<\/p>\n
File art from the Turning Point Believers Summit at the Palm Beach County Civic Center on Friday, July 26, 2024. <\/p>\n
PHOTO BY AL DIAZ<\/p>\n
adiaz@miamiherald.com<\/p>\n
The secretary of Miami-Dade County\u2019s Republican Party started a group chat primarily for conservative students last fall \u2014 and within three weeks it was filled with racist slurs, someone wrote dozens of ways of violently killing Black people and the chat was renamed after what one member described as \u201cNazi heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n
In WhatsApp conversations leaked to the Miami Herald, participants used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as \u201cwhores,\u201d used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people and mused about Hitler\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n
Interspersed throughout were discussions about events promoting the Republican Party at Florida International University. The school told the Herald the chat logs are part of an ongoing criminal investigation.<\/p>\n
The conversations included some of the campus\u2019 top conservative leaders: the county GOP secretary, FIU\u2019s Turning Point USA chapter president and the former College Republicans recruitment chair.<\/p>\n
The group chat \u2014 verified by two people in the group \u2014 reveals the extent of racism and extremism within the highest ranks of campus Republican Party leadership in Miami at a time Florida\u2019s Republicans are reckoning with an increasingly emboldened far right.<\/p>\n
Another member of the chat, William Bejerano \u2014 who tried to start<\/a> a pro-life group at Miami Dade College \u2014 was the primary user of the n-word in the group. At one point, he posted a block of text calling for dozens of acts of extreme violence against Black people, who he referred to using the n-word, including crucifying, beheading and dissecting people. Bejerano hung up the phone when reached by the Herald.<\/p>\n Dariel Gonzalez, the College Republicans\u2019 recruitment chairman at the time, responded in the chat: \u201cHow edgy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEw you had colored professors?!\u201d Gonzalez wrote at another point. \u201cI reguse [sic] to be indoctrinated by the coloreds.\u201d He told the group he used the term \u201ccolored\u201d because, \u201cI was told we cant say black anymore.\u201d A couple days later, he added: \u201cAvoid the coloreds like the plague.\u201d He did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The group chat members \u2014 which included some women \u2014 also frequently discussed sex, sometimes describing women as \u201cwhores\u201d and at one point using the k-word, a slur for Jewish people, to describe women they avoid.<\/p>\n Gonzalez said, \u201cYou can f\u2013k all the [k-word] you want. Just don\u2019t marry them and procreate.\u201d Ian Valdes, the Turning Point USA chapter president, responded, \u201cI would def not marry a Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n A few minutes later, Valdes changed the group chat\u2019s name from one that included a slur for people with disabilities, \u201cUber [r-word] Yapping,\u201d to \u201cGooning in Agartha.\u201d<\/p>\n Gooning is a slang term for male masturbation. Agartha, a mythical white civilization promoted by the Nazi politician Heinrich Himmler, has been repopularized by the young online right<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gonzalez described Agartha to the group chat as, \u201cNazi heaven sort of,\u201d and Valdes explained it, \u201cesoteric nazism essentially.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not something you would know about unless you had spent a considerable amount of time in white supremacist circles,\u201d said Heidi Beirich, who researches extremism and co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was something Himmler was obsessed about and it\u2019s basically a mythical white homeland in the center of the Earth. If you\u2019re using the term Agartha, you have spent some time reading about white supremacy and Nazis, there\u2019s just no way around it,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re embedded in the culture.\u201d<\/p>\n Frequently, chat members discussed Republican politics and race.<\/p>\n Valdes wrote at one point, \u201cWe need to have a moratorium on immigration temporarily unless it\u2019s someone from a first world country.\u201d He then clarified: \u201cYeah I obviously mean whites.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout the two and a half weeks of chat logs between September and October obtained by the Herald, the secretary of the county\u2019s Republican Party, Abel Carvajal, participated occasionally and deleted some messages, but didn\u2019t shut the chat down.<\/p>\n Republican Party divisions<\/p>\n The messages among the party\u2019s top campus leaders last fall reveal the extent to which the party is splintered by its extremist online right and concerned about their growing political power in Florida.<\/p>\n Leading Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, who is Black, denounced what he called the \u201cwoke right\u201d during a speech<\/a> in Miami last fall, a phenomenon he said has risen in the wake of the killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n Donalds seemed to be using the term as a stand-in for the far right, describing it as those that oppose all immigration and espouse \u201csoft bigotry\u201d on social media.<\/p>\n His opponent James Fishback \u2014 a relative political unknown who has used racist and white nationalist rhetoric<\/a> throughout his campaign \u2014 is highlighting the generational divide around extremism on the right in Florida.<\/p>\n One University of North Florida poll found that while only 6% of likely GOP primary voters supported Fishback, he had the support of 32% of 18-34 year olds, four times what Byron Donalds got among that age group.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing I know is the conservative movement has always been steeped in respect for other people, respect for religious liberty, respect for economic liberty,\u201d Donalds told reporters during a campaign stop in Miami this week.<\/p>\n The Turning Point USA chapter president, however, described his conservative politics differently to the group chat.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m more authoritarian than you buddy, I think the church should run the government,\u201d Valdes wrote at one point. During another conversation, Valdes said, \u201cfiscally conservative all the way is so gay\u201d and \u201cHitler himself wasn\u2019t a fiscal conservative.