Republicans don’t have a Nazi problem—they are the Nazi problem

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Peter Oberacker posted a black and white image to Facebook in 2015 of a man in a Nazi military uniform with a swastika badge and an eagle emblem. The caption read: “I debated on whether to post this picture, my Grandfather Ludwig Oberacker who gave his life for his country, I salute all who served.” The New York State Senator’s now-deleted post resurfaced recently as the Republican runs for Congress, calling into question the judgement of a person who would post such a thing. 

Nazi, white supremacist, white nationalist: Whichever term you prefer, it’s undeniable that this category of person is no longer a societal fringe, but an active presence in American society promoted and rewarded by one of the two main political parties. Republicans have embraced Nazi ideology from the White House to the Florida State House, and it’s difficult to track all of the recent instances of Nazism infiltrating mainstream politics. This is my attempt at capturing them.

In an exclusive story this week, journalist Christopher Mathias of Talking Points Memo (and a contributor to The Handbasket) details the history of Marshall Rawson, a Republican and expected winner of the Florida House District 10 election in November. Rawson’s affiliation with the League of the South, “a racist and antisemitic neo-Confederate group that advocates for the secession of southern states from the U.S.,” was already known; but Mathias made public for the first time that Rawson attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

“A photo obtained by TPM, taken at a different point during the violent demonstration, shows Rawson standing near James Alex Fields Jr., the neo-Nazi who a short time later drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring dozens of others,” Mathias reports.

Because of the highly-conservative demographics of the Northern Florida district, Mathias writes, “the prospect that an unrepentant white supremacist will attain elected office in one of the country’s most populous states with no pushback from the Republican Party.”

Just north in Georgia, a Nazi stench has followed Mike Collins, the Republican congressman who’s running against Democrat Jon Ossoff, the Jewish incumbent. As I was gathering examples for this piece, I’d remembered one situation related to Collins; but in my research, I was reminded that there were actually multiple alarming stories.

The first I’d recalled concerned Collins’ son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, and CNN’s revelation in July that he’s “a pro-White nationalist and social media influencer with a track record of sharing antisemitic material and Nazi imagery in comments across the internet.” And Scheer isn’t some random estranged family member. Per CNN, he appeared in photos on Collins’ campaign website, and the address on his voter registration is Collins’ home. 

Last September, Scheer shared an infographic on social media with the caption “My wife made a consolidated version of all of the proof jews control our government through finance.” This year he posted a now-deleted poll to his followers asking if he should make a video called “Why Gen-Z doesn’t hate Hitler.” And in a video he posted last November, Scheer said: “They don’t tell us the history about Germany before World War II. All we’re told is, ‘Germany bad, Hitler evil, don’t ask questions, Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust, here’s 50 movies every year about the Holocaust and why it’s so bad.’”

Perusing Scheer’s Instagram myself, I found this summer he replied to a follower’s comment by saying “The replacement of white people in our own countries is part of the globalist agenda.” 

In more recent days, The Washington Post reported that a former Collins staffer “shared images in June and July on his X account of a swastika and one that depicts himself in Ku Klux Klan robes.” 

Preston Parra, 24, was an intern for Collins and then later worked for him as a contractor for his political action committee. While a student at University of West Georgia, Parra served as the President of the school’s Turning Point USA chapter, the organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk. He also ran for office in the Georgia State House in 2022, inspired by his grandfather Rick Jeffares who previously served there and for whom Parra was a page. (Parra was disqualified from his primary.)

Per the Post story, Parra used Grok—X’s AI feature—to create the June image of himself in a klan robe; according to him, it was supposed to be “satirical,” but it’s unclear what the joke was supposed to be. In July, he posted an image of a swastika.

According to Legistorm, Parra also worked as the Political Director on Congressman Brian Jack's campaign from April to November 2024. I reached out to the Georgia Republican’s office to confirm Parra’s employment and to see if the Congressman had any comment about his former employee’s posts but have not heard back. Jack’s current campaign website boasts on the homepage: “America First. Trump endorsed.”

