering her history or racist, Islamophobic, and antisemitic comments—highlights the white nationalism creep into the Republican Party and CPAC’s willingness to participate. Greene wasn’t the only one in attendance at both conferences. Joe Arpaio, the far-right former Arizona sheriff who was first known nationally for jailing people in tents in triple-digit summer heat and using them on chain gangs, spoke at the white nationalist conference and hawked his new book at CPAC the following day. Followers of Fuentes were spotted at CPAC, wearing America First hats as an ode to their ideology.” [Kristen Doerer, Right Wing Watch]
“…what happens at CPAC matters. There was a time when CPAC was a sideshow, a place for the conservative fringe to gather and rant about how the Republican Party was taking them for granted. Reporters would attend on extremist safaris, right-wing pundits would swing by for autographs and adultion, and then — once the conference was over — the actual power centers of the party would go back to business as usual. But CPAC isn’t fringe anymore; it’s the party base. That’s not because it has gotten more moderate. It’s because the party has embraced the extreme.” [Steven Monacelli, Rolling Stone]
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Must Reads
Tess Owen reports that “far-right personalities have declared Russia a beacon of anti-wokeness and Putin a strong ethnonationalist. In their minds, Ukraine is just a corrupt pawn in a vast “globalist” conspiracy.” [Vice]
Alan Feuer reports that when the first trial resulting from January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol beings “it will set the stage for prosecutors to do more than merely lay out the details of how the defendant, Guy Wesley Reffitt, sought to storm the building with a pistol at his hip.” [The New York Times]
Steven Monacelli writes that “it’s tough for anyone at CPAC to engage in any sort of moderation. Denying white nationalists and their allies access to your platform sounds a lot like “cancel culture” to a movement up in arms over Twitter and Facebook doing even the most limited of content curation.” [Rolling Stone]
Thomas Lecaque reports that leak of GiveSendGo donor data unsurprisingly revealed right-wing financial support to the so-called “freedom convoy,” however, what is “surprising are the wide range of diverse, strange, and dangerous ideological—and theological—ideas about the “convoy” in the donor comments from the GiveSendGo leak.” [Religion Dispatches]
Olivia Little writes that Leigh Dundas, a lawyer and anti-vaccination activists, “is now in the media spotlight for her role in helping to organize disruptive trucker convoys at the U.S.-Canada border – but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Dundas is also closely tied to a number of far-right extremist groups and conspiratorial movements, including QAnon.” [MMFA]
Events on the Right
Operation Save America, the racial anti-abortion group, is organizing a rally at the South Carolina State House. “Hear from state legislators who are bringing forward a bill to completely end abortion immediately in South Carolina as well as Pastors and ministry leaders from around the country, including OSA National Director Jason Storms.” The rally is scheduled for March 5 at 11:00am (EST).
Watchmen on the Wall, a program of the right-wing Christian fundamentalist advocacy organization Family Research Council (FRC), is hosting a Pastors Briefing in North Carolina which will take place at Friendly Avenue Baptist Church in Greensboro, North Carolina on March 18.
Featured Speakers Include: North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson; Tony Perkins (President of FRC); Lt. Gen. William Boykin (Executive Vice President of FRC); and Chad Connelly (Former Republican Congressman)
The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing conservative think tank, is hosting an online and in-person summit that claims that “gender ideology has been working its way into America's public schools for years—in both the official curriculum and extracurricular activities.” The event will be held on March 7 at 11:00am (EST).
Featured Speakers Include: Jay Richards (Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation); January Littlejohn (Right-wing activists and among the center figures supporting Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation); Vernadette Broyles (President of the Child & Parental Rights Campaign — and organization with close ties to the anti-LGBTQ legal and lobbying firm Alliance Defending Freedom); and Nicole Solas (Senior Fellow at the right-wing Independent Women’s Forum)