New York Rep. Elise Stefanik was catapulted to a top House Republican leadership position after Republicans purged Rep. Liz Cheney from the role as punishment for speaking out against Donald Trump's violent attempted coup. Stefanik has since proven to have no moral boundaries whatsoever, eagerly embracing the farthest-right conspiracy theories culled from QAnon, from neo-Nazi groups, and other extremists—but we knew that, due to her fervent prior backing of an actual attempted coup and her devotion now to sabotaging investigations of that coup.
Stefanik was quick to express vague sympathy over the murder of 10 Americans at the hands of a white supremacist citing the neo-Nazi "great replacement" theory, a white nationalist conspiracy theory that claims world elites (billionaire George Soros is frequently mentioned, or just nameless "Democrats") are importing non-white immigrants in great numbers so as to dilute America's "whiteness."
But Stefanik, like Tucker Carlson, has been a promoter of that same neo-Nazi conspiracy theory. She is one of the House Republicans that helped mainstream it into the party proper.
Stefanik did not just embrace the "great replacement" theory as a one-off nod to the party’s white supremacist base. Stefanik launched a Facebook ad campaign pushing the conspiracy theory that was considered abhorrent at the time, and looks even more grotesque now that it has yet again become the cited impetus for a mass murder.
But Stefanik, whose promotion of fringe-right conspiracy theories includes the frothing QAnon-premised claim that opponents of Trumpism are secretly pedophiles, is of course offering no apologies or acknowledgements.
Like Tucker Carlson, she uses violence-provoking conspiracy claims to further her own career while ignoring or mocking the deaths caused when violent believers decide that only terrorism can prevent their advertised conspiracy from taking place. The "great replacement" conspiracy is now widespread in Republican rhetoric; there is now no great difference between the spittle-flecked conspiracies of neo-Nazism and those of Republican Party "leadership."
The Republican Party is a cesspit. From national leaders to minor state functionaries, its officials stoke violence like it is nothing to them. Party propagandists invent new hoaxes for every situation, hoping that the resulting extremism boosts them even if it kills others. It makes perfect sense that the fascist supporters of an attempted coup would expel Liz Cheney from leadership while embracing this perpetually amoral liar and propagandist; that is who they are.
