“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘[n-word], [n-word], [n-word].’ By 1968, you can’t say ‘[n-word]’—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff… Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites…”
— Lee Atwater, Reagan advisor, 1981 (Interview published in The Nation, 2005)
🗓️ Act I: From the Reich to the Right — 1950–1952
You’d think the one thing we could all agree on is that Nazis are bad. Like, genocide bad. Like, tried-to-take-over-the-world bad. But America, with its shiny new Cold War goggles, took one look at those swastika-stamped war criminals and said, “But can they help us fight communism?”
In 1950, provisions in the U.S. immigration system that barred known Nazi collaborators from entering the country were quietly loosened. The key shift? Members of the Baltic Waffen-SS—yes, actual units under Heinrich Himmler’s command—were ruled not hostile to the United States and thus eligible for immigration.
This wasn’t some obscure footnote. It was the beginning of an organized effort, sponsored in part by American intelligence agencies and later embraced by the Republican Party, to use ex-Nazis and Eastern European fascists as ideological shock troops in the war against socialism. And boy, did they deliver.
By 1952, Republican campaigns—particularly under Senator Joseph McCarthy—were all-in on red-baiting, turning the political landscape into a paranoid fever dream. The rhetoric? Straight out of a fascist playbook. Infiltration, subversion, loyalty tests, purges… all hallmarks of authoritarianism.
📎 [Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God]
🗓️ 1969: Meet Laszlo Pasztor — The Nazi Who Helped Nixon “Reach Out”
Fast forward to the late 1960s. Richard Nixon, angling for the White House and eager to appeal to “ethnic voters,” tapped a Hungarian émigré named Laszlo Pasztor to help build the GOP’s National Republican Heritage Groups Council—an umbrella organization meant to court Eastern European immigrant communities.
One small problem: Pasztor was a literal fascist. He had served as a member of Hungary’s Arrow Cross Party, a Nazi puppet regime that enthusiastically deported Jews to Auschwitz and executed thousands more in the streets of Budapest.
Pasztor didn’t hide this. He boasted of his past and immediately filled the Council with fellow Nazi collaborators from Ukraine, Romania, the Baltics, and elsewhere. The GOP didn’t blink.
📎 [Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party]
📎 [Washington Post: “Nazi Collaborators in GOP Ethnic Outreach,” 1986]
🗓️ 1971: Jack Anderson Says, “Hey, These Guys Are Nazis,” and America Shrugs
Enter journalist Jack Anderson, a muckraker of the old-school variety. In 1971, he published a series of bombshell articles exposing the pro-Nazi ties of several of Nixon’s ethnic outreach advisors, including Pasztor and Ivan Dochev, a member of the Bulgarian National Front—which, you guessed it, also collaborated with the Nazis.
The Washington Post backed up the reporting. The public was informed.
And the GOP? It did absolutely nothing. The Council remained active well into the Reagan years, waving Old Glory while half its members kept Third Reich memorabilia in their dens.
🗓️ 1981: Reagan’s Whisper Campaign Goes Full Bullhorn
This is the year GOP strategist Lee Atwater blew the lid off the Southern Strategy in a now-infamous interview later published by The Nation. In case you’ve been living under a rock—or are a Fox News anchor—here’s what he said:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘n-word, n-word, n-word.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n-word’—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights… Blacks get hurt worse than whites…”
Translation: If you can’t lynch them, legislate them into poverty.
This wasn’t a fringe strategy. It was central to Reagan’s rise and the GOP’s electoral dominance throughout the 1980s. And it was working.
🗓️ 1985: Reagan Says “Danke” at a Waffen-SS Cemetery
In one of the most bizarre and galling moments of postwar American politics, Ronald Reagan laid a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery in Germany. Buried there? Forty-nine members of the Waffen-SS. He called them “victims of Nazism.”
Even Elie Wiesel begged him not to go.
“That place is not your place, Mr. President. Your place is with the victims.” — Elie Wiesel
And if that wasn’t insulting enough…
🗓️ Later That Day in 1985: A Standing Ovation from the Nazi-Linked GOP Council
After returning from Bitburg, Reagan spoke at—wait for it—the annual convention of the National Republican Heritage Groups Council, the same org packed with documented Nazi collaborators.
He got a standing ovation.
Russ Bellant was there. He wrote about it. Multiple witnesses confirmed the presence of individuals linked to fascist parties from WWII.
🗓️ 1989–1992: David Duke Is the GOP, Just with a Hood Off
When David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and Holocaust denier, ran for office in Louisiana, he did so as a Republican. And he won.
In 1991 (not 1992, as some slides say), he ran for governor and got 60% of the white vote. The GOP didn’t formally endorse him, but they adopted his platform so completely it barely mattered.
Duke himself said:
“I’ve already won. The GOP has taken my issues.”
🗓️ 1990: Ralph Forbes — Nazi Party Leader, GOP Candidate
You can’t make this up. Ralph Forbes, a former leader in the American Nazi Party, ran in the GOP primary for Arkansas’s 2nd congressional district—and got 46% of the vote.
He said his politics were based on “Biblical values” and was Duke’s 1988 campaign manager.
🗓️ “The Rest is History” — aka, The Modern GOP Dumpster Fire
The final slide in this timeline is a montage of modern GOP figures continuing the tradition of crypto-fascist dog-whistling and sometimes just straight-up saluting.
Here’s just a sampler:
Arthur Jones, a literal Nazi, won a Republican primary in Illinois in 2018.📎 CNN on Jones
Steve Scalise said he was “David Duke without the baggage.”📎 Washington Post fact-check
Ann Coulter defended Nazis on Twitter. More than once.📎 Newsweek: Coulter defends Nazi sympathizers
Laura Ingraham caught doing Nazi salutes at CPAC.📎 The Independent: Ingraham salutes
Donald Trump reportedly praised Hitler to his chief of staff.📎 The Guardian: Trump praised Hitler
Final Thought: This Isn’t a Bug — It’s a Feature
The Republican Party didn’t accidentally become the preferred political home of white nationalists, fascist apologists, and ex-Nazi collaborators. It built that tent. Brick by brick. Decade after decade.
From Operation Paperclip’s diplomatic cousins to the Southern Strategy to CPAC’s rune-shaped stages, this wasn’t a series of random unfortunate coincidences. It was a strategy. A playbook. A recruitment drive for the worst people history has to offer, wrapped in flags and crosses and tax cuts.
And it’s long past time we called it what it is.
End of transmission. Stay angry.