SO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IS THAT DeSANTIS AND HOROWITZ ARE TYPICAL CONSERVATIVE WHITE AMERICANS

In a better country, this would matter on Election Day. It won't.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), a gubernatorial nominee who recently was accused of using racially tinged language, spoke four times at conferences organized by a conservative activist who has said that African Americans owe their freedom to white people and that the country’s “only serious race war” is against whites.

DeSantis, elected to represent north-central Florida in 2012, appeared at the David Horowitz Freedom Center conferences in Palm Beach, Fla., and Charleston, S.C., in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017, said Michael Finch, president of the organization.

... Horowitz has a record of inflammatory comments on social media....

[A] recent Horowitz tweet said: “Black Africans enslaved black Africans. America freed them sacrificing 350k mainly white Union lives. American blacks are richer, more privileged, freer than blacks anywhere in the world, including all black run countries.”

In yet another, he shared a Fox News story about a Dallas man arrested after reportedly traveling to Washington to kill “all white police” at the White House. “Meanwhile, the country’s only serious race war — against whites — continues,” Horowitz wrote.

Horowitz believes that there's a race war against whites in America? How different is this from what most white Americans believe?

This is from 2017:

A majority of whites say discrimination against them exists in America today, according to a poll released Tuesday from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health....

More than half of whites — 55 percent — surveyed say that, generally speaking, they believe there is discrimination against white people in America today....

Notable, however, is that while a majority of whites in the poll say discrimination against them exists, a much smaller percentage say that they have actually experienced it.

Also:

A Public Religion Research Institute poll conducted in May 2017 found that “[m]ore than half (52 percent) of white working-class Americans believe discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” Among working-class Americans aged 65 and older, nearly 6 in 10 held that view.

And:

In September 2016, Quinnipiac University [asked] respondents how concerned the were about “so-called ‘reverse racism’, or discrimination against white people” impacting their lives.

About 4 in 10 Americans said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about that happening — including almost two-thirds of Trump voters.

In those surveys, whites and conservatives acknowledged that non-whites face discrimination. But there's this, from 2011:

Whites believe that they have replaced blacks as the primary victims of racial discrimination in contemporary America, according to a new study from researchers at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School....

Both whites and blacks agree that anti-black racism has decreased over the last 60 years, according to the study. However, whites believe that anti-white racism has increased and is now a bigger problem than anti-black racism.

The paper cited is "Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing" by Samuel Sommers and Michael I. Norton (Perspectives on Psychological Science, May 2011).

And this, from 2013:

A POLL RELEASED Wednesday by Rasmussen found African-Americans are more likely to be viewed as racist than whites.

Thirty-seven percent of poll respondents said "most black Americans" are racist, compared to just 15 percent who said most whites are racist and 18 percent who said most Hispanics are racist.

In this poll, right-wingers tip the balance:

Among conservative Americans, 49% consider most blacks racist, and only 12% see most whites that way.

It's inaccurate to call David Horowitz an extremist because his beliefs aren't extreme in America -- they're slightly to the right of what's believed by most white Americans and conservatives (but I repeat myself). That's why, as the DeSantis story notes, "Guest speakers at [Horowitz] conferences over the past five years have included Republican members of Congress, former governors Rick Perry of Texas and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, [and] young conservative activists James O’Keefe and Ben Shapiro" -- as well as "right-wing European politicians Nigel Farage and Geert Wilders."

If you're looking for a bright line between mainstream conservatism -- or even mainstream American whiteness -- and Farage/Wilders-style white nationalism, you'll look in vain, because there isn't one, and it disappeared long before Donald Trump decided to run for office.