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Representative Madison Cawthorn may have lost his primary, but hes 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 wasnt just one of bitterness. His conceding message seemed to embrace a fascistic proDonald Trump meme with dark and violent origins.

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 Thursday 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. Cawthorn then hailed the rise of the new right, a rebranded strain of paleoconservatism popular among young pro-Trump Republicans. Its 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.

On its face, the post can be read as the ramblings of a resentful soon-to-be ex-politician. But Cawthorns 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 Trumps loss in 2020 and his ongoing denial of Joe Bidens victory. It envisions a vengeful, dictatorial Trump returning to office in 2024 to vanquish Washingtons 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 la the America depicted in Philip K. Dicks novel The Man in the High Castle, in which the U.S. is incorporated into the Third Reichand a way for alt-right zoomers to differentiate themselves from middle-aged and elderly Trump supporters.

Much of the movements 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 memes origins, or if a sanitized version trickled into his social media feeds. Vanity Fair contacted his office for comment but did not receive a response.

Cawthorn appears to have identified his Dark MAGA allies; in the Instagram post, he thanked a number of America First Patriots, many of whom stood by him amid the torrent of scandals he was at the center of in the past few months. His list of acknowledgements included representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and Paul Gosar; and Tucker Carlson, the unofficial mouthpiece of the New Right. Gosar replied to Cawthornspost by writing that his outgoing colleague has a bright future as a leader, adding, I have no doubt you will be back and better than ever.

The lawmakers posts come two days after Republican voters in North Carolinas 11th Congressional District nominated state Senator Chuck Edward over Cawthorn. Though Cawthorn did not explicitly name the cowardly Republicans he plans to depose, he has many detractors in elected office. Among them is GOP senator Thom Tillis, who spearheaded the push to unseat Cawthorn and openly backed Edward. Tillis, North Carolinas junior senator, first turned on Cawthorn in March when the freshman member claimed that his colleagues used cocaine in front of him and had invited him to an orgy. (Cawthorn has since walked back the claims, according to House minority leader Kevin McCarthy.)

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Madison Cawthorns Farewell to Congress Is a Signal to Dark MAGA - Vanity Fair