The Republican Primary That Finally Dropped The Dog Whistle
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Immigration Act of 1924
13 min read
The article directly references the 1920s immigration restrictions that Chip Roy nostalgically invokes. This law established racist national-origin quotas specifically designed to exclude Jews, Italians, Slavs, and Asians - the exact historical context readers need to understand what Roy is actually calling for.
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Bull Connor
12 min read
The article explicitly compares the candidates' rhetoric to Bull Connor, the Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner infamous for using fire hoses and police dogs against civil rights protesters. Understanding Connor's specific tactics and historical significance illuminates the severity of the comparison being made.
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First Barbary War
14 min read
Reitz invokes the Barbary Wars to claim the Founders wanted perpetual conflict with Islam. The actual history of these conflicts over Mediterranean piracy and tribute payments is far more nuanced than the ideological framing suggests, making this essential context for readers.
Most of the Republican primary races in Texas haven’t been making a lot of noise yet, but there’s one primary race, if you’ve seen any of these interviews or speeches, you’ve likely walked away completely dumbfounded. I’m talking about the Attorney General’s election, where in this primary, the three leading contenders seem to be in a race to the bottom to outdo one another with overt white supremacy.
There are four Republicans in the AG primary, but 70-year-old Senator Joan Huffman hasn’t been hitting the podcast circuit, rallies, and events with the same fury as her three male counterparts. Maybe because she’s the presumed “establishment” candidate, or perhaps the misogyny in the Republican Party is too deep to really give her a fair chance. Regardless, if the contest was about which Republican was not overtly racist? She would probably win.
The other three? I can’t tell if they’re performing a bit to win over the “NASCAR crowd” or if they legit stepped out of a time machine from 1930, but we should talk about the Republicans vying to become the next Attorney General of Texas by using language that would make Bull Connor proud.
Let’s start with Aaron Reitz.
Reitz, not from Texas, but moved here as a kid, served in the Marines, then clerked for Texas’ far-right Supreme Court Justice Jimmy Blacklock, before becoming the Deputy Attorney General for Legal Strategy under Ken Paxton. He was Chief of Staff to Ted Cruz and then Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy under Trump.
Needless to say, he’s been in the orbit of every crooked politician from here to high water over the last decade.
In this interview, Aaron Reitz basically goes on national television to say that Muslims are a hostile civilization that must be hunted, prosecuted, surveilled, and forced out of Texas.
He uses every classic white-supremacist trope in the book. “Incompatible cultures,” “civilizational threat,” “they’re taking advantage of our freedoms,” “they want Sharia law,” “Texas values,” and “they should self-deport.”
Reitz repeatedly lumps all Muslim immigrants, all Muslim American organizations, and anyone from a Muslim-majority country into one big criminal cartel. He calls them “Islamists,” “radicals,” “civilizationally incompatible,” and compares them to the Mafia.
He says outright that the First Amendment does not apply to them. As in, his argument is literally:
“Freedom of religion is for Christians, not Muslims.”
He openly promises to weaponize
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