John West’s award-winning documentary Human Zoos (2019), a history of Darwinian racism, warns that “Some things should never be forgotten, because things that are forgotten have a way of coming back.” It then highlights what was at the time of the film’s release a current manifestation, the Alt-Right, mostly atheist proponents of pseudoscientific “race realism.” The warning has been vindicated again with the rise of today’s Woke Right.
The latter designation highlights some ugly overlaps between the Woke Left and figures ostensibly on the right, notably podcaster Tucker Carlson and his sidekick and new best friend, the “Groyper” Nick Fuentes. Carlson specializes in obsessive Jew-baiting insinuations while Fuentes is an outright Hitlerian with, in addition, a professed soft spot for Stalin.
Undying Friendship for Tucker
Haven’t followed it? Ben Shapiro’s summary of the pair’s views and relationship is helpful to get you up to speed. It’s too bad that Heritage Foundation president Dr. Kevin Roberts, PhD, had not familiarized himself with this information before releasing a shock video last week boasting of a Heritage policy of undying friendship for Tucker. It’s good to hear from the New York Post that the “Heritage Foundation [is] in revolt over Tucker Carlson defense after controversial Nick Fuentes interview: ‘Footsie with literal Nazis’.”
But this was chilling:
“If we are labeled on the same side as Nick Fuentes, then we deserve to lose,” chimed in a fourth Heritage colleague, who later added: “Talking with some of the interns I think that there are a growing number of them who actually agree” with the views Fuentes espoused.
The Return of the Perverse
What should not be missed is that the Woke Right of the moment is nothing other than the return of the perverse spirit of the Alt-Right, which Richard Weikart, John West, and I have all documented here. Well, there is one surface-level difference: while the Alt-Right was frankly atheist, Tucker, Fuentes, the poisonous, delusional Candace Owens, and others on their team mostly wrap themselves in pseudo-Christian trappings. I liked the atheists better. At least you couldn’t say about them that they took the Lord’s name in vain.
I’m making it sound like the Alt-Right, which peaked around 2016, has passed away. But of course it hasn’t. Most of the leading personalities and websites are still around, though their audience share has been vastly eclipsed by Tucker et al.
The names have changed but there are direct links. For example, regarding Jared Taylor of the Alt-Right group American Renaissance, a Groyper on X summarizes a video clip, “Nick Fuentes has always praised and showed gratitude to Jared Taylor for all the work he has done for white people.”
A “Hindic Phenotype”
Like traditional evolutionary racists, Fuentes decries race-mixing and has said he favors Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom over Vice President J. D. Vance because Newsom’s wife and children are blonde while Vance’s wife is Indian — a “jeet,” with a “Hindic phenotype,” as Fuentes puts it — and their children are dark.
At the Alt-Right online Taki’s Magazine, writer David Cole claims that Tucker’s notorious fake WWII historian guest, Darryl Cooper, “cribbed” from him. Says Cole under the headline, “Humane Holocaust? Tucker’s All In!”: “I know Tucker Carlson reads me and I know he’s aware of my Holocaust work.” Cole sighs, “I’m an easy guy to steal from. Banned from having a book on Amazon, banned from Twitter, banned from YouTube, and unacknowledged by most who read me. So I’m a sitting duck.”
To be sure, the earlier “right” iteration is ambivalent about the new one. The leading Alt-Right voice of 2016, Richard Spencer, resents the Woke Right more than a little, offering “a psychological theory of Tucker’s creepy laugh” and analyzing “Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and the Trump multi-level marketing scheme.”
Others, though, are more welcoming. At the Alt-Right Occidental Observer, reacting to Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, Greg Johnson says, “There are at least three reasons why this interview is good for white identity politics,” including that “although Fuentes is bad on race and identity, he’s very good on the Jewish question.” The celebratory headline: “Fuentes Flying High.”
It is all, needless to say, vile. And in fact, that is another point of contrast. The proportion of sexually vile language and imagery from the pseudo-Christian Woke Right is FAR higher than from the Alt-Right. On that, I should have warned you before you watched the Fuentes/Tucker video referenced above. What Fuentes has to say about Turning Point USA there is beyond vomit-worthy.
Where Is All This Heading?
The Alt-Right did more plundering of pseudo-science, while the Woke Right plunders Christianity while pretending to revere it. Despite cries from the left and the media that Trump was a crypto-Nazi, the Alt-Right had no effect on the 2016 election outcome. Now the Woke Right is complaining that the President isn’t a Nazi. Speaking only for myself, I fear that the divisions they are sowing among conservatives will, over the coming two elections, hand the country back to the left. It’s a price that the All American “patriot” Tucker, surrounded on his set by all the iconography that can be purchased from L. L. Bean, is willing to pay. He must really enjoy the clicks.
Could past be prologue? Back in 2020, in a related context, we discussed a figure from American history, a tragic part of it: Alexander H. Stephens, who was Vice President of the Confederacy. In 1861, he delivered the “Cornerstone Speech,” which is sort of a fusion of the Alt-Right and the Woke Right. Draping himself in Biblical imagery (Psalm 118:22), he justified slavery, racism, and rebellion on the grounds of, as we would say today, following the science. See my article, “Scientific Racism and the Confederate Flag.”
Invoking pseudoscience while simultaneously weaponizing faith could well be the path forward for the pseudo-conservatives of today. I offer that not as a prediction and certainly not as a recommendation. But for them, you have to admit, it would make a perverted sort of sense.
For some of our past coverage of the Alt-Right, see here:
- “Ties that Bind: The Alt-Right’s Connections to Social Darwinist Madison Grant and Eugenics”
- “Darwinian Influences on the Alt-Right”
- “Razib Khan: A Geneticist and the Alt-Right”
- “Alt-Right’s Interest in Evolution Makes Sense. An Obsession with Taylor Swift? Much Less So”
- “The Religion of the Alt-Right”
- “Evolution and the Alt-Right, Continued”
- “Evolution and the Alt-Right”
- “‘Eugenicons’? Call Them What They Are — Social Darwinists”