\u201d<\/p>\n Valdes previously described himself as a \u201ccampaign employee\u201d on Fishback\u2019s Miami team on Instagram. He has since removed that title. He did not respond to texts or phone calls from the Herald.<\/p>\n In response to questions about the group chats, Miami-Dade County Republican Party Chairman Kevin Cooper said \u201canyone associated with this chat should resign immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cI am shocked and appalled at these statements. Racism and antisemitism have no place in the Republican Party. I am proud to be the first Jewish chairman of the Miami Dade Republican Party, which is comprised of a diverse group of members from every race and background.\u201d<\/p>\n The messages between campus conservative leaders come in the wake of Florida barring certain conversations about race and racism in university classrooms, including the 2022 so-called \u201cStop WOKE Act.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWith the legislation that\u2019s being passed in different states, including here in Florida \u2014 and you could argue even with some of them Trump executive orders about race he signed immediately after being sworn into office \u2014 I think it\u2019s sending a signal that you don\u2019t have to hide your racism anymore,\u201d said University of Florida political scientist Sharon Austin.<\/p>\n The result, she said, is the emboldening of the Florida students who hold discriminatory views and a silencing of those teaching against them at Florida\u2019s public schools.<\/p>\n Beirich, the extremism researcher, said the signals from the highest ranks of the Republican party from the White House \u2014 including social media posts echoing white supremacists messages<\/a> \u2014 are being heard across the party.<\/p>\n \u201cClearly the Trump administration doesn\u2019t have any problem with these extremist views, so we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that young Republicans would be trading in this stuff,\u201d Beirich said. \u201cIt\u2019s being sanctioned by the highest office, it\u2019s not disqualifying anymore in the GOP.\u201d<\/p>\n Carvajal \u2014 the county party secretary who started the chat and is a third year law student at FIU \u2014 said that he had not seen much of the content in the group chat until he was contacted by the Herald about the logs last week.<\/p>\n When he opened WhatsApp on his phone and scrolled up to the conversations last fall while on a call with a Herald reporter, Carvajal said he was shocked by the gruesome calls for violence against Black people.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been five months since this was sent and this is the first time I\u2019ve seen this message,\u201d Carvajal said. \u201cI guess to an extent, I bear some responsibility, cause I created a chat. But if I had seen this at the moment, I would have removed [Bejerano] from the chat. I probably would have even blocked his number.\u201d<\/p>\n He said he generally ignored the thousands of messages in the group, and logs show he did not participate as much as others. But the county party official, who was the most senior Republican political leader in the chat, was not entirely absent either.<\/p>\n The WhatsApp logs show Carvajal deleted a total 14 messages sent by other participants in the chat and 42 of his own messages before the Herald obtained the logs, so the full extent of his participation is not clear. He said many of the messages he deleted were flashy stickers and he was \u201cdecluttering the chat.\u201d<\/p>\n Carvajal said he created the group after Kirk was killed and the campus\u2019 Turning Point USA chat was limited to administrators only.<\/p>\n \u201cMy biggest regret is that in doing that, I facilitated this kind of deranged stuff being out there,\u201d Carvajal said. \u201cI\u2019m at a loss of words.\u201d<\/p>\n When the Herald asked the school\u2019s police department for any records related to the new group chats, a private law firm contracted by the school said they are unavailable because they \u201cconstitute Criminal Investigative Information.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement about the chat logs, media relations director Madeline Bar\u00f3 said, \u201cThe university takes very seriously any allegation of discriminatory conduct. The alleged conduct is under review and will be addressed in accordance with the university\u2019s policies and applicable law.\u201d<\/p>\n FIU and its Turning Point chapter have had a group chat problem before. In 2018, chat logs obtained by the Miami New Times in a group called \u201cTPUSA FIU Fun\u201d included messages joking about rape, liking cartoon pornography featuring drawings of underaged girls and reminding members to not be racist and anti-Semitic.<\/p>\n At the time, 75 faculty signed on to a letter calling on the school\u2019s administration to revoke the organizational status of the campus\u2019 Turning Point USA chapter.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an appalling set of practices that go well beyond any reasonable interpretation of \u2018free speech,\u2019\u201d faculty wrote. The school\u2019s Student Government Association overwhelmingly passed a resolution asking<\/a> for the removal of any \u201crecognition, presence, funding and privileges\u201d for Turning Point USA.<\/p>\n The campus still has an active TPUSA chapter.<\/p>\n At one point in the group chats last fall, various members debated how to describe a woman, with Gonzalez, the former recruitment chair, using terms like \u201chalf breed\u201d and \u201cmongrel,\u201d to which Valdes, the Turning Point chapter president, responded, \u201cIf this chat gets leaked we\u2019re so cooked lmao.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis isnt even my worst one,\u201d Gonzalez responded.<\/p>\n Valdes said: \u201cI\u2019m in a few on telegram that are definitely worse.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published March 4, 2026 at 7:39 PM.<\/p>\n U.S. Congressman Byron Donalds speaks during an \u201cAsk Byron Anything\u201d meet-and-greet event at the Versailles Cuban Cuisine restaurant in Little Havana, as part of his campaign to run in the 2026 Republican primary for Florida governor, on Monday, March 02, 2026. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com <\/p>\n
A supporter listens to former President Donald Trump speak during the Turning Point Believers Summit at the Palm Beach County Civic Center on Friday, July 26, 2024. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com Creator of the chat responds<\/p>\n
View of the Florida International University main entrance on SW 8th Street at the Modesto Maidique Campus in Miami, on Wednesday March 15, 2023. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com Not the first time<\/p>\n