THE MAINSTREAMING OF NICK FUENTES IS STANDARD-ISSUE GOP NICHE MARKETING

Rolling Stone reports:

From the story (free to read here):

Just a few weeks ago, the Republican Party was ripping itself apart as factions moved to either distance themselves from Nick Fuentes, the 27-year-old white nationalist streamer, or to loudly announce they would never bow to the woke mob demanding they disavow the openly racist, proudly misogynist, Holocaust-denying Hitler fanboy.

The outrage cycle is apparently over now, and Fuentes has come out on top: Instead of being sidelined by the uproar that erupted after his appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show in October, Fuentes is now being courted by some of conservative media’s biggest names. Last week he appeared on Alex Jones’ Infowars and Steven Crowder’s podcast “Louder With Crowder.” On Monday he’s scheduled to sit down with Piers Morgan, for his YouTube show “Uncensored.” ...

There was a moment, a few weeks ago, when the GOP appeared poised to unite in a stand against him....

But a funny thing happened next: The leaders of the Republican Party shrugged the whole thing off. “You can’t tell him who to interview,” Trump finally said of Carlson in November, after weeks of silence on the subject. “If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes — I don’t know much about him — but if he wants to do it, get the word out. Let him, you know, people have to decide.”

It's odd that this appears the same day that the front page of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post looks like this:

(Story here.)

This seems ... inconsistent, but I think it's just the Republican Party doing what it normally does: marketing several different messages to niche audiences.

Back in February -- when some Republicans were praising the sex criminal/online influencer Andrew Tate while others were denouncing him -- I recalled an earlier era of GOP niche marketing:

Remember when some Republicans couldn't stop talking about their certainty that Barack Obama had a fake birth certificate and was actually born in Kenya? That was birtherism. Many Republicans, including Donald Trump, eagerly adopted it in 2011 and 2012. Other Republicans, including 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, rejected it. And then there were GOP responses that could be sorted into other categories, as Adam Serwer noted at the time:

Ironic Post-birtherism: Making humorous or ironic references to the idea that the president was not born in the United States as an attempt to signal solidarity with or otherwise placate those who genuinely believe the president was not born in the United States. Examples: Tim Pawlenty, Rep. Raul Labrador.

Pseudo-birtherism: An umbrella term that encompasses all the various modes of belief that involve embracing fictional elements of the president's background, from the belief that he is a secret Muslim to the idea that he was raised in Kenya. Includes highbrow forms of birtherism like the "Kenyan anti-colonialism" thesis and theories that his name was legally changed to "Barry Soetero," as well as the idea that Obama's "real father" was one of the handful of random black celebrities you can name off the top of your head. Examples: Newt Gingrich, Andrew C. McCarthy.

This allowed voters to pick any response to birtherism that seemed correct to them, in the belief that that response represented the real Republican Party. Conspiracy-minded voters could embrace undiluted birtherism. Romney Republicans could tell themselves that the party rejected crackpottery. And people in the middle could tell themselves that Obama might not be lying about his place of birth, but he sure acts like a left-winger from the less developed world, doesn't he? Please note that all of the responses led to support for the Republican Party.

Later, there were the various niches surrounding the 2020 election:

Trump's 2020 election lie worked the same way. Some people believed crazy theories about fake ballots made from Chinese bamboo and electronic vote rigging by means of satellites directed from the U.S. embassy in Rome (or the Vatican). Others said that the baroque conspiracy theories were a bit much, but the Deep State sure did suppress that Hunter Biden story in 2020, wouldn't you say?

It all works this way:

Extreme, irrational, dangerous ideas are allowed to flourish on the right. "Mainstream" Republicans might reject these ideas, but they show up in communications channels that abut or overlap with "mainstream" GOP communications channels. The really extreme stuff leads gullible people to the GOP, while mainstream Republicans can reassure more sophisticated voters that the party isn't really like that. It's win-win for Republicans.

That's what's happening with Fuentes -- although, as I noted in February,

Inevitably, there's extremism creep. When COVID vaccines were first approved, then-president Trump boasted about them, and every governor in America, Republican as well as Democrat, embraced them -- yes, even Ron DeSantis. But the party became increasingly anti-vaccine, the way it became increasingly birtherist and conspiratorial about the 2020 election.

Extremism creep in this case means a party that becomes more and more anti-Semitic. That's probably inevitable. But the "official" party will continue to sell itself as the anti-anti-Semitic party even as it increasingly embraces anti-Semitism -- and the mixed message will reassure the normies (especially because the mainstream media will eagerly retransmit the mainstream party's reassurances). The GOP will never be portrayed in the press as a party that's gone completely to the Nazi side, just as it's still portrayed as a party that operates in the reality-based world on other topics. It won't be seen as a party of haters, cranks, and conspiratorialists, even when it obviously is precisely that.

In the future, the message the party will continue to send to voters worried about anti-Semitism is that the libs are the real Jew-haters, even if Jew-haters are beginning to dominate the GOP. And that will be the conventional wisdom.