PHOENIX – A vociferous rebuke of right-wing bigotry wasn’t on anybody’s bingo card at AmericaFest.
Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called out racism and antisemitism within the MAGA movement at Turning Point USA’s flagship event on Friday evening.
Onstage before thousands of young conservatives, Ramaswamy condemned the notion of “heritage Americanism,” the belief that those with roots in the colonial period are more American than those whose lineage in the United States began more recently.
“The idea of a heritage American is about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put up,” he said.
Heritage Americanism is the nationalist belief that those with Anglo-Protestant ancestry are more American than the children of recent immigrants. He didn’t call out any of his party colleagues, but acknowledged that the ideology was “emergent in certain corridors of the online right.” Ramaswamy’s parents immigrated to the United States from India.
“It leads you to believe that Donald Trump is less of an American than Joe Biden, because Donald Trump’s mother was an immigrant,” said the 40-year-old Ohioan.
Ramaswamy’s message seemed to be in conflict with the Trump administration’s recent messaging and policy goals. The administration is actively working to strip some foreign-born Americans of their citizenship, according to The New York Times, and Trump himself has repeatedly touted his work supporting “American-born citizens.”
Amid his speech, Ramaswamy pivoted from heritage Americanism to racism and antisemitism festering in his party writ large.
“If you believe in normalizing hatred towards any ethnic group, towards whites, towards blacks, towards Hispanics, towards Jews, towards Indians, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement,” he said to applause from the crowd.
Then he got explicit, calling out far-right influencer Nick Fuentes for his bigoted rhetoric, which has followed the MAGA movement for years.
“If you believe that Hitler was pretty f–king cool, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement,” he said.
“If you call Usha Vance, the Second Lady of the United States of America, a ‘jeet,’ you have no place in the future of the conservative movement,” he went on, referring to a slur against Indians Fuentes has used in the past.
Ramaswamy’s rebuke of the most sinister currents within the MAGA movement appears to be an about-face, compared to the way he dealt with similar bigotry during his fledgling 2024 presidential campaign.
His campaign was a gauntlet, featuring 16-hour days and up to 12 town halls in a 24-hour period. And during those events, Iowans consistently questioned his Hindu faith and whether his heritage could be trusted in America.
He took those tough questions on the chin, but never outwardly condemned the prejudiced forces driving them. And on the campaign trail, he advocated for far-right immigration policies, including the deportation of American-born children of undocumented immigrants.
Two years out from his run for president, Ramawasmy on Wednesday previewed his AmericaFest rebuke in an op-ed for the New York Times. But to deliver that same message before thousands at the right-wing conference signaled a renewed dedication to rooting out bigotry within the party. And the applause he received in the packed Phoenix Convention Center indicated there was at least partial appetite for the notion.
Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.