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When ‘DNA’ Becomes Politics
36 sats \ 0 comments \ @jamalderrick 3h Politics_And_Law

I saw this screenshot in my feed today. I’m posting it for context, not as “proof” of anything, assume it could be incomplete. What grabbed me was one line: “it’s in our DNA.”

When someone says “it’s in our DNA” while explicitly tying it to “ascending as a White man,” that’s not just self-improvement talk. It’s a claim that biology decides who should rise: ‘we’ have an inherited essence, and the hierarchy is natural. That’s the tell.

Working out or improving your appearance doesn’t make you political. I’m not attacking self-improvement. I’m talking about the moment it stops being “I want to be better” and becomes “we are built for dominance.”

If we’re trying to understand GOP radicalization risk, the focus shouldn’t be memes. It should be the incentive structures, institutional choices, and gatekeeping failures that allow it to spread. The question isn’t whether this exists online. The question is what happens when institutions decide to normalize it. This hits harder right now because identity formation is increasingly online, and aesthetic ‘crusader’ symbolism is being used as a shortcut to belonging and authority.

That’s why Fuentes matters: not because he holds office, but because he tests the fence line. Every time a major figure platforms him and calls it “just a conversation,” the cost of flirting with his framing drops. That’s the pipeline: gatekeeping decisions out in the open that change what’s acceptable inside the broader right.

The Heritage Foundation blowup after Tucker Carlson hosted Fuentes is the clean example: Heritage president Kevin Roberts defended the interview, and the organization saw resignations and internal rupture.

So here’s the question: what would change your mind that this is only aesthetics, not a pipeline, when major conservative institutions are openly arguing about whether platforming and defending it is worth it?

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