Photo: From Casey Putsch’s X account.
A candidate seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for Ohio governor is releasing a fresh video on social media targeting front-runner Vivek Ramaswamy that is raising concerns for racist language and gun violence.
Note: Some may find the language in this report offensive.
In the video he posted on X, you can see Republican candidate for Ohio governor, Casey Putsch, walking into the frame.
“Hey Vivek, wanna play Cowboys vs. Indians?” A coup is heard before the gun is fired three times.
He then says, “Don’t worry, it’s a feather, not a dot,” using discriminatory words to distinguish a native from an Indian. Full stop, referring to the bindi worn by some Hindus and Jains.
“It is 100 percent a threat,” said Dr. Deepak Sarma, professor of religion and philosophy at Case Western Reserve University.
Sarma was horrified to see the coup targeting Republican Party leader Vivek Ramaswamy using racist language and weapons.
“This individual perpetuates and fuels xenophobia in the United States,” Sarma said. “And he does it in the most brazen way possible.”
In an interview, the coup stated that he was neither racist nor threatening.
“I also support the Second Amendment and exercise my First Amendment right to make jokes that many people find actually funny,” Putsch said.
The coup said that people are sensitive and publishes many posts on social media that “should not be taken seriously.”
He routinely posts about Indians like Ramaswamy, asking for all of them to be deported, including his fellow candidate.
“How could this be racist? Because there are people who should be deported to different places in the world and just because we could joke about deporting Vivek, what does that have anything to do with race other than the fact that he is questionably American, and that is a funny joke too,” Putsch said.
“How questionably American is he? He was born in Cincinnati,” the reporter replied.
“Yes, he was born into a family of foreigners from India who came here just to give birth to an anchor,” Putsch said.
Ramaswamy stated that his parents immigrated legally and his mother was a naturalized citizen. His father never took the citizenship test, he he said in 2023.
Sarma stated that dehumanizing comments are common in politics, and that the Republican Party and Ramaswamy have adopted policies such as mass deportations.
Ramaswamy also supported ending birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, he said in 2023.
“There’s a certain irony to it because he supported these positions and supported (President Donald) Trump, and Trump’s rhetoric has bitten him again,” Sarma said.
Ramaswamy’s team declined to comment, but his running mate, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, addressed general racism and violence in politics.
We couldn’t ask directly about the attack on Ramaswamy, and McColley couldn’t comment directly on it because of rules on discussing campaigns in the Senate.
“I don’t think it matters what party you belong to. We’ve seen political violence, often on the left. In some cases, we’ve seen it on the right,” McColley said. “Political violence should be condemned at every level.”
Sarma said not only should this type of rhetoric be condemned, but Republicans must work together to combat racism.
Trouble
Putsch explained that the event location was canceled after he agreed to hold the fundraiser in Columbus.
French bistro La Chatelaine apologized to customers and the community for agreeing to host him. The restaurant canceled the event after learning of his “pro-Nazi opinions and beliefs,” the restaurant said on Facebook.
Our January coup story delved into the coup’s previous comments on the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler and the Jewish people.
In our interview, we asked him about his comments that Hitler had good decisions and beliefs.
The coup was also met with controversy online after the announcement of an “evening in the beer hall”. Due to his name, Internet users associated it with Hitler’s failed coup d’état to overthrow the German government, known as the “basement coup”.
Putsch declared that he could not aid the fact that he was German and had a German surname.
However, ambiguity is not unusual in a coup, as he himself noted in his “Cowboys vs. Indians” remark.
Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau X AND Facebook.
This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and are published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication on other news outlets because it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
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