Robert Hampton, American Renaissance, November 24, 2018

Tucker Carlson, Ship of Fools, How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution, Simon & Schuster, 2018, 256 pp., $28.00.

Tucker Carlson is a brave man. No other cable news host dares discuss the dangers of demographic change, the plight of white South Africans, and the Left’s anti-white racism.

Mr. Carlson has refused to apologize or trim his sails in the face of left-wing criticism, which makes him stand out in a vast field of conservative cowardice. He has been rewarded with stellar TV ratings and a spot at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for his new book, Ship of Fools .

This book, like his program, pulls no punches on immigration, demographics, and elite treachery. However, it is mostly about economics, and its main thesis is that America’s elites have wrecked the country. Mr. Carlson sometimes sounds more like Bernie Sanders than a conservative pundit when he takes on corporate power and the horrors of foreign interventions.

Mr. Carlson is not a race realist. In fact, he rails against racial tribalism in his chapter on the Left’s obsession with diversity, and he has no appetite for white identity politics. He promotes civic nationalism rather than white nationalism, but that doesn’t mean he is bound by progressive taboos.

In the introduction, Mr. Carlson implies that the core of America is European. Liberals, he writes mockingly, tell us “we must celebrate the fact that a nation that was overwhelmingly European, Christian, and English-speaking fifty years ago has become a place with no ethnic majority, immense religious pluralism, and no universally shared culture or language.”

Much of the book is a muscular attack on elite stupidity in economic policy, foreign affairs, free speech and other social issues, but the themes of anti-white racism and deliberate demographic change run through every chapter. The most incisive parts are discussions of immigration and diversity.

In his chapter on immigration, Mr. Carlson sounds like an old labor Democrat, since he mostly avoids cultural and racial arguments in favor of economic ones. The chapter is a paean to left-wing efforts to restrict immigration, ranging from Cesar Chavez’s vigilantes pummeling illegal aliens to labor unions supporting Chinese exclusion laws. Mr. Carlson believes that mass immigration is driven by the elite desire for serfs, and that liberals of old would be horrified by it.

In Mr. Carlson’s opinion, the new liberals hate blue-collar whites and shed no tears over their replacement. The Fox News host writes that rich white liberals prefer Third-Worlders over white workers because their racial kin are too much like themselves. They would feel guilty if a white cleaned their toilets; little brown people who speak a different language are the solution. Mr. Carlson thinks elites feel good about uplifting the Other, while they avoid the discomfort of degrading fellow whites. This is a novel view of white guilt. It is also novel to devote an entire chapter to attacking Democrats for failing to uphold the restrictionist legacy of Cesar Chavez.

Mr. Carlson argues that elites intentionally divide the races to preserve power. This sounds like the argument of a tenured radical, but Mr. Carlson clearly sees leftist contempt for ordinary whites: “It’s not a coincidence that since the life expectancy of working-class whites in America has declined, elite attacks on working-class whites have escalated.” Elites can be indiscriminate in their contempt:

They’ve managed to destroy entire cities very few of them have ever been to, from Detroit to Newark to Baltimore. They lower test scores in schools they don’t attend. They cause poor nutrition, asthma, and broken families in black neighborhoods, and in their spare time exacerbate global warming.

Mr. Carlson cites many examples of modern-day segregation, such as universities setting up blacks-only dormitories, and he acknowledges that all these examples are driven by anti-white animus. He blasts affirmative action, white liberals’ fawning admiration of Ta-Nehisi Coates, and the hypocrisy of progressives who preach diversity but don’t practice it.

Mr. Carlson grieves over an America that has become intensely tribal and open to anti-white vitriol. He wants Americans to unite on the basis of citizenship, but isn’t optimistic that will happen. Instead, he predicts that white identity politics will soon became mainstream, thanks to the Left’s racial politics:

White identity politics will be a response to a world in which identity politics is the only game there is. In a country where virtually every nonwhite group reaps advantages from being racially conscious and politically organized, how long before someone asks the obvious question: why can’t white people organize and agitate along racial lines, too? . . . It will be a simple argument to make. Soon whites will be a minority in America. They’ve got enemies, as the establishment often demonstrates, as well as interests to protect. Is there some rational reason, someone will ask, why they should be the only group in America not allowed to think of themselves as a group?

Mr. Carlson concludes that this inevitable development will doom the prospect of a revived civic nationalism and “America as we’ve known it will be over.” He does not condemn white advocacy or wring his hands over how terrible it would be. He is simply analyzing where the country is headed.

Mr. Carlson fears white identity politics, but he doesn’t offer a clear alternative to it. He hopes immigration restriction and the elimination of affirmative action will bring racial harmony, but he knows that the Left’s extremism makes that a dim hope.

The chapter on solutions is surprisingly short and offers only “more democracy” as the antidote to elite corruption. Mr. Carlson believes that if elites continue to scorn the people, voters will turn to leaders even more radical than Donald Trump. This thin conclusion suggests he doesn’t believe there will be more democracy, and that darker days lie ahead.

Ship of Fools is an important work race realists should celebrate. Just a few years ago, Fox News’ prime-time hosts argued for amnesty and claimed Third-World newcomers would become conservatives. Now the face of the network argues for immigration restriction and understands that demographic change is the most serious threat to America’s future.

Mr. Carlson is not one of us, but he understands our issues and he influences millions of Americans. His new book should wake up many readers to truths the elites try to hide. Let us hope one of those readers will be Donald J. Trump.