RNC speaker criticized for several actions seen as dogwhistles to alt-right
Congressional candidate Madison Cawthorn Image by Courtesy of Cawthorn for North Carolina
By David Ian Klein August 26, 2020
A day after the last-minute ouster of a scheduled speaker at the Republican National Convention due to accusations of antisemitic Twitter activity, another guest is also attracting criticism.
Madison Cawthorn, 24, is the Republican nominee in a solid-red North Carolina congressional district. He has also garnered attention for a series of posts and actions that detractors say are dogwhistles to the so-called alt-right.
On a 2017 trip to Germany, Cawthorn made a point of visiting the Eagle’s Nest, Adolf Hitler’s vacation home. He later later posted pictures of the visit on Instagram, saying it was part of his “bucket list” and referring to the Nazi leader by the German honorific Fuhrer. (The caption also said the Eagle’s Nest was a place where “Supreme Evil shared laughs and good times with his compatriots.”)
Cawthorn deleted the posts earlier this month.
Cawthorn’s real estate company is called SPQR Holdings, a reference to the Roman motto “Senatus Populusque Romanus,” or “the Senate and People of Rome.” The phrase was a commonplace reference to Roman government in antiquity, but in modern times has been coopted by white nationalist groups.
In one of his campaign videos, Cawthorn can be seen displaying a Spartan helmet on his chest as he aims a rifle. The Spartan helmet, in addition to being the logo of Michigan State University sports teams, has also been appropriated as the logo for the Oathkeepers, one of the largest anti-government militia groups in the United States, with some 30,000 members as of 2016, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Cawthorn has denied that he is racist, noting that his fiancee is half-Black.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
