Josh Hawley is a neo-Confederate at war with modernity. A Republican senator from Missouri, he opposed renaming military bases honoring rebel generals and was the sole vote against a bill to crack down on anti-Asian hate crime. After the supreme court ruled that federal law protects employees against discrimination based on sexual orientation, Hawley bemoaned “the end of the conservative legal movement”. That the decision was written by Neil Gorsuch, an arch-conservative, was irrelevant.
On 6 January 2021, Hawley gave a clench-fisted salute to Trump supporters at the Capitol. After the deadly riot, he voted against certifying the 2020 election. His last book, The Tyranny of Big Tech, featured a blurb from Tucker Carlson – the now former Fox News host who fantasized about the murder of a Black man, dabbled in “testicle tanning” and produced a series called The End of Men.
