Tucker Carlson speaking at the 2023 AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr.

Donald Trump and his key supporters have long promoted an “anti-globalist” perspective wrapped in a racist and narrowly nationalistic message aimed at the MAGA base. The refrain is that the US has shouldered the burden of international responsibilities for far too long, including costly involvement in globalist wars. Thus, the faithful are told that it is time to seal the borders, carry out mass deportations, restore the industrial base and make America great (read proudly white) again.

It has become very clear that a substantial gulf exists between these notions of reactionary isolationism and the brand of America First gangster imperialism that the second Trump administration actually embodies. Yet, this isolationist backlash, which is hailed by some prominent figures and has even gone over to criticism of slavish support for Israel, remains an ugly and dangerous right-wing current that no self-respecting leftist should welcome much less ally themselves with.

Refocused imperialism

Writing in the Guardian, Mohamad Bazzi has rightly pointed out that “Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed ‘candidate of peace,’ is just as eager to start new wars.” This despite Trump’s pronouncement, upon winning his second term in office, that “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

During his first year in office Trump bombed seven countries, and the present moment is dominated by the regional and global ramifications of the so-called war of choice that he launched against Iran. This failed venture involved the largest deployment of US military power in the Middle East since the war of aggression against Iraq in 2003.

Trump and his inner circle are actually serious about a break with globalism in that they wish to abandon the decades-long US role as the cornerstone of the ‘rules-based’ world order and pursue their objectives with little concern for consequences or global stability. This, however, does not mean a curtailment of the predatory role of the US in the world or a reduced readiness to back this up with military force.

As last November’s US National Security Strategy, compiled by the Trump administration, maintains, “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” In this regard, the document sets out a plan for a refocused agenda of domination that establishes definite regional priorities, starting with Latin America where “the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.” In pursuit of these objectives, the Security Strategy continues, “We want to recruit, train, equip, and field the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests, deter wars, and—if necessary—win them quickly and decisively, with the lowest possible casualties to our forces.”

The hopes and illusions of a section of the MAGA base notwithstanding, this is not a plan for a stay-at-home US military and a future of blissfully reactionary isolationism.

There is no question that a section of Trump’s supporters has been alarmed by the pursuit of these imperialist objectives and that this is going over to outright anger. As reported by Politico, a poll conducted among MAGA Republicans showed a high level of distrust and animosity towards the war against Iran. Moreover, “Some of the most prominent MAGA voices are opposed to the Iran war, like [Tucker] Carlson and Megyn Kelly, along with influential figures like Joe Rogan, who holds tremendous sway with young men.”

An article that appeared in Mondoweiss last December drew attention to this mood and particularly to the oppositional view that has emerged within the Trump base to the effect that too many resources are being devoted to supporting Israel. In it, Matt Seriff-Cullick argues that “naming anti-Israel dissent on the right as ‘anti-Zionist’ is a profound misnomer and a strategic error for those on the left who wish to combat Zionism as part of a broader decolonial struggle.” This brand of right-wing opposition to US support for Israel is “grounded in one or both of two tendencies: 1) a particular form of hyper-nationalism (one that often refers to itself as ‘isolationist’ or ‘anti-internationalist’), and 2) antisemitic conspiracy theory… both are fully compatible with underlying Western imperialist and settler colonial logics of Zionism, including ethnonationalism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia.”

The infamous Tucker Carlson has been increasingly ready to challenge the Trump administration’s support for Israel. In the wake of the fragile ceasefire with Iran, he has suggested, as reported by The Independent, that “the United States has to—and hopefully the first thing we do, when and if this war’s resolved, is detach from Israel… this distancing should begin with a total end of aid of any kind, military or economic, to Israel by the US government.”

It might be reasonably suggested that this disagreement within the Trump camp is not entirely unwelcome. The issue, however, is how the left and the Palestine solidarity movement should relate to it and whether expressions of support for Carlson are in order. It would be useful, in this regard, to remind ourselves of just who this man is and the core assumptions that are at work in his thinking on Israel.

An article published by NPR in April 2023 succinctly characterized the views that Carlson has disseminated and the influence he has exercised in the process. It noted that he had “used his prime-time Fox News show—the most-watched hour on cable news—to inject a dark strain of conspiracy-mongering into Republican politics.”

Carlson has stated that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.” He has labelled white supremacy “a hoax” and he has declared that hate speech is “a made-up category designed to gut the First Amendment and shut you up.”

Most notably, Carlson has extensively promoted the “great replacement theory” that claims that “white nations” are threatened by a “flood” of Black and Brown immigrants from the Global South. “Thanks to Tucker Carlson, this kind of dreck that you would normally only see on far-right forums and online spaces had a prime-time audience on cable news every night” (Carlson has since left Fox and gone on to launch his own conservative political podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show).

This conspiracy theory incorporates a highly toxic strain of antisemitism that argues that malevolent and conspiratorial Jews are working to facilitate the immigration process and further the assault on the ‘white race.’ The gunman who murdered 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, as the Detroit News noted, “blamed Jews for bringing non-white immigrants to the US [and] a 2019 Poway, California synagogue shooter claimed Jews were responsible for the killing of White Europeans.”

Carlson is one of several key figures who express a disgruntled racist dissatisfaction with the directions of the Trump administration—misgivings that often bleed into notions of antisemitic conspiracy.

Take for example Joe Kent, who recently made headlines by resigning as director of the US National Counterterrorism Center over the Trump administration’s attack on Iran. Kent fully expressed the perspective of the dismayed hyper-nationalist wing of the MAGA base as he took this position. Al Jazeera quotes from his resignation letter: “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.” He added, rather tellingly, that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Here, too, it is vital to consider the hateful political orientation that underlies Kent’s thinking. PBS News comments, “It was no surprise when Joe Kent showed up on Tucker Carlson’s podcast a day after quitting his counterterrorism job in President Donald Trump’s administration.”

During his interview with Carlson, Kent evinced conspiratorial thinking on Israeli influence, even suggesting that Israel was linked to the killing of Charlie Kirk and responsible for the US being “drawn into” the invasion of Iraq. The PBS article very plausibly suggests that this “focus on Israel is the leading edge of an antisemitic fringe that has gained ground by portraying Jews as shadowy manipulators, echoing some of history’s most hateful tropes.”

It is, of course, completely appropriate to challenge Israel’s very major role in the recent attack on Iran. Moreover, as I have previously suggested, divisions of this kind in the enemy camp may even be somewhat useful. But support for or an alliance with those who want to ‘make America great again,’ as a bulwark of white supremacy and xenophobic isolationism, would be the kiss of death for the left. Indeed, the dangerous affinity with the Carlsons and the Kents that I see all the time in left social media spaces points to the nightmarish possibility of a red-brown alliance.

The racist political right has its own debates and disagreements that we should follow closely, but the very idea that we have anything in common with these reactionary hate-mongers is a repugnant one that should be utterly rejected. Any kind of unprincipled support for the vile politics of the isolationist dissenters within the MAGA movement can only be a source of severe disorientation and inevitable political degeneration for the left.

John Clarke is a writer and retired organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). Follow his tweets at @JohnOCAP and blog at johnclarkeblog.com.

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