On Nick Fuentes and the rise of the woke right

The rise of Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and the growing faction known as the “woke right” is one of the strangest spectacles in contemporary political life. What began as a reaction against the absurdities of progressive identity politics has corrupted into its own version of the same phenomenon. The language and posture of resistance have become the very essence of the movement. They no longer serve truth, but performance. Hence, we may call it the woke right, a mirror image of the woke left, equally intoxicated by critical theory’s vocabulary of suspicion, power, and perpetual grievance.

Critical theory, as Malloy Owen recently observed in The Hedgehog Review, has migrated across the political spectrum. It now flourishes in unlikely soil, feeding on resentment and the thrill of subversion. Its slogans, such as “Everything you’ve been told is a lie,” “All institutions are corrupt,” “Truth is just a mask for power,” are the catechism of the new right-wing influencer class. The left has long traded in these rhetorical gestures. What is new is their appropriation by figures who claim to defend Western civilization while simultaneously dismantling the moral and cultural foundations that made it possible.

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, a young man who has managed to turn antisemitism into a livestreamed lifestyle, revealed the extent of the rot. Carlson, who has styled himself as a defender of family, order, and reason, chose to entertain a figure who has praised Hitler, denied the Holocaust, and publicly fantasized about authoritarianism. The exchange contained no serious challenge, no moral clarity, and no journalistic backbone. It was a group therapy session for men who imagine themselves as martyrs of the establishment. Carlson performed his habitual shrug, framing the conversation as one more instance of “just asking questions.” The act is familiar. It allows the host to appear brave without ever being accountable.

Fuentes, for his part, is a textbook case of radical narcissism disguised as dissidence. His rants about Jews, women, and modernity have little to do with coherent ideology. They are performances of rage. Beneath the spectacle lies a moral vacuum. His claim to Christian faith is a mockery of the Gospel. Christianity does not license hatred under the banner of tradition. There is no room within the revelation of Christ for one who mocks the image of God in others.

Sixty years ago this month, the fathers at Vatican II stated that “in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.” It is difficult to imagine a clearer repudiation of everything Fuentes represents.

The appeal of such “woke” figures reveals less about politics and more about psychology. Sociologists call it parasocial attachment, the illusion of friendship that arises between media consumers and their preferred commentators. The audience feels seen by the speaker’s indignation. In a culture saturated with corporate hypocrisy and elite moral decay, this recognition can feel intoxicating. Conspiracy-based commentary provides an emotional catharsis for those who feel disempowered.

It flatters the listener with secret knowledge. “They” are lying to you, and “we” see the truth. The mechanism is ancient. It is the same instinct that made the gossip of medieval courts so potent, and the same dynamic that keeps online outrage profitable today.

Such rhetoric thrives because it promises liberation from complexity. Every social ill can be traced to a hidden puppet master. Every moral question can be reduced to suspicion of institutions. This posture is indistinguishable from the logic of the woke left, which views all relationships through the prism of oppression. The woke right simply inverts the roles. Where the left decries white patriarchy, the right blames globalist elites or shadowy cabals. Both sides reject the possibility of an ordered moral universe grounded in reason and nature.

Both operate from an anthropology of suspicion rather than of truth.

Fuentes’s followers, often young men, are drawn by a sense of belonging that the broader culture denies them. They see in him the courage to offend the powerful. Yet courage severed from prudence is mere recklessness. A genuine conservative vision grounded in virtue ethics and the natural law does not trade in nihilistic irony. It cultivates self-command, respect for hierarchy, and reverence for truth. When these are replaced by sarcasm and spectacle, conservatism degenerates into theater.

The influence of figures such as Candace Owens further illustrates the point. Owens’s commentary once served as a needed counterweight to progressive racial narratives. In recent years, however, her flirtation with anti-Zionist conspiracies and her reckless commentary on Jewish influence have placed her within the same moral drift as Fuentes. Her alliance with figures who trivialize genocide in the name of “open debate” betrays a lack of intellectual discipline. The Christian conservative movement cannot excuse such carelessness. To do so is to mistake provocation for principle.

The allure of this so-called “woke right” lies in its imitation of critical theory’s grammar. It borrows from Foucault’s suspicion of power while pretending to defend Christian civilization. Its discourse is therapeutic rather than intellectual. The point is not truth but vibe as the transgressive mood of rebellion. Carlson’s refusal to press Fuentes on his admiration for Stalin or his venom toward Jews was deliberate. To challenge the guest would have disrupted the emotional payoff of mutual victimhood. The result is a show that sells grievance as identity.

This style of communication preys on moral exhaustion. Many conservatives, battered by years of cultural defeat, find relief in outrage. They crave certainty in an age of confusion. Conspiracy theories offer that certainty. They restore the illusion of coherence to a chaotic world. Yet they also erode the capacity for reasoned judgment. Every refutation becomes proof of the conspiracy. Every appeal to evidence is dismissed as establishment propaganda. In this way, conspiratorial thinking mimics the totalizing nature of ideology. It closes the mind and inflames the passions.

Theologically, the phenomenon reveals a spiritual crisis. The Christian mean is always the mean of virtue. Saint Thomas Aquinas defines virtue as the habit of right reason in action. The movements of the woke right, however, are guided by passions ungoverned by intellect. They confuse suspicion with discernment and anger with zeal. The Apostle James warned that “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” When commentators feed that anger under the guise of moral awakening, they become false prophets of the digital age.

Moreover, the conspiratorial impulse has a corrosive effect on Christian community. It fosters pride disguised as enlightenment. Believers begin to measure faithfulness by the number of secrets they claim to know. The Church’s magisterium, tradition, and sacramental life are replaced by online gurus and echo chambers. This fragmentation serves the enemy of souls far more effectively than any external persecution. A Church divided by paranoia is a Church disarmed.

The sociological appeal of these commentators also stems from economic incentives. The gig media economy rewards provocation. Rage generates clicks, and clicks generate revenue. The temptation to stoke division is therefore structural. Carlson and Owens understand this dynamic well. Fuentes, though more crude, plays the same game. Their brand is transgression packaged as authenticity. It is a profitable imitation of courage. Yet moral courage has never been measured by one’s ability to offend. It has always been measured by one’s willingness to speak truth in charity, even when it costs dearly.

The conservative movement’s flirtation with this “woke right” reflects a failure of formation. Too many Christians equate skepticism with intelligence and sarcasm with insight. They forget that the foundation of wisdom is reverence. Without reverence, knowledge becomes weaponized. The political right cannot restore civilization while imitating the nihilism of the left. It cannot claim to defend the West while rejecting the moral order that gave the West its coherence.

Therefore, Christians must practice discernment in what media they consume. If a voice continually stirs anger, breeds suspicion, or cultivates contempt for others, it cannot be from the Spirit of God. The standard is simple: does this narrative lead to virtue, hope, and truth, or does it lead to bitterness and fear? The former builds up the soul; the latter corrodes it. Saint Paul’s admonition remains relevant: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, think about these things.”

In the end, there is one authority before which every ideology must bow. It is the magisterium of the Church, the living voice of Christ through the ages. All other claims, be they political, cultural, or conspiratorial, are simply straw before it. The Christian cannot outsource discernment to pundits who peddle outrage. The measure of all things remains the Word made flesh and the faith once delivered to the saints in the authority of the Church.

If we forget this, we will find ourselves defending civilization with the same weapons that are destroying it.

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