Over the past several years, I have taken considerable professional risks to voice a controversial yet straightforward observation: the American Left seems to have veered off course.

The ideals of liberalism have been overtaken by a fixation on identity politics, leading to a shift from judging individuals by their character to categorizing them based on unchangeable traits.

In this transformation, emotions began to overshadow facts, and dissent was equated with hostility. Many institutions — including those in medicine, education, and journalism — have been reshaped to conform to political dogma.

My departure from this progressive-leftist faction stemmed from a refusal to indulge in what I perceive as their detrimental tendencies. Yet, intellectual integrity demands we hold the same critical lens to the Right. If we’re to seriously address the Left’s excesses, we must be equally vigilant about similar issues arising from the Right.

Recently, a resurfaced clip from Tucker Carlson, a leading figure in conservative media, revealed him suggesting that the U.S. government might have planned to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. According to Carlson, this was not for reasons of oil, national security, or geopolitical sway, but rather to enforce same-sex marriage through what he dubbed the ‘globo-homo’ agenda.

‘It’s possible we’re mad that [Maduro] doesn’t allow gay marriage. That is a distinct possibility, but no one will say that out loud,’ Carlson said in the clip from an October episode of his podcast, recorded prior to the January 3rd capture of Maduro by US forces.

Let’s be clear about what that phrase ‘globo-homo’ means.

‘Globo-homo’ is a crude conspiracy term claiming that global elites (also often a wink-and-nod reference to the Jewish people) weaponize gay rights to dissolve national identity, weaken traditional families, and make nations easier to control.

Tucker Carlson told millions of Americans that the United States government may have been plotting to kill Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to impose gay marriage through a scheme Carlson called ‘globo-homo’

If we are serious about confronting insanity when it comes from the Left, we cannot excuse it when it starts creeping in from the Right

This isn’t serious foreign policy analysis. It’s culture-war mythology.

And Carlson didn’t hedge. He didn’t frame his theory as satire or speculation. He presented it as a serious explanation for American intervention.

‘The US-backed opposition leader who would take Maduro’s place… is pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela,’ Carlson claimed. ‘To those of you who thought this whole project was globo homo—not crazy, actually.’ 

That statement isn’t just wrong. It’s malicious.

Tucker Carlson is not a stupid man. He is, in fact, exceptionally sharp. He understands foreign policy far better than most. That is precisely what makes this moment so disturbing. He knows better.

If American foreign policy were genuinely driven by a ‘woke’ imperative to spread gay marriage at the barrel of a gun, our alliances would look radically different. We would not be deeply partnered with Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is punishable by death. We would not trade billions with China. 

The United States has always been brutally pragmatic – sometimes to a fault – about doing business with regimes that do not share our values.

Ironically, Maduro himself once publicly suggested his country’s legislature should take up the question of same-sex marriage – in October 2020 he asked Venezuela’s National Assembly to consider debating the issue, citing comments by Pope Francis.

Pictured: Protests against intervention in Venezuela in New York City on January 6

The idea that the CIA or Pentagon planned a regime change in South America to stage a Pride parade is not realism. It’s fan fiction. So why say it?

Because Carlson is reading the room and playing to the darkest parts of it.

Roughly half the country is skeptical of American intervention in Venezuela. That skepticism is reasonable. Conservatives have legitimate arguments against foreign entanglements, and deep valid concerns over endless wars, and blood-and-treasure commitments with no clear endgame.

But instead of respecting his audience enough to make those arguments honestly — on the merits of non-intervention — Carlson chose something easier and uglier, a cultural scapegoat.

This is the oldest political trick in the book: take a complicated problem, identify a group your audience already feels uneasy about and tell them: This is who’s really to blame.

Not oil. Not power. Not geopolitics.

Them.

The gays.

That is not legitimate commentary. It is scapegoating. And it is dangerous.

We have already seen what happens when identity-based dehumanization becomes normalized. When activists brand opponents as Nazis or imperialists, stripping them of humanity. Violence follows.

When rhetoric teaches people to see entire groups as existential threats rather than neighbors, moral restraints collapse. We’ve watched that pattern play out repeatedly, and the bloodshed that follows is never accidental.

This tactic is also wildly out of step with reality.

The political battle over gay marriage in the United States is effectively over. While many religious conservatives maintain sincere theological objections, the legislative war has ended.

Even the modern Republican Party accepts that we do not live in a theocracy. We live in a constitutional republic where the rights that protect our freedom apply to everyone. Donald Trump never prioritized overturning marriage equality. Major conservative leaders have explicitly rejected reopening that fight. 

The movement moved on – until now.

Carlson, I believe, is trying to rip open a largely healed wound not because he cares about the sanctity of marriage, but because he needs a villain to attach to his isolationist worldview.

This is where the real danger lies.

Donald Trump never prioritized overturning marriage equality. Major conservative leaders have explicitly rejected reopening that fight (Pictured: Trump with Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster on July 31, 2022)

For years, conservatives correctly criticized the Left’s obsession with identity politics—the reduction of people into racial, sexual, and ideological tribes ranked by moral worth. We warned that this thinking would rot institutions and fracture society.

Now we are watching elements of the far Right adopt the same poison.

If the Left can blame ‘whiteness’ for every societal ill, the Right can blame ‘the gay agenda’ for global conflict. Same game, different players.

Both positions replace individual agency with group guilt. Both positions turn citizens into symbols. Both positions teach people to fear their neighbors.

I didn’t leave the Left to watch the Right become a mirror image of the thing I escaped.

Conservatism, at its best, is about individual liberty, realism, and restraint. It is about judging people on their merits and confronting hard truths without hysteria. It is not about conspiratorial scapegoating that treats gay Americans as covert agents of the military-industrial complex.

Venezuela is a serious issue. It involves nuclear-armed adversaries, energy markets, border stability, and regional power dynamics. Americans deserve a sober debate about whether intervention helps or harms our national interest.

Tucker Carlson robbed his audience of that debate. Instead, he offered them grievance dressed up as analysis.

If the Right embraces identity politics, conspiratorial thinking, and moral panic, it won’t just lose arguments. It will lose credibility. And once credibility is gone, power follows.

We can criticize the radical Left without becoming it as long as we refuse to play the same game.