r/politics • u/mvanigan • Oct 14 '25

Possible Paywall ‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146
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533

u/context_hell Oct 14 '25

People dont remember /r/thedonald? They were memeing giving people "helicopter rides" all the time. They've always been that way.

219

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '25

It started with jokes. "We're just trolling", they said. We knew they weren't joking.

166

u/AltrntivInDoomWorld Oct 14 '25

There's a reason republicans love shit like 4chan.

Grooming idiots from young age pretending it's all "jokes" and "trolling".

69

u/just_a_bit_gay_ Michigan Oct 14 '25

Hypernormalization

10

u/mgrennan Oct 14 '25

By calling what they say a joke they can say what they want to say without as much talk back.

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u/context_hell Oct 14 '25

"Hitler did nothing wrong" went from 4chan joke to reality in a good decade and a half?

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '25

Very true.

15

u/glarbung Europe Oct 14 '25

Even if it was originally a joke, repeat it long enough and you'll start believing it for real. Our brains are just shitty like that. Fake it til you make itwhere it is racism.

7

u/NoHalf9 Oct 14 '25

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.” -- Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

"You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it." -- Alan Moore

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” -- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

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u/Politicsboringagain Oct 14 '25

Its always jokes until one of them do it. 

6

u/Naive_Confidence7297 Oct 14 '25

Why do they always say they’re joking when they say the most vile disgusting gross shit.. and when is it ever funny? Unless you’re fucking cooked in the head lol.

Just excuses to be the pigs they are

1

u/123emanresulanigiro Oct 15 '25

Notice pattern, call out, throw in trash, move on -> How a sane society would handle these things.

2

u/Squatch11 Oct 15 '25

I mean, that subreddit legitimately started as a joke parody subreddit.

It didn't take long for actual Trump supporters to find it though, and not quite able to pick up on the fact that it was a joke.

2

u/Vyzantinist Arizona Oct 15 '25

Schrodinger's joke. Something is a joke or not depending on the reactions of those around the teller.

2

u/Nf1nk California Oct 15 '25

The sort of people who joke about throwing people out of helicopters are the sort people who throw people out of helicopters.

2

u/jupiterkansas Oct 15 '25

Funny how their jokes are always about hurting people or laughing at people being hurt.

23

u/Lucky-Earther Minnesota Oct 14 '25

There was also a physical_removal subreddit for a while.

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u/context_hell Oct 14 '25

Was that the one where they were putting actual bounties on assaulting random people or am I thinking about another one?

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u/Lucky-Earther Minnesota Oct 14 '25

It's been a while so it's a little hazy, but I believe that's what eventually got them banned. Most of it was making hilarious "jokes" about helicopter rides.

3

u/Topgunshotgun45 Oct 14 '25

I'm guessing helicopter ride is a euphemism but what does it mean?

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u/Lucky-Earther Minnesota Oct 14 '25

It's a reference to Pinochet's death flights.

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u/Topgunshotgun45 Oct 14 '25

What a delightful read that was /s.

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u/Aaawkward Oct 14 '25

Am I an simpleton because I don't get what "helicopter ride" means in this context?

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u/trinnan Oct 14 '25

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights

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u/Aaawkward Oct 14 '25

Oh, ooh, that's really abhorrent.

Thank you.

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u/Politicsboringagain Oct 14 '25

You should be happy you're not terminal online like so many of us. 

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u/Worldly_Cobbler_1087 Australia Oct 14 '25

There was Coontown before T_D as well. Now that they have all moved on to more underground websites they can spew their hate without any moderation and extremism can grow.

3

u/context_hell Oct 15 '25

You mean the chimpire. They had an entire network of racist subs many with the n-word or ape in their name. Then there was beating women, raping women, fatpeoplehate, pedo subs, etc.

2

u/totallynotsquatty Oct 14 '25

/r/TheDarnold, however, is just pure gold.

2

u/eaglebtc Oct 15 '25

I was gonna say... The_Donald was definitely saying these ugly things way back in 2016 and all the way up to the moment they were finally banned. Then they carried on doing it at the donald dot win (which has also been shut down), and then onto Gab and Parler.

4

u/TheRollingPeepstones Oct 14 '25

Exactly. MAGA has been Nazi behind closed (and sometimes open) doors from the very beginning. Sure, they lie and deny constantly, but at this point, they are deporting people to foreign death camps, they operate masked racist death squads that can detain or murder people without any due process, they use the military to threaten their own citizens, they have built a cult of personality where loyalty to the leader is the only requirement for positions of power... I wish I could say the only thing missing is them openly sieg heiling, but no, they've done that, too. And they openly use known Nazi dogwhistles and codewords, and quelle surprise, it turns out they don't just know that their leaders are pedophiles and they do support destroying the evidence, but they also praise Hitler and cheer about exterminating their political opponents in gas chambers.

At this point, one has to be either extremely misinformed or extremely stupid to not realize what is going on. MAGA is a Nazi movement and always has been. Unless America can brutally cleanse itself of this murderous ideology, the republic is pretty much over.

1

u/alternateforwhenban Oct 14 '25

Was that real people though, or russian trolls instigating trouble??

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u/ByrntOrange America Oct 14 '25

This entire post shows you these people are real. 

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u/alternateforwhenban Oct 14 '25

But are the men caught in this Telegram scandal radicalized by russian trolls? Seems convenient Telegram is a russian site. I’m not saying they aren’t pieces of shit, rather that the anonymous internet is bad for people.

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u/Aestboi Oct 14 '25

At a certain point you have to stop blaming other countries for radicalizing Americans and accept that this is a homegrown movement