Tucker Carlson’s appearance on the Adam Carolla Show has been making the rounds within National Socialist Circles after Carlson dismissed racial politics, specifically telling future White spokespersons to “fuck off” as nobody can speak on behalf of an entire race. Carolla countered, asserting that not having to commit to a racial group identity is, indeed, the real White privilege.
Af first glance, one might expect the National Socialists to be overjoyed with Tucker engaging in a conversation about White solidarity and racial group identity. However, the commentary from the neo-Nazis was as anti-Tucker as I would expect. This is because Carlson is Alt-Con, which is my label for those with a right-wing disposition that steps away from Bush-era neo-conservatism to front a type of Civic Nationalism tinged with a hint of Libertarianism.
In short, Carlson does not advocate for American (or Western) exceptionalism as a driver of economic growth on the global stage (the neo-liberal model of Bush/Obama era politics). Rather, American (or Western) largess should be redirected back into (re)building individual communities within the nation to create a robust, self-interested economic model. A Kind of self-perpetuating Americana, if you will. This was part of the attraction to MAGA Republicanism in its early iteration back in 2016, in which European variants formed the underlying promise of Brexit and (to my understanding) has been a key driver in right-wing national European politics recently.
The brilliance of the Alt-Con position is that it is not overtly racial. It is difficult to see the 14 words, the organisational credo of National Socialism, in Carlson's work (those 14 words being “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children”). Safe communities, good schools, clean politics, and a strong moral compass are broadly resonant messages that Tucker employs on his shows. There is a great general appeal to these points, underscored by the idea that: this is what society should strive towards. The issue is that Tucker’s framing around his messaging is racist - when viewed through an academic lens of motivated reasoning.
Here is the problem, it is my experience that most people tend to find academics to be absolute wankers. To translate this charming Britishism for American readers, “wanker” is often employed as a derogatory term to identify a particular type of bourgeois person that is so completely self-satisfied with their own contributions to high-brow cultural discourse that it borders on masturbatory and wildly out of touch with common folk experiences.
It has been almost five years since Robin Di Angelo’s White Fragility was published and popularised by mainstream news outlets. Central to Di Angelo’s theses is that White people are socialised to be racially “illiterate”, which helps perpetuate White supremacy. Ironically, perhaps, it is now groups of White people that are racially literate; lambasting Tucker Carlson for not advocating White Solidarity both in the Carolla interview and on his shows. While Di Angelo’s work has been instrumental in helping some people to “see” the racial injustices faced by Communities of Colour within the West, it has also been instrumental in helping some people “perceive” what White genocide looks like. Something similar happened with #Accelerate (The Accelerationist Manifesto) edited by Armen Avanessian and Robin Mackay. Published in 2014, #Accelerate provided key theoretical and strategic insights into how radical left-wing political organisation could be mobilised to disrupt neo-liberal capitalism. This was quickly adopted by the National Socialists and other groups across the right to inform narratives of systemic, anti-White, racial injustices.
It is fascinating to see how much the Overton window has shifted. Circa 2017, the mood surrounding online discourse was that racial “collectivism” was something that the radical left-wing cultural Marxists did, while the Alt-Con right championed reaffirming individual rights. Over time, the demand for White racial solidarity has moved from the fringes into the increasingly popular Hard Conservative spheres that want to see “White issues” advocated for within policy arenas. There was a time when the National Socialists viewed Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump as imperfect vehicles to table “White issues”. Now, both actors (and those of their ilk) are broadly viewed as failures for trying to construct “big tent conservatism” where everyone is welcome. This perceived failure is due to the inherent anti-Whiteness of neoliberalism, which holds that Traditionalist deconstruction is the paramount social value. The logic is that, in order to become popular, White people can not advocate for “White issues” due to the stigma around Whiteness. As such, White people will be replaced by People of Colour within the policy arena to smooth over White advocacy, yet this will only further marginalise Whiteness in the West.
It seems convoluted, but stepping back, we see the clear message of: “Why can’t White people advocate for their own self-interests the same way that People of Colour can?”. Indeed, now primed with a degree of racial sensitivity from the popularisation of Di Angelo’s book, we see a growing comfort with the idea that White people in the West face systemic difficulties and are without institutional support (unlike People of Colour). Indeed, there are many arguments to challenge and debunk this position, but they can be easily swept aside as absolute wankery.