From Staff Reports

Following the May 17 primary defeat of U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn to state Sen. Chuck Edwards, R- Hendersonville, Vanity Fair magazine, widely regarded as politically left-leaning, published a story on May 20 headlined,  “Madison Cawthorn’s farewell to Congress is a signal to a dark extrenist online movement,” with a subhead of  “This isn’t a regular level of bitterness.”

“Cawthorn may have lost his primary, but he remains on a mission; the 26-year-old Republican vowed on Instagram to exact revenge against the ‘cowardly and weak’ members of his party. But his post wasn’t just one of bitterness. His conceding message seemed to embrace a fascistic pro–Donald Trump meme with dark and violent origins,” Vanity Fair stated in its story.

“‘I am on a mission now to expose those who say and promise one thing yet legislate and work towards another, self-profiteering, globalist goal,’ he wrote in the May 19 Instagram post. ‘The time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end,’ the post read, before it was edited to say, ‘genteel politics.’

 â€œCawthorn then hailed ‘the rise of the new right,’ a rebranded strain of paleoconservatism popular among young pro-Trump Republicans. ‘It’s time for Dark MAGA to truly take command,’ he continued. ‘We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered.’”

Vanity Fair added, “On its face, the post can be read as the ramblings of a resentful soon-to-be ex-politician. But Cawthorn’s shout-out to ‘Dark MAGA,’ an apparent reference to the latest meme movement launched by the terminally online alt-right, is a window into a fanatic faction born out of Trump’s loss in 2020 and his ongoing denial of Joe Biden’s victory.

“It envisions ‘a vengeful, dictatorial Trump returning to office in 2024 to vanquish Washington’s neoliberal and neoconservative order while ruling the country as a Christian authoritarian.’ (Think, Napoleon retaking the throne after escaping from Elba.)  

“At its core, Dark MAGA is a Pinterest mood-board exercise for young white nationalists who demand that Trump embrace fascist symbolism in his second term. It is also aspirational fan fiction — à la the America depicted in Philip K. Dick’s novel ‘The Man in the High Castle,’ in which the U.S. is incorporated into the Third Reich — and a way for alt-right zoomers to differentiate themselves from middle-aged and elderly Trump supporters.

“ Much of the movement’s ideology is masked with multiple layers of irony, but in one ‘#DarkMAGA’ post, an apparent proponent of the movement wrote that Dark MAGA calls for ‘Torture, nuclear holocaust, genocide, extermination.’ It is unclear if Cawthorn is aware of the meme’s origins, or if a sanitized version trickled into his social media feeds,” the magazine stated.

 Vanity Fair said it contacted Cawthorn’s office for comment, but did not receive a response.