Medhi Hasan Debates 20 Typical, Mainstream Republicans

The myth of the 'far right.'

There is no such thing as the ‘far right.’ At least not in the United States. When political ideologies are prefixed with ‘far,’ it implies they’re on the fringe, distant from the more moderate and common strains of their ideology. This is the case with the modern left. My socialist politics are unrepresented in the current government, the opposition, and the media class. While a handful of elected leftists are scattered across the country, they’re dwarfed by their center-left counterparts, who dominate the left-of-center political space. The moniker ‘far left’ fits, as it distinguishes capital-friendly Democrats like Tim Walz from avowed socialists such as Zohran Mamdani.¹ But there’s no far right. There is only the right, which, having gained trifecta control of a global superpower, is revealing its true, extreme nature. The myth of the American far right was made extraordinarily clear during

Mehdi Hasan

’s recent appearance on Jubilee’s Surrounded. As the title implies, the YouTube show features one prominent political voice, in this case, progressive journalist Hasan, facing off against twenty ideological opponents. For this video, the producers labelled the oppositional group ‘Far Right Conservatives.’ But as the participants made abundantly clear, there’s nothing ‘far off,’ ‘fringe,’ or ‘ultra’ about them. Their extreme views, including an explicit endorsement of fascism and Nazism, are well represented in the mainstream conservative movement, the Republican Party, and the American government.

If you watch the full video, you’ll hear what many people call ‘far right’ opinions. The twenty conservatives want to deport Brown immigrants, preserve America’s Whiteness, and celebrate Trump’s lawlessness. They believe there’s a White genocide, think Los Angeles was burned to the ground, and have convinced themselves pre-Trump America was a Marxist dictatorship dominated by the iron fist of Chairman Josef Biden. Their rhetoric and logic was typical reactionary thought: Threatened by perceived changes in the traditional race-class-gender hierarchy, they got scared and angry, compelling them to find politicians who confirm their delusions that they are the victim. With slightly more brainpower than a Labrador retriever, the reactionary mind justifies its illogical worldview with asinine and contradictory statements attempting to give a veneer of intellectualism to their childish hallucinations. Take this speakers’ befuddling claim as example. (Note: I’ve assigned pseudonyms to the conservative participants to protect their identities.)

Below, Karen Lou Who claims ‘immigrants can’t be American,’ admits her parents are immigrants, then struggled to provide a coherent definition of either term.

Evidently, Ms. Who hasn’t put a single ounce of effort into forming her racist xenophobia into a coherent political belief, leaving her sputtering like an idiot when faced with the most elementary pushback. For one reason or another, she is threatened by the Latinos immigrating to the U.S., and has rationalized her racism through a false claim that those entering America ‘right now’ are different from her naturalized parents. This claim, that modern emigres are somehow different from historic European immigrants, reappeared several times during the debate. Though ludicrous, its no more unreasonable than the other reactionary statements. Resting Snitch Face said L.A. had been burned down by protestors, despite being in L.A. to film the video. Others were more honest with themselves and disregarded the veneer of respectability. Roof A. Lin told Hasan, who is an American citizen, he should be deported, a demand later expanded to include one of his fellow conservatives.

Mr. Resting Snitch Face and Mr. Roof A. Lin, both GOP thought leaders.

But none were more honest than the Pillsbury Doughboy. After admitting he was an avowed fascist, Doughboy begged Hasan to call him a Nazi, refused to condemn the Holocaust, and outlined conservatism’s theory of free speech.

In case you missed it, he said:

‘The reason we have free speech now is because we want to be openly talking about our opinions so we can get the state that we want. But it doesn't mean free speech after we win.’

If you’ve caught the news anytime in the last decade, then you will know there’s nothing fringe about these statements. A desire for racial purity, suppression of dissent, and admiration of bloodthirsty fascists is the current operating system of the United States Government. Only one-eighth through his term, the President has delivered exactly what these people want. For years conservatives claimed free speech was a precious American tradition, and therefore everyone had to listen to them all the time. Using the First Amendment as their shield, they bullied their uncivilized politics into the mainstream and used it to seize power. Now that the first part of Doughboy’s plan is complete, the Republican President has done exactly what this permanent virgin wants. The most anti-free speech President in living memory, Trump imprisoned Rümeysa Öztürk for criticizing him in a school newspaper, is suing The Wall Street Journal for exposing his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and intends to make flag-burning a punishable offense.²³ Of course, the conservative podcasters who claimed Twitter’s Terms of Service were a crime against humanity — Bari Weiss, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, etc. — have cheer-leaded Trump’s repression. Not because they’re hypocrites, but because they’re fascists. A hypocrite thinks one thing and does another. Republicans don’t believe in the First Amendment. They want speech rights for themselves and state repression for their opponents. They are fascists, no different from the Doughboy. The only difference between Ben Shapiro and this loser is that the latter is willing to admit it.

