Established as a beacon of political and religious freedom and tolerance just over 340 years ago, Pennsylvania can truly claim to be the citadel of American democracy. It played host to the conventions which inspired the revolution of 1776, while Philadelphia’s Independence Hall was the scene of the drafting and ratification of both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

Last month, however, Pennsylvania witnessed something rather different.

At two separate political rallies for Republican candidates – one headlined by Donald Trump – members of the crowd raised their right arms in unison in a gesture which, some critics say, bore “an uncanny resemblance” to the Nazi salute.

“No Republican should ever escape an interview or news conference without being asked to condemn this monstrous event,” the conservative Washington Post columnist, Jennifer Rubin, wrote. “The cynical GOP leaders who know that Trump is unfit for office and that many of his cult followers have become violent should not be treated as ordinary party hacks. They are enablers of a dangerous movement.”

The salute is used by supporters of QAnon – a poisonous conspiracy theory claiming the world is controlled by a cabal of paedophiles including Democrat politicians, the mainstream media, and Hollywood, which US Jewish groups have branded antisemitic.

The incident highlights the toxic relationship between the Republicans and the American far-right, and the manner in which, feeling that the door to the party is newly ajar, antisemites and white nationalists are flaunting their power and presence.

It also came just days after Joe Biden travelled to Philadelphia to warn about the threat posed to democracy by the “extreme Maga ideology” of Mr Trump’s movement, which the president has previously characterised as “semi-fascism”.

While even some Democrats have expressed unease at Mr Biden’s fiery rhetoric, the far-right threat within parts of the Republican party isn’t one to be dismissed.

Recent research by the ADL, for instance, found that of the 119 “right-wing extremists” it identified earlier this year running for office across the country, about 25 percent had triumphed in their primary elections – with a third of those winning by 10 points or more.

“The right-wing extremist candidates who won their 2022 primaries subscribe to or espouse a range of extremist and fringe ideologies, including support for QAnon; ties to anti-government extremists; white supremacy; and antisemitism. Other candidates have sought to undermine the United States electoral system by propagating election conspiracies and participating in the January 6 Capitol attack,” suggested the ADL.

Among the far-right candidates on the ballot paper in November is Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. Mr Mastriano, who was at the forefront of the effort to stop the state’s 20 electoral college votes being cast for Mr Biden in 2020, has appeared at events linked to QAnon and supports the idea that the US should be a “Christian nation”.

Last month, it was reported that Mr Mastriano’s campaign had paid Gab, a far-right social media platform, nearly $37,000 in “digital marketing fees”.

While Mr Mastriano subsequently claimed to reject antisemitism “in any form”, his Jewish, Democrat opponent, Josh Shapiro, was right to note that the Republican campaign had nonetheless “proudly recruited white supremacists, antisemites, and conspiracy theorists … and paid thousands to the alt-right website Gab to do it”.

None of this has stopped Mr Mastriano issuing what opponents label an “antisemitic dog whistle” by turning the Democrat candidate’s childhood attendance at a Jewish parochial day school into a campaign issue.

Or take another example.

Darren Bailey, a far-right state senator, was picked by Illinois Republicans in June to stand as their candidate for governor.

Endorsed by Mr Trump, the former farmer has attracted attention for placing his evangelical Christianity front and centre of his campaign. Indeed, Mr Bailey recently admitted that voters had told him to “Quit cramming your religion down my throat.”

Mr Bailey has refused to apologise for comments he made in 2017 which appeared to suggest that abortion was worse than the Holocaust. “The attempted extermination of the Jews of World War II doesn’t even compare on a shadow of the life that has been lost with abortion,” he suggested. “The Jewish community themselves have told me that I’m right,” he claimed when questioned about the comments in August.

Mr Bailey’s strained relationship with the Jewish community hasn’t been helped by reports that he addressed a pro-Palestinian group in front of map which labelled Israel as Palestine and indicated he might be willing to repeal anti-BDS legislation. (Mr Bailey says he “strongly supports” Israel).

Nor are the Republican gubernatorial candidates in Pennsylvania and Illinois exceptional.

Blake Masters, the party’s candidate for US Senate in Arizona, has attracted the backing of prominent white supremacists and got in an apparent tangle over his ties to Andrew Torba, the controversial founder and chief executive of Gab.

In Maryland, the Republican gubernatorial candidate is Dan Cox who used a QAnon hashtag in a tweet and has spoken at an event linked to the far-right group. The Republican’s candidate for US Senate in Oregon, Jo Rae Perkins, has suggested that “there is a very strong probability/possibility that ‘Q’ is a real group of people, military intelligence, working with President Trump.” And while he has since sought to distance himself from the it, an Ohio candidate for the House of Representatives, JR Majewski, boasted last year: “I believe in everything that’s been put out from Q”, which he termed “military-level intelligence”.

This radicalisation of the Republican party primarily reflects the baleful influence of Mr Trump over the past seven years.

As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait argues: “Trump’s rise has reshaped the GOP, driving out some of its constituent elements while bringing in previously excluded factions, the ranks of which include virulent antisemites.” He added: “The GOP may not be an antisemitic party … Nevertheless, it has become a party in which antisemitism has gained a foothold.”

But the cowardice of Republican leaders – which echoes the manner in which much of the parliamentary Labour party fell in behind Jeremy Corbyn – has also been key to the far-right’s growing encroachment on their party.

It is exemplified, as Mr Chait also notes, in the manner in which the party’s aspiring House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has refused to take meaningful action against two of the most prominent and radical far-right Republicans in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar.

The appeasement of the far-right – which is subject to no more than the occasional rhetorical rap over the knuckles from the Republican establishment – stands in stark contrast to the way future presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan spoke out against the extremist threat posed by the John Birch Society in the 1960s. The society, which, Jewish groups at the time accused of “contributing to antisemitism”, was also slayed by the party’s congressional leadership.

The Republicans’ complicity has been compounded by the risky and morally dubious decision of the Democrats to spend over $50m on advertisements which, while seemingly attacking far-right candidates, were also clearly intended to trumpet their positions to conservative primary voters. Among the victorious beneficiaries of the Democrats’ meddling in the Republican primaries – a ploy attacked as “playing with fire” by the former House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt – were Mr Mastriano and Mr Bailey.

The two far-right nominees now face off against two Jewish Democrats, Mr Shapiro and Illinois governor JB Pritzker, who, having used their campaign funds to boost the seemingly least electable Republicans, are now relentlessly attacking their extremism.

Politically, there are some signs that the Democrats’ strategy may pay off.

But whatever the outcome on election day, American democracy will suffer. As the ADL’s Centre on Extremism warned in January, the very presence of far-right candidates on the ballot paper has the potential to shift the “Overton Window” – “the parameters of what is considered ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’ in political and social discourse’.”


And words – as the FBI itself suggested in 2019 when it cautioned that “anti-government, identity-based, and fringe political conspiracy theories [are] very likely motivate some domestic extremists … to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity” – can have bloody consequences.