| | | | |  | | By Jesús A. Rodríguez | With help from Jesse Naranjo, Brakkton Booker, Rishika Dugyala, and Teresa Wiltz
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POLITICO illustration/Photo courtesy of Daniel Martinez HoSang | It's Jan. 6, 2023, the second anniversary of the siege on the Capitol. This week, the speaker feud in the House became the longest one since before the Civil War as the House GOP (kind of) coalesces around a deal and President Joe Biden announces a new policy of curbing asylum. But first, let's talk about one underexplored angle of the Jan. 6 attacks. Enrique Tarrio is an Afro-Cuban Miami native. He's charged with sedition for his role in planning the "Stop the Steal" protests that turned violent. Ali Abdul-Razaq Akbar is a Black and Arab man whose single mother lived in Section 8 housing. Better known as Ali Alexander, he takes credit for organizing the pro-Trump protests challenging the results of the election post-2020. Kashyap Patel was born in New York to Gujarati Indian parents. He's a loyal supporter of the former president and a former top defense aide with a front-row seat to the security response of that day, which he has defended on his podcast. | 
Kash Patel, former Trump White House official and chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, speaks at a rally in Minden, Nev., Friday, Oct. 8, 2022. | José Luis Villegas/AP Photo | Even taking a cursory look through the list of indictments that the Department of Justice has brought against nearly 1,000 Americans who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol attacks reveals more than a handful of names that stand out: Rasha Abual-Ragheb. Hector Emmanuel Vargas Santos. Tam Dinh Pham. It's a telltale sign of just how many people of color and Americans with recent immigrant backgrounds have been involved, in some way or another, in the events of Jan. 6 and the larger ecosystem of election denialism. One study from the University of Chicago found that most of those who took part in the Capitol insurrection hailed from counties whose white populations have been declining. Daniel Martinez HoSang, a professor at Yale and the co-author of the book "Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity," says the involvement of people of color in this movement is not entirely by accident. His book explores how conservative activists of color are using their race to make the case that their cause shouldn't be about white supremacy, but about wresting control away from a demonized elite. "Many elements on the right," he tells The Recast, "understand clearly they are not going to win the support and base they need if they're viewed as an all-white formation." To mark the second anniversary of the Capitol attacks, we talk about the appeal of right-wing politics to people of color — and how racial politics will continue playing a key role in the GOP.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. THE RECAST: Let's start by talking about your book. What did your research reveal? HOSANG: What we were trying to do is chart the changes in the ways that race was being talked about, thought about, approached and strategized on the right, ranging from elected officials to militia patriot groups on the far right and think tanks. The argument is not that race is as critical as ever to Republican and conservative politics as it is in national politics, but that the way it's deployed and talked about has actually shifted. We can see that both in the number of elected officials of color, especially Black and Latino officials, running as Republican candidates and the presence of people of color in far-right groups. THE RECAST: You were doing your research as the Proud Boys were ascendant. How did you decide which groups to focus on and what the implications were? HOSANG: We were both based in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest when we wrote the book, so one of the groups that we looked at in particular was Patriot Prayer and the particular role of men of color in that organization. The way that they framed themselves as a multiracial group that was on the far right helped to broaden their support among even their base of that organization, even if it was predominantly white. | 
Will Johnson, foreground, speaks next to Joey Gibson at a news conference held by right-wing group Patriot Prayer in Pacifica, Calif., Saturday, Aug. 26, 2017. | Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo | Especially in the wake of Charlottesville in 2017, which many on the right viewed as a debacle in that it suggested that the right today was no different — that it was a Nazi right, in the vein of "Jews will not replace us." Many elements on the right are weary of that framing — they understand clearly they are not going to win the support and base they need if they're viewed as an all-white formation and one that can only talk in the language of white dominance, white exclusion, and of European cultural superiority. In interviews we had, they were very clear about that. | | | | 
| Every week, we sit down with diverse and influential characters who are shaking up politics. Who should we profile next? Let us know. Email us at therecast@politico.com.
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There's always going to be a contingent who think in those terms, but it's always going to be a marginal contingent numerically.
The [broader] vision is not of a white homeland, as it was a generation ago among many kinds of Aryan Brotherhood and Nazi formations. It's not that racial politics aren't central to it, but that's not the vision they're trying to build the far right around today. THE RECAST: What would that vision be? HOSANG: I would say the vision includes a kind of demonization that is consistent with the mainline vision of most Republicans that there's a corrupt left, whether it takes the form of Antifa or even [Joe] Biden or [Anthony] Fauci. And then the second aspect of the vision is about restoration — of the nation, the family, safety, respect, military authority, etc.
