October 23, 2023 11:51 AM UTC

I'm Not A White Supremacist Anymore, Says Council Candidate

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• by: Colorado Pols

A budding controversy in a Fort Collins City Council race, as reported by the Fort Collins “It’s How They Used To Spell It Damn You All” Coloradoan, first raises alarms about the deeply troubling avowed white nationalist former politics of District 6 candidate Alexander Adams, a registered Republican, and then asks us all to consider the question: even if you believe a candidate’s claims to have disavowed racism, how long–if not forever–should someone have to wait after doing so to ask for the public’s trust as an elected official?

An internet search shows that in January 2020, Adams appeared on a Liberty Conservative Podcast to talk about his involvement with the “Groyper phenomenon that he helped to launch last year.”

“Groypers are a loose network of alt right figures who are vocal supporters of white supremacist and ‘America First’ podcaster Nick Fuentes,” the Anti-Defamation League says on its website.

“Groypers regularly confront mainstream conservative organizations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) for failing to promote a truly ‘America First’ agenda and for not being adequately ‘pro white,’ ” the Anti-Defamation League says.

We’ve never heard of Alexander Adams before this story to know whether attributing a founding role in the “Groyper” movement to him is accurate. We first heard about the white nationalist group known as the “Groypers” back in 2020 when far-right columnist and Colorado Springs resident Michelle Malkin was ripped by mainstream Republicans for her public embrace of the group, even calling herself their “Mommy.”

And it does appear that Adams at the very least had put…well, a lot of thought into his racist beliefs:

[I]n April 2020, Adams posted a series of tweets about brain size, intelligence and race in response to a Zoom debate with Fuentes. While he deleted his @KAlexanderAdams Twitter account, this particular thread remains archived on TWText.com, which “unrolls” long tweet threads so they can be more easily read. Essentially, the post claims Black people aren’t as intelligent as white people. [Pols emphasis]

So, that was 2020, which by any objective measure was not that long ago. But between April 2020 and the present day, as the Coloradoan continues, we are to believe that Alexander Adams has totally reformed himself–and not just enough to tour the country preaching against the hate he helped bring, which to be clear he is not doing–but to hold office as a Fort Collins City Councillor!

On Friday, he said: “I’ve been unassociated with these circles for years now, and I strongly disavow it. There’s a reason why I don’t have it up anymore.” That reason is he doesn’t want people following the same path, he said.

“If you repudiate these ideas, and you think they’re dangerous, which I do,” you don’t want it to remain posted, he said. “If you had an embarrassing moment online, you’d want people to not see it.”

We can all agree that nobody wanted to see Adams’ white supremacist musings. But now that we have seen them, it’s necessary to evaluate whether Adams’ repudiation of his three-year-old white supremacist views makes them any less disqualifying for public office. Again, it’s great that Adams says he’s not a white supremacist anymore, but the process of becoming a white supremacist to begin with raises, to put it mildly, the most basic questions about his judgment. What exactly has replaced those views, what caused his change of heart, and why should anyone trust it to be authentic?

We would argue that redemption in some cases is possible even for those who have held highly unsavory past viewpoints. But you have to be upfront about your past. If rejecting racism is in your story, you have to lead with that–otherwise it just looks like you’re trying to whitewash your past.

In 2023, that will never work again. Google is the revelator of our times.