Resisting the Nazis Was the West’s Finest Hour
Disgraced ex–Fox News host Tucker Carlson has fully descended into the fever swamps of conspiracy theorism, from bizarre claims about UFOs to insidious, antisemitic allegations about the “Israel lobby.” Among the most persistent of his absurd ideas, though, is the notion that World War II somehow brought on the collapse of Western civilization.
Carlson has been making the claim for years, seemingly as part of an argument against continued U.S. support for allies such as Ukraine and Israel. In many respects, it seems that he has cribbed his arguments from the thoroughly debunked work of populist firebrand Pat Buchanan. Plenty of scholars — from Lord Andrew Roberts to members of Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project — have ably refuted Carlson’s erroneous claims. Anyone with an ounce of common sense realizes that standing up to Adolf Hitler’s mad ideology was an act of civilizational greatness.
Most recently, Carlson pressed the case in an interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former Tory minister, who easily deconstructed it. The fact that the podcaster persists in making it is evidence that he has lost touch with the conservative movement he supposedly represents. Heroes of the American right, from Russell Kirk to Ronald Reagan, understood the folly of appeasing the Nazi regime and advocated a strong foreign policy to preserve the world order that emerged after World War II.
Today, the United States faces threats almost as complex and dangerous. Conservatives have a responsibility to reject the voices of appeasement and retreatism, especially as so many come from the far right. The Democratic Party of Barack Obama and Joe Biden proved incapable of checking Vladimir Putin, the Iranian ayatollahs, and the Chinese Communist Party; if conservatives do not rouse the opposition, the world may very well fall into a new dark age of multipolarity and geopolitical instability. We cannot afford to heed the conspiratorial ravings of Carlson and his ilk.
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