The white supremacist right is penetrating the mainstream right with increasing ease.

The Conservative Political Action Conference is the premier gathering of right-wing activists and politicians in America every year, and it serves as a bellwether for the direction of the conservative movement. This year Nazis showed up.

According to an NBC News report, ā€œa group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed ā€˜race scienceā€™ and antisemitic conspiracy theories.ā€ (Hitlerā€™s Nazi Party was officially called the ā€œNational Socialist German Workersā€™ Party.ā€) The reporter of the article has video of one of them giving a ā€œheil Hitlerā€-style salute in the lobby of the hotel where the conference took place and of other members of the group reportedly used the N-word.

This is a critical frog-in-boiling-water moment for the right: The mainstream organs of American conservatism are apparently acclimating to Nazis in their pot. That this group was able to mingle with participants at a high-profile conference, wasnā€™t kicked out of CPAC, and wasnā€™t appropriately condemned is a sign of how contiguous mainstream conservatism has become with white supremacist politics today.