So, This Is Interesting… 🪳

Multiple speakers and a venue have pulled out of the True Texas Project’s July conference after The Texas Tribune reported on its plans to amplify white nationalist figures and rhetoric.https://t.co/hJ16VGvyyu

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) June 13, 2024

True Texas Project is a key part of a powerful political network that West Texas oil tycoons, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks have used to push the state GOP and Legislature to adopt their hardline opposition to immigration, LGBTQ+ rights and public education. Dunn and Wilks are by far the biggest donors to the Republican Party of Texas, and have used their influence to purge the party of more moderate lawmakers and survive a high-profile scandal last year over racists and antisemites employed by groups they fund.  

Formerly known as the NE Tarrant Tea Party, True Texas Project was crucial in the rise of Texas’ ultraconservative movement throughout the 2010s. It rebranded after McCarty wrote on social media that she sympathized with the gunman who murdered 23 Hispanic people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 — one of many mass shooters who have been motivated by a belief in Great Replacement Theory. 

“I don’t condone the actions, but I certainly understand where they came from,” she wrote.

And then somebody turned on the light, and the cockroaches scattered.

Multiple speakers and a venue have pulled out of a prominent Texas activist group’s July conference after The Texas Tribune reported on its plans to amplify white nationalist figures and rhetoric. 

Billed as the 15th anniversary celebration for True Texas Project, the conference agenda claims that there is a “war on white America,” and urges attendees to embrace once-fringe ideologies such as Christian nationalism or the Great Replacement Theory, which claims that there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to destroy white people through immigration, interracial marriage or the LGBTQ+ community. 

On Wednesday, the Tribune reported that the conference lineup features figures with ties to antisemites and extremists, including Paul Gottfried, a far-right author who mentored neo-Nazi Richard Spencer. Since then, at least three of the 12 listed speakers have said they will no longer partake in the event, two of whom said they were unaware of the themes and lineup when they agreed to participate. 

“I was unaware of the racialist themes of the conference and language of the other sessions related to it until the past couple of days,” Todd Bensman, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, told the Tribune on Thursday. “I categorically reject white replacement theory and never write or speak about it. I’m not interested in any of that stuff.” 

Prominent GOP donor and former state Sen. Don Huffines, who was listed as a speaker, condemned the conference Wednesday, saying it is a “dumb and inaccurate way to promote the Republican agenda” and that he “was never given a lineup of speakers or topics.” 

The Texas Public Policy Foundation confirmed Thursday that Ammon Blair, a senior fellow who focuses on immigration, had also pulled out of the event. 

The conference prompted a wave of condemnations this week. 

“Every good and [decent] and honorable person associated with this event should back out,” Travis County GOP Chair Matt Mackowiak wrote on X. “Right now. This moment.”

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The love that still dare not speak its name; not even in Texas.