The poison of antisemitism is “growing on the new right,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, and it’s “spreading wider and faster than we thought.” Last month, Tucker Carlson hosted “Hitler fanboy” Nick Fuentes on his podcast for a “chummy” two-hour interview watched by more than 5 million people. The white nationalist influencer, 27, toned down his material for the chat—he’s previously talked about wanting a child bride and fantasized about killing a Black man with Hitler—but still praised Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin and assailed the threat of “organized Jewry.” Carlson largely nodded along and even admitted he loathed Christian Zionists such as the staunchly pro-Israel GOP Sen. Ted Cruz “more than anybody.” That Carlson would grant Fuentes access to his massive audience is proof that his hate “is entering the MAGA mainstream,” said Ali Breland in The Atlantic. Look at the recently leaked group chats of Young Republican leaders, which were “full of the kind of antisemitic and racist jokes” beloved by Fuentes and his legion of young fans, known as groypers. Conservative writer Rod Dreher, a friend of Vice President JD Vance, says he’s been told that 30% to 40% of Republican staffers in Washington under age 30 are groypers. Fuentes said in 2021 that his goal was to turn the GOP “into a truly reactionary party.” That “vision is coming true.”
“Conservatives who detest antisemitism were shaken by the interview,” said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. But “they were even more alarmed” when Kevin Roberts—head of the Heritage Foundation, the GOP’s preeminent think tank—released a video defending Carlson’s decision to host Fuentes. He said Heritage doesn’t police “the consciences of Christians” and accused a “venomous coalition” of targeting Carlson. It’s an argument made by other prominent new right thinkers, who portray the Left as an existential threat that “necessitates the final loosening of all remaining restraints.” Roberts did eventually denounce Fuentes after some Heritage donors and staffers slammed his video. But it was too late to stop a MAGA “civil war,” said Will Sommer in The Bulwark. Podcaster Ben Shapiro attacked Carlson for “normalizing Nazism,” Cruz called Carlson a “coward,” and Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said he’d canceled an event with Heritage because “I don’t work with antisemites.”
Yet the silence from President Trump’s heir apparent was “deafening,” said Eli Lake in The Free Press. Vice President JD Vance, a Carlson ally, said nothing about Fuentes, despite being a repeat target of Fuentes’ bile. In recent livestreams, Fuentes has called Vance—whose wife, Usha, is Indian American—“a fat race mixer” and vowed to disrupt Vance’s likely 2028 presidential campaign if he gets too close to “the Israel First lobby.” Vance has gone out of his way to avoid offending groypers, chiding the “pearl clutchers” who were outraged by the Young Republicans chat. Perhaps Vance thinks “he can tame the feral groypers, retain his friendship with Carlson, and keep the MAGA peace. But this is delusional.”
It’s not if you remember “Never Trumpism circa 2016,” said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. Back then, plenty of Republicans—like Vance—denounced Trump as “an unfit degenerate” only to embrace him “as the specter of a Hillary Clinton presidency loomed.” So why wouldn’t they embrace a future candidate who’s friendly to Fuentes or, at least, one who can triangulate “the growing divide between antisemitic and anti-antisemitic Republicans?” Practicing “strategic silence” might just be enough for Vance to keep everyone on side. “There will be no right-wing crack-up.”
That Carlson would grant Fuentes access to his massive audience is proof that his hate ‘is entering the MAGA mainstream’