One guy, who definitely can’t see his children without a court-appointed supervisor, claimed Republicans’ deportations of Latinos is nothing compared to Democrats’ ‘genocide of the entire race.’ The extremely preposterous belief of a White genocide is common sense for the White House. Trump granted asylum to White South Africans ‘refugees’ fleeing the imagined racial genocide, and dined with anti-White genocide advocate Nick Fuentes, who Mr. Court-Ordered Visits named a ‘conservative thinker shut down by the left.’

I’m picking up big ‘I was kicked off Hinge for literally no reason’ vibes from Mr. Court-Ordered Visits.

The general theme of the group was ‘immigration is fine if they’re White.’ Describing himself as a Catholic Nationalist (not a thing), Resting Snitch Face appreciated that Catholic Irish and Italian migrants were allowed through Ellis Island, but thought today’s Latino Catholic immigrants should be refused entry. When Hasan asked an Iranian immigrant, who I’ll call Waluigi Mangione, what he thought of his side’s racism, he declined to answer. Meanwhile, the onlookers jeered and mocked him as a future deportee.

A PSA to all the conservative sexual, racial, and religious minorities that appear in these Jubilee videos: your fellow conservatives hate you as much as me, and can’t wait until we’re shoved into the same concentration camp. Nothing you say will ever make them forget you’re the ‘other.’

Mr. Waluigi Mangione. Just absolutely insane.

Racist xenophobia is Donald Trump’s brand. Currently, ICE is seizing, detaining, and deporting any Brown people they can find. They’ve arrested Latino American citizens even after they declare their nationality, and have renditioned American-born children to foreign countries, while those who remain are tortured in ICE concentration camps.⁴⁵ Prisoners testimony from Alligator Alcatraz describe constant exposure to Florida’s harsh environment and 24/7 lighting that prevents sleep; two tactics straight from the CIA handbook.⁶ Another ICE camp in Miami forces prisoners to kneel and eat off plates on the ground while their hands are cuffed behind their backs. ‘They treat us worse than dogs,’ the survivors said.⁷ Such behavior is not the result of overly-sadistic guards, but the terrorist policy of the United States government. By torturing any Brown-skinned people his masked pigs can get their hands on, Trump aims to terrorize Latino communities and deter them from participating in American life. Whether they’re American or not matters as much to racist Republican officials as it does to the racist conservatives in this Jubilee video — absolutely nothing. Hasan’s opponents are gleeful about this type of treatment, which comes from the mind of Trump’s closest advisor, Stephen Miller. Miller has been an open advocate for torture since he was a teenager, calling it ‘a celebration of human life and dignity.’ It’s notable the below video shows Miller celebrating torture in the context of the Iraq War, which was started by the ‘normal’ Republican, George W. Bush.

As the sadistic desires of Jubilee’s casting call are standard practice of the Republican Party, it’s inaccurate to call these people ‘far right,’ or imply that their politics materially differ from the conservative movement. Fascists, whether outright and closeted, have always been represented by American conservatism. Despite the attempts by both the Republican and Democratic elite to pretend Donald Trump isn’t a normal Republican — such as all the caveats House Speaker Jeffries insist on adding before ‘MAGA’ to differentiate it from ‘respectable’ conservatism — the current President brought nothing new to the GOP. He simply traded their dogwhistle for a megaphone and turned their implicit racism into a campaign slogan.

Just call them Republicans.

