Video shows local GOP leader embracing white nationalist -- a week after she disavowed him

Video shows local GOP leader embracing white nationalist -- a week after she disavowed him

James Allsup has ties to Identity Evropa.
LUKE BARNES
JUL 31, 2018, 5:45 PM

When self-proclaimed “pro-European nationalist” James Allsup was elected to a Republican Party post in Whitman County, Washington, the immediate backlash from GOP leaders was swift.

After Allsup won the uncontested election for precinct committee officer, the Republican National Committee (RNC) condemned him and his “hateful, racist views” and said there was “no place for it in the Republican Party.” Spokane County GOP chair Cecily Wright went a step further. “I’d like to go punch the guy in the nose myself,” Wright jokingly told the Inlander on July 3.

But barely a week later, Wright introduced Allsup as a speaker at a monthly event for local conservatives on July 11. The evening’s topic of discussion was “label lynching,” which accused groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the media of unfairly hanging labels on conservatives.

“If I started saying something about you, that you were a white supremist (sic), and you could say because so-and-so and such-and-such happened, and other people pick it up, and then if the news media picks it up, you’re dead meat, and it’s pretty darn sad,” Wright said at the event, which was filmed by Northwest Grassroots, a small local political club that hosted the gathering. “People’s lives are destroyed with these labels that are being hung on them.”

https://thinkprogress.org/video-washington-republicans-embrace-white-nationalist-f3c67e2eb951/