The battle over the ‘woke reich’

OPINION:

For the past several days, I have watched as a splinter faction of the right — often referred to as the “woke right” or, informally, the “woke reich” — dissolved into hysterics over reaction to Tucker Carlson’s softball interview with Nick Fuentes, a guy who has repeatedly said he admired Josef Stalin, praised Adolf Hitler and called second lady Usha Vance a “jeet.” He has even been accused by his fans of streaming gay porn during his livestream.

Criticism of how the interview was conducted was described as an “attack.” Refusal to entertain the ideas stated (and those curiously unexamined) was met with accusations of “cancellation.”

If those accusations sound familiar, it’s because the left has used them relentlessly for the past two years as a way to police speech.

When did the right become so weak, emotionally undisciplined and sensitive that it borrowed from the left to malign legitimate criticism, free association and accountability as “canceling?” Do we need to provide some on the right with safe spaces now? Bad ideas deserve criticism.

Why are we expected to reexamine the intimated potential benefits of Nazism, Stalinism and all the other sides of the same tyrannical turd? How do these views reconcile with Christianity and the concept of “America First”?

We have already debated all those ideas. The “debate” ended in 1945. There is barely a family in the U.S. whose legacy is unaltered by the cost of that victory against that godless, anti-Christian worldview. Communism lost the debate when the Berlin Wall fell. Americans don’t owe anyone a reexamination of these defeated ideologies just because some digital shock jock who thinks politics began the day he was born thinks they’re “cool,” just as no one is obligated to venture behind their local quick mart and question the drunk bum passed out behind the dumpster on his thoughts regarding important policy.

I interviewed The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, last week after he recorded a disastrous video in which he described criticism of Mr. Carlson’s interview as “venomous,” “divisive” and akin to “cancel culture.” He seemed caught off guard when I asked whether stating that one “hates” Christian Zionists, as Mr. Carlson has previously done, was “venomous” or “divisive.” Mr. Roberts answered in the affirmative. I don’t dislike Mr. Roberts, and many of my friends and colleagues, Jewish and Christian alike, have complimented the organization’s work under his tenure. Mr. Roberts may deserve the praise, but all this good work was nearly destroyed by a video that seemed to be recorded before he ever saw the Fuentes interview.

This wasn’t some decade-old, bad-taste joke on X. It was the presentation of a perfidious race hustler, the White version of Al Sharpton, as a worthy character to consider within American politics. You can argue otherwise, but the outright refusal to question Mr. Fuentes on his sizable body of identity politics betrays such a defense.

The irony of the people crying “cancellation” is that they are doing so to deny others of their free association. They complain that an election season isn’t the time to argue over this with our own side, but they have no problem demanding that everyone entertain these ideas during an election season.

However, a larger battle is at stake. It’s a battle not just for the soul of the right but also for the future of America. Thousands of brand new accounts exploded on social media platforms, like someone popped the egg sac of a horribly illiterate social media spider that hates Jewish people, and all its spawn sped across multiple platforms to cast webs. People who can’t pronounce “Knesset” are eager to tell you how Israel owns the United States, but please pay no attention to Qatari dollars flowing into American universities and to American “influencers.” You’re being played.

Granted, most of these accounts are most likely phones in racks somewhere in Pakistan and SIM farms fueled by Chinese dollars in conjunction with Qatari and Iranian friends, all to weaken the right at its most effective and cut the alliance between the U.S. and Israel. However, not all of them are. Many are very real people.

It’s a mistake to not engage these people, but you don’t engage them by holding up immoral ideas as equal to moral ones, and you don’t malign others’ refusal to freely associate with bad ideas as “canceling.” You don’t ingratiate yourself with Fuentes’ audience by demanding equal consideration of bad ideas that some hosts seem too terrified to even ask about face-to-face. The right’s commentariat shouldn’t debase itself with such digital prostitution. It’s the political version of OnlyFans.

People who type “Christ is King” in their social media profiles shouldn’t betray Christ’s commands on fashioning false idols of race and background. Righty talking heads shouldn’t make idols out of clicks, either.

Last thought: The difference between the right and the left on idiotic ideologies is that the left mainstreams them and makes it their statement of purpose (see Mamdani). The right goes to war with itself to course correct. We are not the same.

• Dana Loesch is the host of the No. 1 nationally syndicated weekday talk program, “Dana Show,” a bestselling author and a Second Amendment advocate. She lives in Dallas.