Simple examination of the American conservative movement reveals this. The brainchild of William F. Buckley, founder of National Review, conservatism united Southern segregationists and Northern capitalists in the Republican Party, which adopted a ‘small government’ philosophy that explained their opposition to civil rights legislations and worker protections. Raised a segregationist and an anti-semite, Buckley’s family proudly burnt crosses on the lawns of their Jewish neighbors.⁸ He claimed to have been reformed by the time he entered politics, but his first book, God and Man at Yale, was about how there were too many Jews in the Ivey League.⁹ In classic conservative fashion, Buckley positioned the gains of a historically-oppressed minority as a loss for young White Christian men, which is a core belief of modern conservatism.

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The racist-business coalition is the base of today’s GOP, which is why the movement was so quick to champion Donald Trump. Who better to lead the racist-business political project than a racist businessman? Staunchly anti-communist, as left wing projects often considered economic and social justice as hand-in-glove, American conservatism is deeply inspired by right wing autocracy and European fascism. The fascism expressed in Jubilee’s video is not a Trump-caused bug of American conservatism, but a founding feature.

Again, we return to the Pillsbury Doughboy. Admitting he was a Catholic fascist, Doughboy stated he wants a strong, aristocratic daddy leader to run America in the style of Francisco Franco, the Nazi-aligned fascist dictator who ruled Spain for thirty-six years after overthrowing the democratic socialist republic. He also cited the Friend-Enemy Distinction, a theory created by Nazi intellectual Carl Schmit. A viewer could easily watch this video and think, ‘Wow. These Trump-Ultra-MAGA-EXTREME-Republicans are out of control!’ But idolizing fascists is something the Republican Party has been doing long before Trump. William F. Buckley adored Francisco Franco and applauded him up until his death.¹⁰ National Review continues this tradition. Still they praise Franco, and by extension his murder of a half a million Spaniards, as a ‘good dictator.’¹¹ I’m not surprised this young unfuckable fascist advocated for Carl Schmitt’s teachings. Following 9/11, the Bush Administration and its conservative allies cited Schmitt as justification for the Unitary Executive Theory. UET argues that all executive branch power is vested in the President, which means he can openly break the law and direct law enforcement, who are part of the executive branch, not to prosecute him.¹² John Yoo, the Bush Administration lawyer who penned legal arguments for UET and torture, directly cited the Nazi jurists’ theory of state power. So while it may be a shock to hear a twenty-year old praise the Nazi project on YouTube, it’s no different than what the Republican Party has been saying for decades.

Citations of Nazi lawyer Carl Schmitt in American Legal Scholarship, 1995 - 2009.

Given the fascist makeup of this Jubilee cast, a conversation arose online about when it’s appropriate to debate fascists. I will defend Medhi Hasan here, because it appears his opponents’ true beliefs weren’t revealed to him beforehand, and when the Pillsbury Doughboy admitted he was a fascist, Hasan simply stopped talking. This is a correct response (mocking them will also do), as, like the participants said, they don’t care about the exchange of ideas — only using the platform to seize power so they can punish dissenters. However, we cannot simply ignore right wing ideology. After all, these people are not ‘far right’ or fringe actors. They are the Republican Party’s base, which is comprised of fascists, re-segregationists, reactionaries, White supremacists, anti-feminists, and self-described Nazis. This has always been the Republican Party, it’s just taken them this long to reach a point where they could be themselves and stop pretending to care about the Constitution, democracy, the rule of law, or any of the other aspects of civilized society. Given these people hold ultimate political power and are itching to enact state violence on their critics, debate is worthless — perhaps it’s time to consider other solutions to America’s political predicament.

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In Solidarity — Joe

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1. I wouldn’t consider Tlaib, Mamdani, or myself ‘far left,’ though we are in considered so given America’s right-wing nature.

2. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/22/trump-lawsuit-wall-street-journal-supreme-court-ankush-khardori-column-00465728

3. https://www.fox4news.com/news/trump-anti-ice-protests-american-flag-burning-jail

4. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/ice-deports-3-u-s-citizen-children-held-incommunicado-prior-to-the-deportation

5. https://apnews.com/article/us-army-veteran-immigration-raid-53cb22251a01599a0c4d1a8d5650d050

6. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/another-alligator-alcatraz-detainee-describes-torturous-conditions/3663171/

7. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/21/migrants-miami-ice-jail-abuses

8. https://defector.com/william-f-buckleys-bill-never-came-due

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_and_Man_at_Yale

10. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/spanish-speaking-william-f-buckley/

11. https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2015/01/26/franco-full/

12. https://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/schmitt-and-post-911-legal-thought.html