Blog: We Should Distance Ourselves from the Crazies.

In the past few years, we’ve seen a growing divide in the conservative movement. It started as something small, with a fringe minority of Republicans or self-proclaimed conservatives swinging to the “far-right” or “woke right.” Then, those fringe minorities started gaining more traction. Guys like Nick Fuentes were some of the first to gain traction in that space, but it started becoming more popular as people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens hopped into the jacuzzi of bad ideas.

I originally wrote about this back in May when this problem was getting more pervasive. However, since the death of Charlie Kirk and the resulting turmoil, this split has gotten worse. Frankly, it looks more like a gaping chasm than ever before. While most people mourn Charlie’s passing, there’s a growing movement that is using it to platform themselves to spread ideas that Kirk adamantly opposed. Candace Owens immediately used his death to throw shade on Israel, and now, the Trump administration, essentially starting a political cult in the aftermath. Tucker Carlson used Kirk’s memorial to that Israel killed him. And most concerningly, Nick Fuentes, a staunch opponent of Charlie Kirk and TPUSA’s mission, seems dead set on replacing Charlie Kirk as the voice of the Gen Z conservative movement, replacing TPUSA’s vision of traditional conservatism with his faithful Groyper gang (cult-leader much?).

As this has continued, multiple voices on the Right have tried to bridge this gap, calling for greater unity within the conservative movement to continue to fight back against the Left. Notable voices such as Matt Walsh and Brett Cooper have said that they won’t stop associating with people in the movement who are swinging far-Right (such as Candace Owens) because they’re friends and we need to stop the Left. Brett Cooper even went so far as to say that conservatives who are calling out Tucker Carlson for having Nick Fuentes on the show are acting like Leftists. Specifically, she faults conservatives for calling Nick Fuentes a Nazi, even though he’s happily proclaimed that he thinks “Hitler is really f***** cool” amongst other things praising Hitler, has praised Stalin, denies the Holocaust, has adamantly voiced his hatred of the Jews, etc.

As much as the conservative movement would be a larger force if we could bridge this gap, the simple answer is that we can’t. While there may be some things that we can agree with some of these people on (even a broken clock is right twice a day), it’s morally incoherent to join hands with these people to fight the Left. We fault the Left for being antisemitic, racist, promoting death, violent, etc. We fault them for unduly calling us Nazis while they act like Nazis. How can the conservative movement, in good conscience, then side with people who are much the same thing, but who just call themselves conservatives or Republicans?

This type of thing is how a movement dies. If a movement becomes so radicalized that it doesn’t even look like what it was in the beginning, is it really the same movement? The answer is no. At that point it’s completely different. Thus, if we truly want what we say we want as conservatives, then we need to disown those on the far or woke right. They are no longer conservatives, though they say they are.

Further, as conservatives, we have an obligation to uphold the values we profess. We’ve been under attack by the Left for years, being called racists, Nazis, every word that ends in -phobic, and more. If we rebel against the Left by becoming all of those things or accepting people who are like all of those stereotypes rolled into one, then are we still in the right? Haven’t we just become the things that they’ve been calling us for years, making them the truth tellers? It’s one thing to be called something unduly, being innocent of the accusations and undeserving of the label. That’s what we all should be. It’s another thing to be called something and have those accusations ring true. That’s when you know you’ve lost the plot, and it doesn’t help anyone.

The bridge between the conservatives and the woke right unfortunately has become too big to bridge. At this point, we just need to bite the bullet and distance ourselves from the crazy people. If we don’t, then we’ve lost all integrity.

Until next time,

M.J.