Ray Myers, a right-wing activist who helped draft the Texas GOP platform for 2018, proudly declared himself to be a white nationalist in a post on his Facebook page last week.
The term “white nationalism” refers to the explicit pursuit of leveraging powers of the state to legally enforce a white supermajority in a country, most often through the use of extreme immigration policies and federal targeting of non-white citizens.
“Damn Right, I’m a WHITE NATIONALIST and very Proud of it,” Myers wrote on Facebook in reaction to a Real Clear Politics article about remarks CNN reporter Jim Acosta made to CNN host Anderson Cooper in October. Acosta told Cooper that Americans were wondering if President Donald Trump was secretly a white nationalist after remarks the president made suggesting that if Middle Eastern people were traveling within the large group of Central American migrants headed toward the U.S.-Mexico border, it may indicate a terrorist threat against the United States.
Justin Miller at Texas Observer first reported Myers’ comments and his proximity to the presidential campaigns of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and President Trump, as well as his selection to participate in “crafting the platform for the biggest and most influential state party in the country.” Miller reports:
Myers was a member of Ted Cruz’s “Texas Leadership Team” during his presidential campaign, served as a Cruz delegate at the RNC convention and went on to become a Trump volunteer, according to his Facebook profile.
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In June, Myers helped to draft the Texas GOP’s platform, a document that frequently draws attention for pushing the limits of mainstream conservatism.
The 2018 platform includes numerous planks that espouse a nationalistic view, including a demand for using “English, and only English” voting ballots; “the reasonable use of profiling” to defeat radical Islamic terrorists; a condemnation of participation in the United Nations as a threat to U.S. sovereignty; an abolition of the refugee resettlement program; the prohibition of any sort of immigration amnesty; a constitutional amendment defining citizenship “as those born to a citizen of the United States or through naturalization,” among many others.
White nationalists in America have sought to directly influence GOP politics in the Trump era, feeling emboldened by the president’s lack of condemnation for their movement and the fact that he has echoed their rhetoric. An Idaho-based neo-Nazi distributed robocalls targeting midterm campaigns of African American candidates, the right-wing news site Daily Caller has been forced to expel half-a-dozen columnists revealed to be white nationalists, and some white nationalists have sought office for themselves.
It’s also worth noting that younger generations of white nationalists have urged supporters to secure low-level influence positions within local and state GOP offices in order to gradually swing policy toward the goals of white nationalism. James Allsup, a white nationalist YouTube personality, currently holds the office of Whitman County Precinct Committee Officer in his local GOP.
