Speechwriter for US Congressman Channels White Nationalism

My latest at Political Research Associates, on far-right operative Darren Beattie, and his connections to white nationalist movements and across the U.S. Right.

“On July 22, far-right House Republican and top Trump ally Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) came under fire for potentially breaking House Ethics rules by funneling taxpayer funds, through an intermediary, to a speechwriting consultant hired in 2019 named Darren Beattie. Beattie made headlines in 2018, when his position as a speechwriter in the Trump White House abruptly ended after CNNrevealed that he had given a speech at the H.L. Mencken Club, an annual conference frequented by White nationalists, in New York two years previously. 

But since assuming a prominent role crafting messaging for Gaetz, the politician GQ called “the Trumpiest Congressman in Trump’s Washington”, Beattie’s connection to White nationalist leaders, and commitment to a range of disturbing supremacist and anti-democratic views, has only deepened. In our volatile political moment, Gaetz and Beattie’s blend of White nationalist rhetoric with patriotic populism stands to pull institutional conservatism even further to the Right, threatening the already tenuous fabric of multiracial democracy in the U.S.”