Kyle Bristow to seek post as Youth Chair of MI-GOP

Last week, former chair and current communications director of Young Americans for Freedom Michigan State University, Kyle Bristow, announced he is seeking to become the Michigan Republican Party’s Youth Chair.

In a release sent out Monday, Bristow had this to say:

“Michigan’s next generation of Republicans need a leader who is committed to defeating the liberals and spreading conservatism,” said Bristow. “They want a youth chairman who is focused on them — someone who will get results.”

Bristow touts his experience as follows:

Bristow, 22, recently served as chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom chapters at MSU. He has been involved in numerous political campaigns and is a former intern at the Virginia-based Leadership Institute, which trains up-and-coming conservatives in the tactics they need to defeat liberals.

Under Bristow’s leadership, MSU YAF became the nation’s first university recognized and supported hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC tracks hate groups in the country and has listed MSU-YAF under the general hate category since 2007.

Since the listing, Bristow has increasingly used antisemitic, racist, and homophobic slurs, and has become a strident white nationalist. Following the listing, Saul Anuzis defended Bristow saying the MSU student was “exactly the kind of kid we want.”

Bristow has caused controversy on the East Lansing university campus by hosting speakers like British National Party chair Nick Griffin, whose party advocates a deportation of all non-white residents out of England; and assisted in bringing in Canadian Neo-Nazi Paul Fromm in April of this year to speak in Lansing.

Neol Siksai, president of the Log Cabin Club of Michigan, a Republican gay organization, was disappointed Bristow was seeking a leadership role in the MI-GOP.

“Let’s just say we don’t need a leader of an identified hate group as a GOP leader,” Siksai said in e-mail.