Earlier this week, the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) released a report detailing some pretty scary and damning research documenting the terrifying amount of state-level Republican lawmakers who were members of far-right Facebook groups, either within their own state or nationally. While we at PNNM have been tracking the rhetoric of many NM GOP electeds and calling out their racism, jingoism, homophobia, and general hate speech for years, these Facebook groups are even more documented proof that beyond the rhetoric, many Republican lawmakers are fully on-board with some pretty scary stuff.
IREHR identified twelve GOP members of the New Mexico Legislature who had ties to these private, hate-filled Facebook pages. Shockingly this list includes ALL four members of the GOP leadership from both the House and Senate; House Minority Floor Leader Rep. James Townsend and House Minority Whip Rep. Rod Montoya and Senate Minority Floor Leader Sen. Gregory Baca and Senate Minority Whip Sen. Craig Brandt.
Other notable GOP members are listed, chiefly among them being current GOP Gubernatorial Candidate, Rebecca Dow.
The IREHR report details the criteria and content of the far-right pages they used and were able to access to compile their report, but PNNM thought it would be worth doing a little further research into at least a couple of these pages to see what kind of content these pages were spreading and what these Republican lawmakers are exposing themselves and their constituents to.
Eight of the 12 named Republicans in New Mexico belonged to a page called “New Mexico Patriots” in the report. It appears the full name of the page is “New Mexico Patriots Advocacy Coalition” and it has over 1000 members and has shared some pretty extreme content since its inception in 2019.
Here are some screenshots of some of these active members of the NM Legislature on “NM Patriots”:
Now, what kind of stuff is happening on these private FB pages? Below we post one of, if not the most, terrifying posts we could find on the page, and for better or worse, it didn’t take us that long scrolling back through their timeline to find it. In September of last year, 2021, failed Libertarian candidate for multiple positions, A. Blair Dunn, son of also failed Libertarian candidate Aubrey Dunn, posted this on the “NM Patriots” page, and as you can see, actively calls for people to engage and spread it around. Below the screenshot we’ll post the documents but please be prepared, what you’re reading is nothing short of actual calls for secession and treason, and there’s a clear reference to parts of New Mexico even breaking away from the rest of the state to join this seditious group of Neo-confederate states.
And just to be crystal clear that these GOP leaders aren’t just quietly members of this group and idly scrolling past it, here’s a shot of Rebecca Dow, candidate for Governor, posting to the page THIS YEAR during the legislature:
So, while it’s one thing to simply hear or see that a dozen NM lawmakers are part of some secret fascist-adjacent Facebook pages, it’s something else entirely to see behind the curtain to the kind of stuff being shared on those pages. This is just ONE example from ONE of those pages. We’ll be bringing you more evidence as we can collect it in the coming days or weeks.
#StayTuned.