How to Handle White Supremacists 101

Here are words I never thought I would be writing to fellow conservatives: I wish everyone would do what Charlie Kirk just did.

I don’t know Mr. Kirk and I don’t envy his success. In some ways I feel badly that his meteoric rise on the right has thrust him into a spotlight he isn’t prepared to fill. I think Charlie means well, wants what is best for the country, and like all of us, probably comes to regret certain things that he says or writes. Unfortunately for him, he lives in a cut-throat business where you have to be right all the time and never admit the boneheaded mistakes we all make.

Admitting error is a sign of weakness in the power politics world of 2019. Consequently, Charlie feels obligated to stand by and defend absurd and intellectually vapid declarations like this:

No conservative with even a partially functioning brain would defend that. And sadly, this kind of indefensible partisan rhetoric is par for Charlie’s course. It’s why I’ve never been a big fan of Kirk or his organization, Turning Point USA.

That said, for as much as that group gets criticized on the left for being infiltrated by white supremacists, there was (believe it or not) a pretty interesting write-up over at Vox about how the alt-right neo-Nazis are actually attacking groups like Kirk’s. It’s worth a read as it details the alt-right’s disdain for conservatism.

That disdain was certainly on display at a recent Q&A hosted by TPUSA. A radical white supremacist took the mic and challenged Kirk with the notion that America’s founders wanted this to be a European nation of white people, and Charlie wasn’t having it. With as critical as I am of his frequent overreaches and blunders, and as personally off-putting as I often find his demeanor, I think Kirk deserves immense credit for his response here:

America as an idea, not bound by social class or skin color. E Pluribus Unum is the core, foundational concept of the country. These are foundational, mainstream conservative values. The alt-right, white supremacist, neo-Nazi cretins that undermine those principles deserve to hear from all of us precisely what Kirk said:

“You…your ideology, is not conservative, it is right-wing identitarian, and it has no place in the conservative movement…Get out of line.”

Amen, Charlie. Well done.