You know who ELSE had some good ideas?

Vox has an explainer on why some people on the left were upset about the American Prospect publishing yet another idiotic red-brown alliance thumbsucker about noted critic of the American class hierarchy Tucker Carlson:

There’s long been an impulse among some on the left to argue that the right populists kind of have a point. This dates back to the dueling interpretations of the 2016 election, in which some commentators argued that Trump won because of racism, while others pointed to the Democratic establishment’s failures. It’s more recently been seen in the debates about whether wokeness has gone too far.

Praising Tucker Carlson may still be too hot a take for a progressive publication to stand by, but these fissures will likely continue to drive arguments on the left in the post-Trump era.

In America in 2023, when the Republican party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Donald Trump’s political cult of personality, this “impulse” comes down to the claim that except for the white supremacy there are some people on the political right who hold views on some subjects that overlap with those held by people on the left.

That is very true. Except for the white supremacy.

Oh, and the authoritarian nationalism. Except for the authoritarian nationalism, there are some people on the political right who hold views that people on the left hold too. Yep, quite the incisive insight there.

And, uh, what was that other thing? Ah yes, the theocratic longings to turn the entire country into either a white Protestant evangelical megachurch or the Empire of the Virgin of Guadalupe (the shall we say potential tension between these two visions of a Godly nation will apparently be sorted out “later,”).

The point here is that it’s completely irrelevant that some authoritarian ethno-nationalist theocrats don’t like corporate monopoly or imperialist foreign policy or the war on drugs. Because it’s just beyond idiotic to note those things and then say “except for the white supremacy.” Because the white supremacy (and the authoritarian nationalism, and the theocratic atavism) is the whole thing.

It’s like looking at National Socialism and saying “except for the race theory” the autobahn is really cool and check out those spiffy uniforms. And if you think that’s hyperbolic I suggest you catch up on current events and think about it some more.

Some call him a “white nationalist” (and indeed, white nationalists have frequently praised Carlson for finally letting arguments they’ve long made into the mainstream). Others call him a fascist. He is believed to be not just a participant but a ringleader in a movement that threatens marginalized people’s rights and very existence. Naturally, if you believe this, any praise of Carlson or effort to find common ground with him sounds repulsive.

But some leftists think these claims about Carlson (which resemble claims made about Trump) are overhyped, as is the culture war in general. They tend to believe the greatest threats to the country do not fall so clearly along party lines and aren’t getting enough attention. They’re deeply troubled by the bipartisan US foreign policy establishment, and they think both parties remain far too corrupted by corporate power — and both those viewpoints got an airing on Carlson’s show.

Carlson, as I’ve written, did indeed break from the traditional GOP establishment on both of those topics, offering commentary that sounded quite different from that of other Fox hosts like Sean Hannity. This is the argument Glenn Greenwald has made in explaining his willingness to appear on Carlson’s show, and his increasing friendliness toward the populist right generally (once viewed as a crusading journalist of the left, he is now loathed by many of his former allies). 

One of the more astonishing grifts of our time is that Greenwald, a man who has never at any time in his career held any distinctively left political positions on literally any subject, is still dining out on the nearly 20 year old confusion that he is some kind of a “leftist” because he hated the Iraq war (after first loving it).

The only political position that matters at the moment on the left and the center and the non-fascist right in this country is this: are you unambiguously opposed to Donald Trump’s white supremacist project, or are you waffling on that point in any way? Murmuring sweet nothings about Tucker Carlson puts you on the wrong side of that line, period.