By family history and his own early bona fides, Derek Black was slated to have a successful career in white nationalism, as far as those things go. Black’s father, Don, is the founder of the oldest neo-Nazi website, the now-shuttered Stormfront; and was a grand wizard in the KKK; a member of the American Nazi Party; and was convicted in 1981 for attempting to overthrow the government of the Caribbean island of Dominica, part of a long dream for white nationalists to establish their own government. Derek Black’s mother, Chloe, was once married to David Duke.
As a child, Black, gifted as a coder, created a version of Stormfront for kids, and as a young man, hosted a talk show on the website. In 2008, as a 19-year-old, Black won a seat on the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee, although he was ultimately denied the position after the party learned of his background. According to reporter Eli Saslow, who wrote the book Rising Out of Hatred about Black, the young white nationalist had a serious influence on his father:
“One of Derek’s most lasting and damaging impacts on this white nationalist movement is that he convinced his father to scrub Stormfront of all racial slurs, all Nazi insignia … Derek thought the way [they were] going to reach more people is, instead of of using this kind of language, [they] need to play to this false, but unfortunately, very widely spread sense of white grievance that still exists in big parts of this country.”
But at the age of 24, Black disavowed white nationalism, writing in a letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center that he had abandoned the movement, citing experiences in college and extended conversations with Jewish friends as factors that led him from his former beliefs: “I acknowledge that things I have said as well as my actions have been harmful to people of color, people of Jewish descent, activists striving for opportunity and fairness for all, and others affected.”
All this to say, Black knows a thing or two about the rhetoric and long-term planning of the white-nationalist movement in America. And in a segment on The Van Jones Show this weekend, Black claimed that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is doing a better job at promoting whitenationalist rhetoric than SPLC–bona fide white nationalists are:
“It’s really, really alarming that my family watches Tucker Carlson show once and then watches it on the replay because they feel that he is making the white nationalist talking points better than they have and they’re trying to get some tips on how to advance it.”
Carlson has been accused of forwarding the agenda of white nationalists before: In August 2018, the Fox News host ran an erroneous segment about white farmers in South Africa pushed off their land, a conspiracy theory widely circulated in far-right circles. Carlson has objected to the removal of Confederate statues; defended the social network Gab, which has been described as “Twitter for Racists;” and in December 2018, he claimed that immigrants are making America “dirtier.” In February, the white nationalist site VDARE thanked Carlson for name-checking them in a segment about deplatforming — the Fox News host simply referred to the site as a “publication” — and in March, leaked chat messages of the white-nationalist group Identity Evropa showed that members believe “Tuck” is “our guy” and has “done more for our people than most of us could ever hope to.”
Whether or not it’s intentional, Carlson’s status as a megaphone for white-nationalist ideas comes in tandem with a rise in far-right violence in the United States: According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s most recent accounting, there are now 112 neo-Nazi groups, 148 white-nationalist groups, 63 racist skinhead groups, and 36 neo-Confederate organizations active in America. Nor is the phenomenon limited to the U.S.: The New Zealand mosque shooter that killed 50 consumed a media diet loaded with white-nationalist rhetoric.