A group of young Republicans repeatedly used racial slurs and discussed dozens of ways to murder black Americans in a WhatsApp group chat, the Miami Herald and The Floridian reported.The WhatsApp group was created last September by Republican Miami-Dade County Secretary Abel Alexander Carvajal, a 23-year-old sophomore at Florida International University School of Law and co-founder of the school’s Turning Point USA chapter, the report said. The organization was originally called “Uber Ret—s Yapping Inc.”Carvajal, who used the chat administrator name “MaoTze Abel,” a reference to Chinese Communist dictator Mei Zedong, conducted communications overseen by him and other members in which he and other members used variations of the “N” word and other slurs more than 400 times. Users also hurled anti-Semitic and deeply misogynistic slurs at Jewish women and joked about appealing to Nazi propaganda. Some users were later recruited by Carvajal into local party leadership, The Daily Beast reported.“Total death for black people!” Dariel Gonzalez, a former board member of the Florida International College Republicans, reportedly wrote. On another occasion, he claimed that an African American student left the organization after another user called her the “N” word. Thereafter, he applied to become a committee member of the city chapter of the Republican Party.Another member of the group identified by the Miami Herald was Miami Dade College student William Begerano, who last year tried to start an anti-abortion rights group at the school and who also appeared to have published a tirade in which he fantasized about killing black people.Sometime in early October, Ian Valdes, president of the academy’s Turning Point USA chapter, renamed the group chat “Gooning in Agartha.” These terms refer to masturbation in a trance state and to the mythical civilization considered the home of the Aryan race by members of the Nazi regime.After the band’s name was changed, Valdes joked that he would become “completely Afro,” while Gonzalez described Agatha as “heaven on earth.” Valdez further wrote that he “would never marry a Jew,” and Gonzalez suggested it was best to “keep your dick away from them” for fear of “having a little dick running around.”Florida International University confirmed to the Miami Herald that the group chat is now the subject of a criminal investigation.A local Republican source told The Floridian that Carvajal’s role as local party secretary “is not tokenistic; it has a responsibility to represent all members of the organization,” including the region’s 170,000 African Americans registered as Republican voters, “with professionalism and respect.”The Daily Beast reached out to the Miami-Dade Republican for comment. Carvajal told the Miami Herald that he typically ignores messages sent to the group, but “I guess in a way, I have some responsibility.”He also told The Floridian that he was unaware of the racist comments because they were posted to his WhatsApp group and he sometimes appeared to respond to them. Asked if he would resign over the slurs, he said: “No.” “Of course not, because you know, the information conveyed in a chat is not mine.”Miami-Dade County Republican Party Chairman Kevin Cooper told the Miami Herald, “Anyone associated with this conversation should resign immediately.”“I am appalled and appalled by these remarks. Racism and anti-Semitism have no place in the Republican Party,” he said. “I am proud to be the first Jewish chair of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, a party comprised of diverse members from all races and backgrounds.”The reports mark the second time a leaked group chat has exposed violent and racist language from young members of the Republican Party.In October, Politico obtained thousands of messages from a private group run by a senior member of the New York State Young Republicans in which users wrote “I love Hitler” and referred to black Americans as “watermelon people.”In a log of an exchange with the Florida organization, Valdez wrote, “If this chat gets leaked, we’re screwed.” Gonzalez responded, “This isn’t my worst,” to which Valdez replied: “Some of the ones I’ve seen on Telegram are definitely worse.”
