Karys Rhea, writing fellow at the Middle East Forum and producer of The Epoch Times’s flagship show, American Thought Leaders, spoke to a May 16 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes her comments:
Since 2022, the progressive woke left playbook of postmodernism, identity politics, cancel culture, conspiratorial antisemitism, and “historical revisionism [and] moral relativism” has spawned similar tactics with the rise of an inverse trend — the woke right, which falsely cloaks itself in conservative values. “In some ways, they are indistinguishable from the woke left.” Contrary to popular belief, the political spectrum does not run in a straight line with the extremes on opposite ends. The “horseshoe theory” posits that “if you get further enough to the right or to the left, you end up looping back around” where the opposing ideologies “get close to mirroring one another.”
The woke left’s identity politics of dividing society into the oppressor and the oppressed demonizes Jews and Zionists, fomenting Jew-hatred on campuses under the tutelage of Islamists.
The “red-green alliance” that illustrates common cause between Marxists, socialists and communists of the progressive left with Islamists has found a new red with Republicans who are part of the woke right. The woke left’s identity politics of dividing society into the oppressor and the oppressed demonizes Jews and Zionists, fomenting Jew-hatred on campuses under the tutelage of Islamists. Similarly, the woke right’s embrace of “Christian identity politics” promotes Christians as the ultimate oppressed group and points the finger at Jews and Zionists as oppressors. Conspicuously absent from their list of oppressors are the Islamists who are actually persecuting Christians in Muslim-ruled countries.
In the wake of the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel and the kidnapping and massacre of its citizens, the woke right turbocharged Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism by spreading conspiracy theories. They exponentially expanded their reach through social media platforms such as X/Twitter and TikTok via influencers and podcast personalities, among them Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. Both provided cover for Kanye West, “a pathological antisemite.” Carlson legitimized West’s hateful views by omitting West’s toxic comments from an interview. Owens “recklessly” defended West “at all costs” and has since claimed her own place in the pantheon of Jew-haters by advancing antisemitic and anti-Israel conspiracy theories on her own platform.
There is evidence that foreign funding from Qatar, Iran, and Russia foments civil unrest that woke right influencers promote on their platforms. Influencers’ motivation can run the gamut from ideological belief to funding sources, or simply grift to generate more clicks online. Worse still is the woke right’s resuscitation of medieval antisemitic tropes that find a receptive space in Christian theology, such as deicide charges against Jews as Christ-killers and supersessionism, wherein Judaism is rendered “completely null and void” because its covenant with God is replaced by New Testament Christianity.
The danger posed by the right’s resurrection of Jew-hatred as one of its drivers is that when “politics is downstream from culture,” it risks creating “a new normative politics” infecting the MAGA movement “that could trickle up to policy.” Administration officials can then become imbued with the woke right’s embrace by “regurgitating their talking points.” Tucker Carlson influences millions online and is “the link between … the culture and the state.” Carlson has gained more prominence in Trump 47’s administration compared to Trump 45 because of his platform’s popularity and “an ability to influence policy.”
Although free speech and the First Amendment are key issues in the MAGA movement, those who object to someone like Carlson are accused of restricting his freedom of speech.
Consider the 2018 House bill that passed with bipartisan support for making foreign funding for boycotts of Israel illegal. Although an extension of the bill has just been introduced, it was shelved with pushback “not just from the left” but from “the new right.” Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) claimed that limiting boycotts abridged freedom of speech. The prospect of any bill with a whiff of censorship exercises conservatives, but this portrayal exhibits a “simplistic misunderstanding” of the bill. The legislation is in fact similar to actions Trump took to end federal funding for universities that tolerate discriminatory practices that run counter to America’s values and interests. Privately, people are free to boycott at will, but any institution, organization, or business engaging in discriminatory boycotts cannot receive federal funding. The bill itself was meant to include international organizations like the European Union (EU) and the U.N., both having taken positions counter to America’s interests.
Although free speech and the First Amendment are key issues in the MAGA movement, those who object to someone like Carlson are accused of restricting his freedom of speech. America does not have the slippery slope of hate speech laws found in Europe, but “it is so twisted [in America] that they [the woke right] are allowed to give their opinions, but we are not allowed to give our opinions of them” without the risk of being canceled. Much like the woke left, the woke right is thin-skinned and tries to “shut down discourse.” That kind of pressure can be very daunting to “young MAGA conservatives” when the woke right dehumanizes challengers with labels such as “neocon” or “warmonger.” There is “a lot of hypocrisy” among the influencers who have gained traction because of the likes of Carlson. They have “taken up the mantle of identitarianism” by lumping people into categories and dismissing “anybody who disagrees with them.”
The new right counts among its followers neo-Nazis, libertarians, paleoconservatives, and Christian nationalists — all claiming to be pro-Trump members of the MAGA movement following the morphing of traditional conservatives into the MAGA populist movement that “redefined the Republican party.” By appealing to the MAGA mainstream, the woke right aligned with conservatives in opposing “gender ideology or CRT (Critical Race Theory).” However, by stoking animus towards Jews and Israel, the woke right serves to distract from a larger worldview and ideology that is “fundamentally anti-American and anti-Western.” The woke right, with its “new, more isolationist and libertarian” positions, departs from the MAGA vision of Trump’s “peace through strength” foreign policy.
The woke right, with its “new, more isolationist and libertarian” positions, departs from the MAGA vision of Trump’s “peace through strength” foreign policy.
The woke right idealizes a “neo-isolationist America” that withdraws from foreign involvement to focus exclusively on domestic issues. “They want to tear down the current order, the post-World War II unipolar order in which America is kind of policing the global stage.” While Trump extricates the U.S. from foreign wars, he is also opposed to the EU and the U.N., which he views as “international multilateral organizations that are trying to co-opt national sovereignty.” In that way, the anti-American right shares the same goal with the anti-American left of upending the current system. The new right embraces Qatar, Iran, Russia, and China, but the isolationists ignore the cold reality that withdrawing from the world does not keep “rogue, aggressive nations” at bay. Isolationist policy is “no different from an appeasement policy,” which leaves a vacuum to be filled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Islamic Republic of Iran, or expansionist Russia.
“The woke right is gaslighting us into believing that their vision for America is the MAGA vision for America, and I would argue that it is absolutely not.” As Trump strives for “foreign restraint,” America’s enemies still fear that the U.S. will act to rein in those countries that would “wreak havoc in the international arena.” If they believed that there were “no consequences” for their malign activities, Trump’s policy of “peace through strength” would lack deterrence.
Countering the woke right requires legacy media to call out the likes of Carlson and his fellow influencers. “We cannot be scared to name names.” Conservative outlets balk at criticizing the woke right for fear of losing followers who tune into Carlson. “I think that the truest test of patriotism is country over party. And so if people are scared to call out people within their own camp, then that essentially means that the conservative movement is not a pro-America party, or the conservative party is not pro-America; it’s actually just tribalist, and it’s no different than the Marxists and communists on the left that chose party over country every time.”
