Conservatives have always insisted that they are not racist. When Leftists accuse them of harbouring prejudices, the response used to be that liberals were smearing them over political disagreements. Often, this has been true. Someone could, for example, oppose affirmative action based on the principle of colour blindness.

For certain sections of the Right, that posture is becoming harder to maintain. This is plainly demonstrated by the rise of Bo French, the GOP nominee for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission. Today, he posted a picture of the audience at a University of Texas football game, captioning it: “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

The object of derision wasn’t a prayer area for Muslim students, or even an indigenous Aztec ritual brought from deep in the heart of a region of Mexico still yet to be fully transformed by contact with Europeans. Instead, the picture showed South Asian students, dressed in school colours and cheering for the UT football team. You almost couldn’t get AI to design a purer picture of assimilation.

If you are unfortunate enough to be familiar with anti-Indian hatred on X, you will be aware that most complaints boil down to the fact that they practice a different religion, wear strange clothes, and have foreign customs. You’ll rarely see a video of Indian Americans hurting anyone — which is unsurprising, given their high levels of educational attainment and income.

This time, however, South Asians didn’t even need to be doing anything that marked them as different. Their existence was enough to offend a Republican politician who is likely to hold statewide office in a few months. French isn’t alone. Ron DeSantis has criticised the H-1B programme, while explicitly pointing to the large number of Indian beneficiaries — as if that alone is enough to condemn the programme. That is, despite the broad consensus among economists that high-skilled immigration benefits the country.

There was, of course, pushback, including from Texas Senator John Cornyn, newly empowered to speak his mind after losing his primary this election cycle. Cornyn’s reply has nearly two million views. But the comments below are not congratulating him for his decency and courage. A representative sample of the most popular replies included: “We don’t want our children’s future destroyed so you can have your underclass of slum dogs”; “We want our country back you traitor”; and “Get lost, loser. America is for Americans.”

Performative racism has become key to Republican identity. Before, there was always some plausible deniability. “No, it’s not that I don’t like Mexicans, I just want people to come here legally,” they might say. Or: “Most Muslims are fine people, but I worry that in large numbers they might have trouble assimilating into American culture.”

Now, the mask has come off. Increasingly, the conservative movement is relying on genetics and blood to distinguish who belongs to the national community, without even the bare pretence of appealing to higher principles — or even utilitarian reasoning based on the national interest. That can be seen in the Trump administration’s war on skilled professionals coming from abroad. Some of the most energetic supporters of the Republican Party appear increasingly willing to reject the idea that non-whites can be fully American. Until the cancer of open racism is excised from modern conservatism, the GOP itself must be considered a fundamental threat to American institutions and ideals.

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Richard Hanania, an UnHerd columnist, is the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and blogs at Substack.

RichardHanania

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