The Ossoff campaign has been all over Collins’ white supremacist ties. Per a campaign statement on September 2nd following the Post’s reporting on Parra, Ossoff “demanded that Collins release every email, every text message, every Signal message, and every other communication between Collins’ office and notorious white supremacists,” adding, “Collins’ office had previously briefed Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer, some of the most notorious white supremacists in America who attended the Unite the Right hate rally in Charlottesville, on its efforts to free a Holocaust denier from jail.”

Then there’s Peter Oberacker, the current New York State Senator who’s the Republican candidate for Congress in the state’s 19th district. Oberacker first entered Nazi-related waters when Bobby Walker—a staffer for State Senator Minority Leader Rob Ortt state who was slated to be Oberacker’s campaign manager—was exposed as a member of a young Republicans group chat. In leaked messages, the chat’s leader wrote “I love Hitler.” (Walker, for his part, “called rape ‘epic’ and spoke flippantly about mishandling the New York State Young Republicans’ finances,” per Politico. He was not brought onto Oberacker’s campaign as a result.)

And as mentioned earlier, Oberacker’s Nazi woes didn’t end there: On Veterans’ Day in 2015, he posted a black and white photo of his grandfather Ludwig in a military uniform worn in Nazi Germany. He expressed his hesitancy in posting, but ultimately wanted to “salute all who served.” 

“Look, war sucks. Plain and simple, it really does,” Oberacker told Politico in August when they broke the story of his old post. “And to have my dad grow up without his father is just, you know, it really changed him.”

In an effort to prove he didn’t share his grandfather’s Nazi bonafides, he mentioned his previous participation in the state senate’s anti-semitism working group. “I have always condemned and fought against antisemitism,” he said, before changing the subject to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. 

What continues to be galling is how Republican candidates act surprised when a third party points out there’s a Nazi in their midst. And even mainstream media continues to treat it like a bug rather than a feature. 

The Washington Post reported last week that Stephen Woytek, a now-former staffer for Ohio Republican Senate candidate John Husted, used an image of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile photo. The story states: “Some Republicans have expressed concern that a small but growing faction of younger people in the party have interacted with or expressed fealty to white nationalist and racist ideologies that have long been considered fringe.” 

Woytek is reportedly part of a historical reenactment group “portraying the 1.SS Panzer Division” whose members dress up as Leibstandarte, “a Waffen-SS formation that began as Adolf Hitler’s bodyguards and later became an armored division.” Despite the obvious inferences, Woytek told the Post he rejects “the racist and antisemitic ideology the SS and Nazi Germany represented” and participates in the group because “I believe it is important to educate our younger generations.”

There is little to no holistic evidence that Republicans’ Nazi problem is tethered to age. Yes, it’s more likely that a younger person who’s terminally online will post imagery to be provocative, but they’re simply reflecting the values modeled by the Republicans who came before them and for whom they’re now working. Project 2025 and its mirroring of Nazi Germany values, like drastically reducing immigration and persecuting people who aren’t white, wasn’t brewed in a frat house; no, it was dreamed up by grown-ass adults who were forged in the hellfires of the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Presidents Bush and now Donald Trump administrations, and whose embers landed at the Heritage Foundation. 

As Peter Oberacker, Mike Collins, Jon Husted, and all Trump loyalists have demonstrated in the past decade, white supremacy is timeless. But to avoid a resurgence like the one we see now, these views must never be tolerated even in casual conversation. Doing a Sieg Heil may get you likes on X, but it should, under no uncertain terms, get you a job. 

A personal note: Thanks to everyone who shared words of support in response to the post about my miscarriage. I was overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness shown to me. I wasn’t able to respond to every email and comment, but I hope that each and every one of you who reached out knows you now have a piece of my heart. And tremendous gratitude to The Handbasket community at large for allowing me the time I needed to get my head together and find my way back to the work that I love. The grace you’ve shown me will not be forgotten, and I’m looking forward to getting back in the groove, delivering important stories about these truly deranged times. - M