The Patriot Post® · About Michelle Malkin's Columns

American Liberty, as endowed by our Creator, is colorblind. It is the unalienable right of all people. Being an American Patriot is, first and foremost, about embracing Liberty for all. “The name of American,” as George Washington declared, “must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.”

Leftism, by contrast, is ultimately about statist tyranny. Often the best way to achieve tyranny is by dividing constituent groups. Thus, leftists lump people into identity groups — fomenting divides over gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and financial status.

In this and some other respects, adherents of the so-called “alt-right” have more in common with the Left than with the Right, because — to paint with an exceedingly broad brush — alt-right ideology, particularly regarding immigration, tends to “slide” into the ugly identity politics of white nationalism.

That slide is on our radar as longtime syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin was fired last week by Young America’s Foundation (YAF) after she defended and embraced some alt-right ignoble personalities. Malkin recently gave a speech at UCLA premised on having been asked to “disavow” certain people after those people had disrupted and smeared other conservatives with racialist heckling.

A quick background on that: She defended Nick Fuentes, a 20-something provocateur, who hosts a YouTube show called “America First.” He and his band of self-named “groypers” have targeted and heckled conservatives such as Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), and even Donald Trump Jr. Fuentes has excused Jim Crow segregation, ventured into Holocaust denial, and praised what he dubbed a “tidal wave of white identity” after the racists marched at Charlottesville.

“The reason I wouldn’t call myself a white nationalist — it’s not because I don’t see the necessity for white people to have a homeland and for white people to have a country,” Fuentes says. “It’s because I think that kind of terminology is used almost exclusively by the Left to defame.” He adds, “I think in a way it’s almost redundant that you’re a ‘white’ nationalist. We know that the word ‘nation’ almost implicitly talks about ethnicity and biology.”

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh asked Malkin, “Fuentes called me a ‘race traitor’ and ‘f*ggot’ because I ‘work for Jews.’ He also said that black people who complained about segregation needed to ‘grow up.’ How do you feel about these statements? And in what way are they ‘America First’?”

Dan Crenshaw says, “They use slogans like ‘America first’ to get conservatives to sympathize with them. But after personally dealing with them, it’s pretty obvious they are vehement racists, anti-semites & ethnic-nationalists. Conservatives need to know the difference.”

Rather than respond to Crenshaw’s comments, Malkin blocked him on her social-media accounts.

Worse, Malkin has not only refused to reject these groyper white nationalists, she embraced them.

“They want me to disavow Nick Fuentes and VDARE and Peter Brimelow and Faith Goldy and Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys and Steve King and Laura Loomer and on and on,” Malkin said. “No, I do not agree with every last thing they’ve said or written or published or tweeted or thought with their inside or outside voices. But I will not disavow any of them and I will not join the de-platforming witch hunters who hypocritically call themselves free speech and culture warriors.”

Peter Brimelow is the founder of VDARE, widely considered to be a white nationalist website because its authors routinely take legitimate arguments about immigration in the race-based direction. Malkin has described Brimelow as “my friend.” Faith Goldy is an activist journalist long associated with white nationalists. She was fired from Rebel Media for conducting an interview with the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, and Facebook has banned her over white nationalism. We don’t take our cues from Facebook, but in this case, she’s been correctly pegged.

Ben Shapiro, by contrast, rightly notes, “Race does not have ideals; it’s just a melanin level.”

Explaining Malkin’s termination, Young America’s Foundation noted: “YAF gives a platform to a broad range of speakers with a range of views within the mainstream of conservative thought. Immigration is a vital issue that deserves robust debate but there is no room in mainstream conservatism or at YAF for holocaust deniers, white nationalists, street brawlers, or racists.”

Sadly, Malkin, who in 2007 shared a national journalism award with Patriot Post publisher Mark Alexander, seems to have become detached from our Patriot ranks of grassroots Americans. Making the decision to drop Malkin from our editorial lineup, Alexander said that, like our friends at YAF: “There is zero tolerance at The Patriot Post for those who associate in any way with fringe racists and delusional holocaust deniers. Malkin must go.”

There is plenty of room in the coalition on the Right for disagreement on policy positions. There is no room for anyone who dabbles with “alt right” haters.