As regular readers will recall, I’ve written occasionally about a faction of the right which operates in a manner increasingly resembling the Woke Left. There is much debate about me labelling this group the “Woke Right”, with plenty of agreement and disagreement from people I like and respect. Mainly, these arguments stem from what one understands wokeness to mean. If being woke is about being an extreme leftist obsessed with pronouns and open borders, the term “Woke Right” is nonsense. But, to me at least, wokeness was never about policy positions, it was about the philosophy and methodology behind the movement. And it is this— the identity politics, grievance mongering and cancel culture— that is now being replicated on the fringes of the right.
In any case, even those who disagree with the label can’t possibly think it’s a coincidence that this faction of the right is attempting to destroy the very same historical figures as the Woke Left.
Winston Churchill has been the subject of leftist attacks for decades for obvious reasons: since the entire project of the Woke Left is to undermine the West’s belief in itself, they must necessarily target the people we celebrate the most. Whoever we hold up as the best of us must be torn down.
But why would some on the right who are otherwise patriotic and pro-Western, increasingly attempt to denigrate his legacy as Tucker Carlson did over the weekend in a debate with Piers Morgan?
Even though the clip is only 40 seconds long, there is much to unpack. Before we do, however, it is important to recall that last year Carlson hosted a pseudohistorian on his show called Darryl Cooper. In that episode, Carlson famously endorsed Cooper as the “best and most honest popular historian in the United States” before nodding along as the “historian” explained that “Churchill was the chief villain of WWII”. My point is, Carlson’s performance in the clip you just watched is the product of an extensive ideological evolution, rather than an off-the-cuff remark made in the heat of the moment.
Carlson explains that Churchill was no hero because he didn’t save Western civilisation - if he had, where is it? As we’ve discussed previously, much of the animus behind what I call the Woke Right is understandable frustration at the sense of decline in Western self-confidence, a growing feeling of disunity and a generalised moral decay that is palpable wherever you go. While the Woke Left hates the West for its ideals, the Woke Right hates the West for failing to live up to them.
This low resolution worldview is easy to take apart, as, to his credit, Piers Morgan immediately does when he explains that Churchill led the fight against Hitler and the Nazis whose expressly stated objective was subjugation of the entire Western world. Furthermore, how can Churchill be held responsible for today’s direction of the West when he died in 1965 and was last in office 75 years ago?
It is at this point that Carlson engages in what I call “sleight of mouth”- a linguistic judo trick designed to spring the trap into which he has placed himself. “I’m not defending the Nazis!” he exclaims. This is a weird thing to say since no one at any point suggested he was defending the Nazis - what Morgan pointed out is that in standing up to Hitler, Churchill did in fact save the West from Nazi domination.
But defeating Nazism and Japanese imperialism isn’t enough for Carlson. “Everyone wants to yell at you for not loving Churchill,” Carlson continues “but where is the victory?... Where is your freedom? You can’t defend yourself, you can’t control who comes into your country, and you can’t criticise government policies or you get arrested… so how are you free? You’re a slave!”
In doing so, Carlson commits at least two logical errors. First, the idea that a man who led Britain into WWII a full eighty-five years ago should be held responsible for the state of the country today is insanity. FDR, America’s President during WWII, is widely regarded as one of America’s top three Presidents, alongside George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. “But where is the victory?” I can just as easily screech. “What about the southern border which has been wide open for decades? Did Washington fight the War of Independence so that half-naked drug addicts could litter the streets of America’s major cities? Did Lincoln win the Civil War just to have mentally ill children mutilated by doctors?”. This approach is patently absurd.
Second, the reason we celebrate Churchill is that the choice we had was either WWII or Hitler being in charge of Europe and possibly the world. The victory is that by 1945, Western Europe was free of the tyranny and ethnic hatred the Nazis had imposed on it. In failing to understand this, Tucker does exactly what the Woke Left do to our history - they imagine an infinite array of utopian possibilities and then deride our former leaders for failing to deliver said utopia. Churchill didn’t have a choice between the land of milk and honey or fighting Hitler. He could either fight Hitler or let him take all of Europe. This is so obvious that an intelligent person like Tucker cannot possibly have missed it by accident.
My experience both in public debates and in personal relationships is that whenever someone refuses to see something that is in plain sight, it is because underneath their stated arguments lies a different agenda. As the Navajo proverb goes, “It is impossible to wake a man who is pretending to be asleep”. So, why does the Woke Right have to destroy Churchill?
To me the answer is equally obvious:
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