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| Those two dominant narratives are actually quite compatible with multiracial incorporation. Byron Donalds, a congressman from Florida who has been put forth by the Freedom Caucus as their exemplar for speaker, shows this. He is deeply, deeply conservative, but he will actually articulate his own political maturation as a child of a single parent [who] knows what it means to have to work for what you have, to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, to depend on the nation's greatness to create possibility. A generation ago, someone with Donalds' political biography would have been much more likely to have been viewed as the product of a so-called broken family and would have had no credibility. This has shifted now, to where the very same life story and biography is now a testament to the authenticity of his conservative commitments. THE RECAST: What do you make of the nonwhite faces participating in Jan. 6? To what extent was the race of these prominent "Stop the Steal" leaders important? HOSANG: It's another example of the changing complexity of right-wing politics today. From the images that day, you saw Confederate flags side by side with [Ali] Alexander as in many ways the primary organizer and leader of it. Those two things, which seem incompatible, have been brewing and developing for some time. The notion of reclaiming the nation's government from a corrupt elite — there are people of color who can see themselves in that project and don't see themselves as tolerating bigotry and white supremacy, but that they have an investment in the movement too. Now, there's no way that a large number of people of color or a large number of Black people leading [the attacks] would have been tolerated. But the politics of the far right can accommodate a nominal amount of [nonwhite] incorporation. And I don't mean that in an instrumental way, as if Tarrio or Alexander were drafted as a branding effort — they are true believers, and they really see themselves in that project.
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Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, left, returns to a conference room for a deposition with the Jan. 6 committee Dec. 9, 2021, on Capitol Hill. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images | Liberals embraced the notion of a multiracial populace a generation ago, and every consumer-oriented corporation does it today through its language. It's not a surprise that even groups on the right would also understand that if you're going to claim popular appeal and authority, you can't be seen as an all-white formation. It doesn't work for Nike and it won't work for groups on the right either. THE RECAST: What do you mean when you say a large number of people of color leading the attacks wouldn't have been tolerated? HOSANG: It would have been into long-standing racist tropes of anarchy, claims that their motivation was primarily violence and disorder for its own sake, and that the only appropriate response to control them would have been violence by the police. THE RECAST: On the visual point, you also mentioned the Confederate flags. How can a credible case be made that while some people brought in the Confederate flags, that the movement as a whole is not aiming for a "Lost Cause" redux? HOSANG: In a literal sense, the Lost Cause was about a restoration of an apartheid order of white elite state-makers and employers over a nonwhite populace. That flag indeed had a lot of racist and populist imagery, but it doesn't necessarily mean they want the same social order as 100 years ago; symbols do lots of complex work and they change in different ways. | 
Supporters listen to President Donald Trump speak as a Confederate-themed and other flags flutter in the wind during a rally in Washington preceding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo | THE RECAST: How does this play out for people — from upstanding everyday citizens to the House Jan. 6 committee — who are trying to convince others that they should reject this movement because they view it as nostalgic for a racist era? HOSANG: Democrats used [this argument] time and time again in this election to be able to say [the right represents] the forces of extremism. Now clearly, they were looking to overturn an election. So I'm not saying that they weren't actually deeply threatening to these institutions. But increasingly, as more and more people of color agree that there's a kind of demonic left taking over, it's going to require liberals and those on the left to actually criticize the politics and offer alternatives to this. To the extent the right is there to say, "Look, if you're interested in dramatic and profound change, we represent insurgent energy," they're filling a void that has been left open by centrist liberals who are reluctant to call for large-scale social transformations. THE RECAST: Is there a way in which this is all self-serving, that conservatives of color see a way to use their race to gain prominence for their own benefit? HOSANG: I don't think so. They don't see themselves as being in a kind of transactional arrangement, where they're being opportunistic or careerist. They see themselves as deeply committed to conservative principles. |  | Tim Scott is an excellent example of this. When Trump signed his big tax cut in 2017, his landmark piece of legislation, Tim Scott was at that press conference. And some liberal hecklers would be like, "You're just put up there as window dressing." And Tim Scott was like, "Mmmmm, I helped write this. I'll talk to you about any portion of it." I think there's a fantasy that liberals and people on the left can just pull up the curtain and reveal that this is all just a show. And I think why that won't work is that those figures take their conservative commitments very, very seriously.
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We may not have a new speaker of the House until Monday, though some cracks in the opposition are beginning to show... If you're looking for a break from all the drama on the Hill, here are some good reads and pop culture recs to tide you over the weekend.
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Frederick Gillett was reelected speaker of the House of Representatives in 1923 after days of deadlock. | Smith Archive/Alamy | Scenes From Last Century — Historian and POLITICO Magazine contributing writer Joshua Zeitz has this dispatch from 1923, when progressives thwarted the effort to elect a speaker. Fund the Steal? — Jessica Piper and Zach Montellaro report that corporations gave more than $10 million to Republicans who echoed Trump's stolen election claims or voted against certifying the election results after promising to turn off the cash faucet. V. V. Ganeshananthan's latest, "Brotherless Night," centers on 16-year-old Sashi as she grapples with her dreams in the face of the Sri Lankan civil war. "Breaking Bad"'s Giancarlo Esposito is back, this time starring in a heist caper, "Kaleidoscope." Plot twist: You can watch the eight episodes in any order. Jake Blount takes on Tiny Desk to bring us energetic, futuristic Black folk music.
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| Adrienne Su's thoughtful poem "The Days" reflects on the intersection of writing and memory. The Brazilian drama "Mars One" observes a family coping in the aftermath of far-right extremist Jair Bolsonaro's presidential election victory. It's streaming on Netflix now.
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| Actor-producers Viola Davis and Julius Tennon give us nosy people a tour of their Los Angeles home with Architectural Digest. Check out Quavo's moving tribute to his Migos bandmate Takeoff, who was killed in November.
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| TikTok of the Day: Memory test
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