WASHINGTON, Oct 24 — Three separate controversies involving leaked text messages from private online group chats have rocked the United States' (US) political circles this month, revealing racist, antisemitic, and violent statements from figures across the ideological spectrum.
The messages — sent privately but now public — include racial slurs, praise for Nazis, and threats of political violence, raising questions about why those involved felt comfortable expressing such views despite the risk of exposure and censure.
The online posts have also deepened concern among civil society groups and political language experts that violent rhetoric and racist hate speech are becoming normalised in America, particularly after decades of hard-fought civil rights victories that sought to dismantle such ideologies.
People have long expressed violent or racist views in private settings, but experts say the leaks of the text messages are noteworthy because they surfaced the unfiltered — and to many shocking — views of political figures.
A Politico report on October 14 revealed that a group of about a dozen Young Republican leaders had been sending racist and antisemitic messages to each other on Telegram between January and mid-August, referring to black people as monkeys and with one declaring, "I love Hitler."
On October 3, leaked texts published by National Review revealed that Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate to be Virginia's top law enforcement official, sent a private text in 2022 saying a state Republican should be shot dead and that he would urinate on the graves of political opponents.
And this week, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead a federal watchdog agency, Paul Ingrassia, withdrew from consideration after he lost support among key Republican lawmakers following reports that he had described himself as having a "Nazi streak" in a private text message exchange.
Experts in online culture and political discourse, including a professor from the City University of New York and Alex Turvy, a sociologist who writes for publications including Social Media and Society, say the persistence of inflammatory group chats reflects a false sense of privacy and safety, even though the messages form a permanent record and can be leaked.
Turvy noted that at the same time, members of group chats sometimes falsely assume they can trust their fellow participants, even as allegiances, ambitions and motivations can shift over time, especially in politics.
"There is an illusion of intimacy; it feels like it is private speech. But you are betting that all of the members in the group chat are going to protect you forever," he said.
Provocative language
The experts said an increasingly powerful social media presence among more extreme elements of both parties, and a phenomenon — especially among younger people — to push rhetorical boundaries, has exacerbated private hate speech.
City University of New York's media culture associate professor Reece Peck said Trump's own rhetoric and attacks on progressive causes have led many conservatives to believe that language that would have been deemed unacceptable before Trump first took office in 2017 is now permissible.
While campaigning last year, he accused people in the US illegally of "poisoning the blood of the country." As president, he has called some of them "criminals," and described illegal border crossings as an "invasion."
At the same time, his White House has posted memes online that critics say have coarsened political rhetoric.
"They feel Trump has seized popular culture, and the Democrats are out of touch. The throughline is anti‑woke.
"If you can be edgy — say something inappropriate — you establish group membership. That dynamic is central to Trumpism," Peck said.
Turvy said this is known as 'edgelord culture', an online phenomenon in which people deliberately post shocking or taboo content to stay relevant in the chat group.
The Black Conservative Federation, a grassroots group that sought to court black voters for Trump's second term, called on Republican leaders to denounce the Young Republican group chat texts "without hesitation or excuse."
Stanford University political science assistant professor Hakeem Jefferson also said Trump has helped "give some cover" to some of the speech contained in the texts.
"This is how the President of the United States speaks, and I do think it has opened a space for these people to mimic his behaviour," he said.
White House spokesman Abigail Jackson said, "President Trump is right to call out heinous criminal aliens who have invaded our country and have murdered innocent Americans."
She cited the case of a man in the US illegally who allegedly killed three people while driving a truck this week in California under the influence of drugs.
Jackson added that White House memes were successfully communicating Trump's agenda against people in the country illegally who are committing crimes against Americans.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the content of the Young Republican group chat, the Jones text messages, and the alleged private text messages by Ingrassia.
Firings, resignations
The text scandals brought widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum, although Vice President JD Vance — while calling the Young Republican texts "truly disturbing" — also accused critics of "pearl clutching" and referred to the chat participants as "kids". Most were in their 20s and 30s.
Vance instead drew attention on X (formerly Twitter) to the texts by Jones, the Virginia Democrat running to be the state's attorney general.
In his 2022 text, Jones said that former Virginia Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert should get "two bullets to the head," and mused about his children dying in their mother's arms.
Jones' campaign referred Reuters to a statement he issued on October 3 in which he said he was "embarrassed, ashamed, and sorry" about his texts and had sought to apologise to Gilbert and his family.
A Washington Post-Schar School poll of Virginia voters released on Thursday showed that support for Jones has tumbled since the texts were made public, and a race he had led in public opinion polls is now a tie.
Many of the Young Republicans involved in their group chat have since lost their jobs as political aides or lost their positions as Young Republican leaders. One, a state senator from Vermont, has resigned.
Republican group disbanded
Across 2,900 pages of chats, black people were referred to as "the watermelon people," one member talked about raping enemies, and there was talk of sending people to the gas chamber.
Several members of the group were from the New York Young Republicans Club, which was disbanded by the state's Republican executive committee last week. At least two members from the group, which also included members from states including Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont, have apologised.
The Young Republican National Federation's chairman Hayden Padgett referred Reuters to a statement the group released on X on October 3, in which its board of directors called on all involved to resign.
"Such behaviour is disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican, and stands in direct opposition to the values our movement represents," the statement said.
Ingrassia, a former right-wing podcaster, was Trump's nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates claims of retaliation against government whistleblowers.
His nomination imploded after Politico reported on Monday that Ingrassia told Republican operatives and social media influencers in a text chat last year that "I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time."
He also said the January holiday celebrating black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr "should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs."
In a statement to Reuters, Ingrassia's lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik said that the messages could have been manipulated. He noted that if they were authentic, they "clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humour."
