For seven months, in a private Telegram chat, Young Republican party officials and activists from New York to Arizona exchanged racist, homophobic, and antisemitic messages so vile they could have come from the darkest corners of the internet. They joked about loving Hitler, mocked Black people as “watermelon people” and “monkeys” hurled slurs at LGBTQ+ Americans, attacked the honesty of Jews, called women the b word, threatened Democratic voters with the gas chamber and so, so much more—all while holding leadership positions within the Republican Party.

When Politico exposed the 2,900 pages of messages this past week, the familiar dance began: a few resignations, a few carefully worded “apologies,” and a chorus of top Republicans dismissing the scandal as “private conversation” or “youthful mistakes.” But this wasn’t locker-room talk. It was their hidden ideology again in plain sight. It was the quiet part spoken out loud, again.

As Stephen Colbert quipped in his recent The Late Show monologue, “The days-since-Nazi-language-or-flag-found-in-a-Republican-office clock is back to zero.” It will now restart—until the next time Nazi rhetoric surfaces. Republicans often ask in conversation why they’re accused of embracing extremist ideology. The answer isn’t complicated: because their leadership talks openly about loving Hitler in their group chats while displaying Nazi imagery in their legislative offices. That’s why.

A Group Chat Becomes a Mirror

The Telegram thread—ominously titled “RESTOREYR WAR ROOM”—wasn’t fringe. It included chiefs of staff, campaign operatives, and local GOP officials from multiple states. The title itself was a kind of slogan: “RESTOREYR,” short for “Restore Your [Country, Race, or Republic],” a phrase that circulates in far-right spaces as a coded call to reclaim an imagined past order. In these circles, “restoration” is shorthand for returning society to a time before diversity, equality, and accountability, before progress threatened their racial hierarchy. The language wasn’t a slip of the tongue; it was a worldview, a culture of cruelty masquerading as patriotism. You know the phrase. MAGA—Make America Great Again.

Peter Giunta, a chief of staff to a New York assemblyman, typed, “I love Hitler.” Others then joined in, mocking pilots with dark skin tones, celebrating hate as humor, and demeaning marginalized communities as if it were a sport. But the most revealing detail wasn’t the words themselves, it was the ease and camaraderie behind them. No one objected in the group chat. No one pushed back. And that may be the most alarming part. Literally no one within their ranks challenged it. Not one of these rising Republican staffers or operatives stood up to say that it was wrong. That silence is what allows extremism to thrive.

Within today’s GOP, the lesson seems clear: do not criticize your own, no matter how obscene the behavior. Everything is tolerated, everything is rationalized or pardoned, and no one is ever held accountable for “crazy.” The culture rewards loyalty over integrity, outrage over reflection, and cruelty over courage. This is not just moral failure, it is moral conditioning. It teaches a generation of young conservatives that silence in the face of hate is the price of belonging.

When “Restoring America” Means Erasing Others

For decades, conservative messaging has wrapped exclusion in the language of “restoration.” Restore America. Restore faith. Restore values. But what happens when the restoration they imagine is to a time before civil rights, before inclusion, before accountability?

The “RESTOREYR” chat wasn’t an aberration, it was an echo. It reflected how far-right movements have normalized racial resentment and homophobia as badges of authenticity. When young Republicans casually joke about a Holocaust or celebrate hating diversity, they’re not rebelling against the establishment, they’re absorbing its coded messages. You can hear the same undertones echoed by mainstream figures who peddle the white-nationalist “Great Replacement” theory, the false notion that immigrants and people of color are “replacing” white Americans. Conservative influencers like Charlie Kirk have said it plainly: “The Democratic Party is trying to import a new electorate.” That’s not policy analysis; it’s demographic panic dressed up as patriotism.

These aren’t isolated actors. They are the next generation of party operatives being incubated in a political culture where bigotry hides behind slogans like “anti-woke,” “parents’ rights,” and “free speech.” What begins as dog whistles in campaign speeches turns into open slurs in private chats, and then, too often, into policy. It becomes immigration raids justified by fearmongering about “illegals,” upheld by Supreme Court precedents that allow people who appear Latino or poor to be stopped, searched, or detained by ICE without probable cause. It shows up when police zip-tie African American seniors and children half-naked in Chicago high-rises in the name of “law and order” and “immigration enforcement.” The language of restoration becomes the machinery of repression, turning prejudice into policy and cruelty into governance.

The Silence of Party Leadership

The responses from senior Republicans have been predictable. Some have offered vague condemnations. Others have urged everyone to “move on” and forgiveness. The party of “law and order” and “accountability” again finds moral excesses and calls for due process when it comes to defending hate speech in its ranks.

This selective silence is complicity. You cannot champion “character education” and biblical values in schools while ignoring the moral collapse in your own ranks. You cannot legislate against “critical race theory” while your own staffers admire Hitler. Leadership means more than press releases and damage control, it means housecleaning. Yet when that cleaning threatens to expose the rot beneath the rhetoric, most Republicans have choosen to look away.

And that silence has consequences. The Young Republicans who filled those group chats with racist, homophobic, and antisemitic language will not vanish from public life. They will be promoted, hired, and endorsed. They will become the next generation of party operatives, consultants, and legislators. In time, their bigotry will be rebranded as new “populism,” their cruelty as political “toughness,” and their extremism as working-class “authenticity.” What we are witnessing is not a scandal, it is succession. The ideology revealed in those chats is not a deviation from the Republican future; it is its blueprint.

Conclusion: Sunshine as Disinfectant

Justice Brandeis once wrote that sunlight is the best disinfectant. That’s why journalism matters, because when the curtains are pulled back by Politico and others, we see what power tries to hide. But sunlight doesn’t cure everything. Exposure without accountability only breeds cynicism. When Young Republican political operatives face no real consequences, when party elders shrug off hate as “bad judgment,” it signals to the next cohort that the price of racism is just a bad headline and a waiting period. What’s needed isn’t just scandal management, it’s structural reform. Political parties must demand civic decency, historical literacy, and moral courage.

The Politico revelations remind us that the battle over America’s soul isn’t confined to Congress or cable news—it’s happening in group chats, campaign offices, and county committees. Racism doesn’t just appear in congressional redistricting; it’s cultivated in the backrooms of ambition. The Young Republicans in that Telegram thread weren’t just venting, they were rehearsing a worldview for use. One that sees diversity as threat, empathy as weakness, and cruelty as strength. If we don’t confront that Kirkian worldview with truth, history, and collective accountability, we will inherit exactly what they want to build in America, politics without moral conscience.

Racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, and homophobia thrive in secrecy. That’s why the disinfectant of sunlight is so vital. The rest of us—educators, journalists, voters, leaders—must keep shining that light. Every institution, from schools to political parties, must teach what these Young Republican clearly never learned or maybe simply just don’t care about: that power without empathy is corruption, and leadership without humanity is rot. The question isn’t just how could they say these things… It’s what will we do now that we’ve heard them?

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Julian Vasquez Heilig is an award-winning civil rights leader, scholar, and public intellectual whose two-decade career in higher education includes serving as Provost at Western Michigan University and Dean of the College of Education at the University of Kentucky. A national voice on education policy, leadership, and social justice, his research and commentary have been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, USA Today, and Education Week. He has appeared on MSNBC, PBS, NPR, Fox, ABC, CBS, Univision, Democracy Now!, and Al Jazeera. In 2025, his LinkedIn posts and Without Fear or Favor newsletter reached more than 1.5 million readers, extending the impact of his public scholarship beyond academia. He is also the founder of the influential education and policy blog Cloaking Inequity, established in 2012.