A Washington state Republican committee voted to boot an openly fascist podcaster, seven months after The Daily Beast revealed his racist ties.
James Allsup, 22, is a member of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, and marched with them during the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Despite his public affiliation with the racist right, Allsup managed to obtain a role with the Whitman County Republican Committee earlier this year, after he ran unopposed. Seventh months after Allsup’s quiet election, Whitman County Republicans moved to eject him from their group, the Moscow-Pullman Daily News reported Monday.
In early June, Allsup announced that he’d become a precinct committee officer (PCO) with his county’s Republican committee. Under Washington law, PCOs are publicly elected officials who manage local affairs for specific political parties. The role is small, but PCOs earn a vote and a voice within the local committee.
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Allsup’s election was part of a plan to infiltrate mainstream Republican groups and pull them to the far right.
In an Identity Evropa podcast earlier this year, Allsup recommended listeners work with “three or four fashy goy [fascist, non-Jewish] friends” and “take over your school’s College Republicans group and move it to essentially being an alt-right club.”
After The Daily Beast reported on Allsup’s PCO role, some Republicans distanced themselves from him. "The executive committee is going to meet and see if we have the ability to not seat him," Art Swannack, a Whitman County Republican Committee member, told Washington’s The Inlander.
Other local Republicans gave Allsup a more sympathetic platform, with one local GOP leader hosting Allsup at a Republican movie night and announcing that the Charlottesville marcher had been “label lynched.”
Swannack’s plan to deny Allsup a seat appears to have failed. In a Saturday meeting of the Whitman County Republican Central Committee, county Republicans ruled that they could not take Allsup’s PCO title, since he technically won it through a public election. But because the county Republican committee is a private organization, it is allowed to oust individual members. The group unanimously voted to end Allsup’s membership and privileges with the committee.
Allsup will retain his PCO role until the next election, but the title will be effectively meaningless.
