…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.
Anti-Semitism is the canary in the political coal mine, and that canary is now spasming from the poison. The problem can no longer be ignored, yet so many still are seeing this as an aberration when it is but the tip of the iceberg. The question of Tucker’s sanity aside, his anti-Semitism isn’t some aberration, but a natural fit with the rest of the post-conservative right’s political belief system.—like a hand in bespoke glove. This isn’t just happening; it’s been growing like a cancer for years. It has now metathesized to the point where they increasingly feel they can admit it openly and with impunity. And no, this is the overt signs of what has creeped into the GOP for years now and the problem if far greater than a “hand full of racist[s]“. Continuing to ignore the problem just guarantees that you’ll get more of it.
So many wish to minimize the extent of this problem. For some, it is to hide the extent of their power they hold within. For others, it is wishful thinking and a desire to not be distracted from opposing the Progressive Left. To seek out the real root of the problem and the extend of those roots, we must look beyond just the proverbial canary in the coal mine to find their other complementary beliefs and ideas and those who hold those beliefs, even if they are not overtly anti-Semitic or even not actually anti-Semitic themselves for even the later can serve as an enabler of anti-Semitism. This is not to say that sans the anti-Semitism these ideas would be anything but anti-American and loathsome.
Tucker’s overreach has led to the highlighting of his political circle and connections, including Vice-President J.D. Vance. When given an opportunity to reject the anti-Semitic conspiracy about Israel controlling the United States (which is deemed to be a “ZOG” or “Zionist Occupied Government”), Vance couldn’t do it and instead said “When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the President of the United States, they’re not controlling this President of the United States.” Even those trying to defend their “own side” are starting to have qualms over it. The defensiveness over Vance is also telling. After all, why would Vance be threatened by criticisms aimed at Tucker Carlson and catboy aficionado Nick Fuentes unless they ideologically stand together?
Their greatest defense is that they aren’t what is hated more: The Progressive Left and also the “establishment GOP” who is used as the boogie man and justification for tearing everything down. And some are so focused on that tearing down that they don’t realize that others have already set in motion that which is intended to replacement. Ironically, hen “the establishment GOP” is the big bad enemy, the Left—from Communist Antonio Gramsci to National Socialist Carl Schmitt—and their intellectual brethren end become their allies. No wonder, then, that the Schmittian “Friend-Enemy Distinction”, or alternatively “Four Legs Good; Two Legs Bad” distinction from Animal Farm, has been the ready defense of the indefensible. Little wonder then, why there is skepticism of those who claim to be protecting Christendom by attacking the Progressive Left while giving Wiccans a free pass when they are on “our side”.
That cry for unity against a common enemy has been a useful shield for them, not only against criticism, but as a means of hiding hitherto their own beliefs which are at odds with everyone else “on their side”. This “unity” was never about working with others as co-equals, but of placing themselves in the dominant position as the “fighters”—the vanguard who would become the new thought leaders and Nomenklatura. That unified one voice is exclusively theirs; all others are but reduced to a faint echo, and a venomous echo at that.
Increasingly, many are calling out and outright condemning this cancer within the Right, and its defenders of said cancer. But even then, many minimize it because they believe they are just using them, rather than visa versa. As Erick Erickson noted that “[i]f they have to accommodate a few closeted gay guys with a Nazi fetish who blame the Jews for everything, they’ll do it and reason that, once they win, they can clean up.” The problem is that the proverbial long knives are already sharpened and pointed at them.
