It’s the Bullies Who Are Afraid: Chuck Norris, 1940-2026

Chuck Norris was such a tough guy he was scared of clouds and gay kids. He accepted a sponsorship deal with Glock because he needed a gun to feel safe even as school shootings were a national crisis. He was scared of racial equality, fleeing to the Dixiecrats when the Democrats suggested that maybe racism was bad. He clung to his beliefs even though it was increasingly clear that that belief was hurting people because he was afraid of change and afraid of learning that he was wrong. He was definitely afraid of black people who expressed the opinion that maybe this country wasn’t treating them equally.

Chuck Norris, internet meme and sometime actor, has died at the age of 86. Frankly, I don’t know how much you can trust a lot of the biographical information online, especially ideas about what roles he was or was not offered. The political beliefs are much easier to document. Also the fact that he was apparently kicked out of the Air Force for being AWOL, among other things. It seems he claims his drill sergeant was “abusive,” which I thought was kind of how it works. But I guess that means we can add drill sergeants to the list of things he feared.

The list was very long, if you want my opinion, and explains a lot about him. Conspiracism is inherently based on fear, and he was a big fan of conspiracies. He believed in chemtrails. He was a birther. He was right-wing enough that there was speculation about whether or not he was at the insurrection on January 6. (It appears he was not.) He opposed the separation of Church and State. He wrote for fringe website WorldNetDaily about the lunatic things he believed.

It’s true that it wasn’t yet known that Roy Moore was a pedophile when Norris supported him. But everyone knew about another person he supported and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, at least the third time he ran for office, and so far as I know he never said anything about it. Sure could get pissy and claim the Obama administration had paid the BSA to let gay kids into the scouts, though. His concern for kids didn’t include leaving a church that illegally failed to report a pastor’s abuse of children—they fired him, but because they never reported him, he got a job at another church and abused more kids.

Unlike many other people who appeared in Expelled, he knew what he was doing and was an ardent supporter of creationism. He opposed gay marriage. IMDb says he was a secessionist, but it’s hard to find details about that—all my searches just lead to obituaries that don’t mention it. What I can find is that he was a supporter of “traditional marriage” who had a one-night stand while married that resulted in a child that he didn’t see until she was an adult.

In short, I’ve never understood the Chuck Norris thing. I assume it’s people who didn’t know anything about him beyond his Tough Guy facade. They didn’t look beyond Walker, Texas Ranger to the toxic, fearful person beneath. Even when those memes were everywhere, I wondered why we didn’t make them about Christopher Walken instead. Christopher Walken actually is that cool, to my knowledge doesn’t oppose taking rights away from anyone, and is also a hell of a dancer.