…Is your enemy’s enemy. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Being the enemy of your enemy does not make them allies, friends, comrades in political arm, or even good people, nor does it mean that they feel that way towards you even if they may pretend otherwise. And certainly, this does not and can not put them beyond criticism.
When the only criteria for allowing someone inside your own movement is that they are the enemy of your enemy, then you have failed to gatekeep. This leads to being taken over from the inside by people whos values and goals are fundamentally at odds with your own. But they shield themselves from criticism by insisting on a manichean worldview that you are either with them or else you are with your and theirs enemy. This denigrates and degrades yourselves and what you thought you stood for, becoming nothing but a tool.
To this end they seek to minimize or even dismiss their own loathsomeness by hype focusing on that common enemy in order to distract you from truly thinking about what they actually believe and the goals they intend to achieve. This defensiveness, dismissiveness, and distraction is clear evidence that they are anything but your friend; even actual friends and comrades can disagree and there is even an obligation to tell them if you feel they’ve gotten out of line and visa versa, after all. When they vowed to “fight like the Left”, clearly they meant that to include elevation above criticism, as deemed appropriate for nascent Nomenklatura such as themselves.
Only when they feel confident and secure enough that their friendly mask begin to slip, and their true intentions become more overt. But by then, the rot has already set in and the problem has already become endemic. Still, epiphanies can happen for people who still have an ethos that hasn’t been reduced to pure contrarianism against that common enemy. Such is the case with what has been happening with Tucker Carlson, and mores specifically the head of the Heritage Foundation’s defense of him.
Tucker Carlson has for some time now been a voice that Blames America First and praises tyrannical regimes from Russia to Iran. With it comes a normalization of authoritarian power and an isolationist bent that creeps up in American history from time to time, though rarely with such self-loathing as a nation. But even then, people would be defending any and all nutty ideas Tucker comes up with to this day if it weren’t for his, and others, inability to shut up about blaming Jews for everything.
Tucker has platformed literal Nazi apologists, as well as former KGB agent Vladimir Putin who pines away for the glory days of the Soviet Union, all while condemning Winston Churchill as the cause of the 2nd World War. Tucker Carlson represents the Molotov-Ribbentrop wing of the modern GOP.
People had defended Tucker, as well as people like Candace Owens, because “they fight” and scratched that itch that far too many had to just punch back twice as hard. For that, they were given wide latitude in what they said and claimed. The warning signs were ignored and they were defended since, after all, they were fellow enemies of the Right’s political enemies. This allows the problem to fester and grow. When a plethora of Young Republicans were caught repeatedly praising Hitler and joking about genocide, they were dismissed as an aberration and problem minimized; didn’t want to waste any energy on the more emotionally cathartic attacks on the Democrats and the Progressive Left, after all.
But they couldn’t normalize the anti-Semitism, thankfully.
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