The MAGA Civil War, Week One

Polite people on the left always want to tell you the right is perfectly unified, disciplined, marching in lockstep behind the Great Golden Id.

They’re not always wrong, but I’ve observed they increasingly tend not to act because of the presumption that the right is too far ahead with its message machine and too focused on staying on message.

“They’re so good at narrative,” they sigh, as if the MAGA GOP is anything more than a brawling Telegram channel of scamfluencers, bootlicks, incels, racist choads, Russian agitporn, ideological dead-enders, conspiracy dipshittery, and a merch store.

Every so often, the curtain pulls back and you see what MAGA actually is now: a coalition of people who hate the same enemies but desperately want to rule the kingdom themselves. You can see where the essentially nihilist and pessimistic ideology of Trumpism can’t build beyond its base because of, well, its base.

This week is one of those weeks.

Let’s start with the ugliest piece: Tucker Carlson deciding to launder Nick Fuentes back into the discourse. For years, Republicans did a delicate little dance; they’d flirt with the online right, maybe hook up for a one-nighter around the election, a little cocktease for the “nationalist” brand, but they’d stop short of open, proud antisemitism and overt racism because of those pesky normies, donors, suburban voters, and basic political survival.

Tucker blew through that guardrail and while back, but laundering Nick Fucking Fuentes is something else.

Once he blesses somebody like Fuentes, everyone else has to pick a lane: Are you with the shiny, YouTube-centric, terminally online post-right that lives to offend? Or are you still pretending to be the party of Reagan, “Judeo-Christian values,” and support for the Jewish people? Tucker was defended by the Heritage Foundation, condemned by a handful of Congressional Republicans, and lauded by the online alt-reich.

Siri, order popcorn...