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Recently, there's been a conflict in the right wing media world, with popular right wing podcaster Tucker Carlson having another popular figure in right wing media, Nick Fuentes on his show. Fuentes is, putting it bluntly, an utterly unrepentant bigoted, antisemitic misogynist. He has denied the Holocaust, said that "black people should be in prison for the most part" and advocated for taking away women's right to vote. Despite all of that, Carlson two hour interview was full of mostly softball questions, showing just how much hard right, despicable beliefs have become mainstream in the rightwing MAGA movement.
Or have they? At first, Kevin Roberts, the leader of the right wing Heritage Foundation released a statement about the interview saying that “We will always defend truth.We will always defend America, and we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda." But this caused enormous division within his own group, and he later released another statement on X, coming out strongly against Fuentes's antisemitism, but leaving Carlson off the hook for having him on. But, given the late nature of Roberts's statement, the Antisemitism Task Force has already cut ties with the Heritage Foundation and several members of the group have left in disgust. Now lines are being drawn on the right about what to do about Fuentes and his supporters of mostly young men known as"Groypers,"
All of this reminds me of something that happened decades ago: David Duke, an unrepentant former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, who's views on race and religion sounded just like Fuentes, became a prominent political figure in the state of Louisiana in the 80's and 90's. After running a stunt campaign for president in 1988, Duke actually won a Louisiana House seat in 1989. He then tried to run for the Senate and governorship, and while he lost both times, he did surprisingly well in the polls. (As he would proudly point out, he received a majority of the white vote in his run to be governor.) To be fair, many Republicans condemned Duke at the time, but his stands on the big issues of the day were not really much different than theirs.
Like Fuentes does now, Duke's surprising popularity with a segment of the Republican base shows the ugly underbelly of bigotry that has always existed since Richard Nixon first developed the racially coded Southern Strategy in 1968. While I'm certainly not saying that all Republicans are bigots, what I am saying is that the pro business, libertarian wing of the party (the Mitt Romney style Republicans) have, in the past few decades, relied on the support of Republican blue collar voters who do not vote the way they do because of, say, supply side economics. Instead they back the GOP because the party has convinced them that the Democrats only care about people who aren't white or heterosexual. All that Duke and Fuentes have done is loudly state what Republican politicians have been dog whistling for decades.
While I'm glad to see some members of the right coming out forcefully against Fuentes, I can't help but feel it's a little too little and a little too late. Where we these people when Donald Trump had Fuentes over for dinner at Mar A Lago just before he started his 2024 campaign? Why aren't they going after Carlson as much as Fuentes? It's clear that, as with David Duke in the 90's, the GOP wants to appear to condemn the opinions of Fuentes while keeping the support of his voters. It's dark, cynical politics, the kind that has worked well for the conservative movement in this country and very well may continue to for years fo come.
