The ‘Woke Right’ Is on the Left

By Abe Greenwald

It was never a secret that MAGA isn’t conservative. The movement is a fluid mix of Trumpian caprice and populist sentiment. Whether we approve of this or not, there is a storied history of right-wing populism in the U.S. So it’s not conservatism, but it’s not an innovation either. 

I’m not sure, however, that you can say the same about the hardened anti-American podcast darlings who broke off from the MAGA mainstream to rant about Jews. Many have taken to calling this group the woke right, owing to their identity obsessions and snowflake temperaments. But I’m beginning to think that’s no longer sufficient. 

Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and the like are in no way conservative. But their mode of populist outrage—against Israel, corporate America, traditional values, and U.S. military dominance—doesn’t exactly align with the political or cultural right either. 

In fact, the closer you look, the clearer it becomes: They simply are the woke left. They’re a faction of the woke left for those who disdain the tawdry aesthetics of campus protest. That’s it. In every other respect, they are the same. They share the left’s hatreds, heroes, and self-pitying worldview. 

This all came into sharp focus yesterday with the most recent episode of Carlson’s show. His guest was Fuentes, who’s primarily known as a “far-right white-supremacist.” But, again, the designation doesn’t quite get the job done. Asked who should be the next president of the United States, Fuentes responded, “Well, Ye, of course.” Ye is Kanye West, who is, among other things, a black man. In the same interview, Fuentes described himself as “a fan” of Joseph Stalin. 

Let’s stipulate: Fuentes is a racist Hitler fanboy, and he does draw his support from the fringes of the right. But why, then, does he long for a black president and worship Stalin? The answer: Because neither his racism nor right-wing origins informs his primary aims: to target Jews, destroy Israel, and blow up the good working order of the American-led free world. Those just happen to be the chief desiderata of the woke left. 

Kanye West is a Jew-hating madman. To Fuentes, that’s more relevant than his race. Stalin was a mass-murderer and postwar America’s number-one enemy (oh, and another Jew-hater). If it takes a Communist to stand up to our horrible country, that, too, is fine. Indeed, it’s better than fine, because achieving authoritarianism is more crucial than the ideology of the authoritarian. It’s why Carlson himself bows before Vladimir Putin and flatters the president of Iran. And Carlson’s contempt for America was proven long ago, in multiple broadcasts during which he nodded along with amateur historians who explained that the Allies, not the Axis powers, were the bad guys in World War II.

So, naturally, Carlson didn’t push back on Fuentes. But he distanced himself from Fuentes’s overt anti-Semitism and instead homed in on the supposed evils of Israel. Denying that one’s anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is a perennial woke-left defense. Carlson does it constantly.

So the supposed woke right hates Israel, loves Communist and fascist dictators, pals around with America’s present-day enemies, and regrets American military victory. Wrap the lot of them in keffiyehs, and they’re good to go.

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.