If there is a silver lining to the recent uproar over antisemitism on the right, it is this: The pushback has been inspiring.
While the number of voices willing to defend or excuse Tucker Carlson’s softball interview with self-professed “Team Hitler” member Nick Fuentes has been shocking, it has been even more heartening to see how many on the right have spoken out and even given up their jobs to prevent the virus of antisemitism from entering the conservative mainstream.
If there is a silver lining to the recent uproar over antisemitism on the right, it is this: The pushback has been inspiring.
While the number of voices willing to defend or excuse Tucker Carlson’s softball interview with self-professed “Team Hitler” member Nick Fuentes has been shocking, it has been even more heartening to see how many on the right have spoken out and even given up their jobs to prevent the virus of antisemitism from entering the conservative mainstream.
Which raises a question: Where is this pushback against antisemitism on the left?
While antisemitism exists across the political spectrum, right-wing antisemitism has heretofore been largely a fringe phenomenon. You don’t see students and faculty at Ivy League schools holding neo-Nazi rallies. Left-wing antisemitism, by contrast, is an elite phenomenon. We see it in the pro-Hamas protests at our nation’s most prestigious universities. We see it in the halls of Congress, where “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) has spewed virulently antisemitic comments and yet was rewarded with promotion to vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s human rights subcommittee. We see it in the New York mayoral election of Zohran Mamdani — who has falsely accused Israel of “apartheid” and won’t say that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state or condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” yet was endorsed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York).
Had we seen the same resistance to antisemitism on the left that we do on the right today, there would be no Squad on Capitol Hill, no Mayor Mamdani and no pro-Hamas turmoil at elite universities. Unlike the left, conservatives have until now effectively policed our movement, containing the contagion of antisemitism to the fever swamps of the alt-right. If we ever stop doing so, we’ll end up like the Democrats today — captured and cowed by the antisemites they welcomed into their coalition out of political expediency.
That is precisely what those who excuse Carlson’s softball platforming of Fuentes want conservatives to do. We have been told that conservatives need to stop fighting “amongst ourselves” and focus on fighting the left. Sorry, fighting Nazis and those who seek to sane-wash them is not fighting “amongst ourselves.”
Fuentes is a fascist. On his podcast, he has exulted that while “Hitler was a pedophile and kind of a pagan … he was also f—ing really cool,” yells “Heil Hitler!” and gleefully announces “Hitler is awesome. Hitler was right.” He is a Holocaust denier who blatantly declares “the Holocaust didn’t happen” — and yet has called for the extermination of “perfidious Jews” whom he calls “evildoers” and “devil worshipers” who “practice magic or rituals” and “need to be given the death penalty, straight up” when his “Groyper Army” takes power. (He is also “a fan” of Joseph Stalin).
Fuentes has called women “whores,” “sluts” and “stupid, dirty bitches” and says “a lot of women want to be raped.” He defends racial segregation, declaring “enough with the Jim Crow stuff, who cares? Oh, they had to drink out of a different water fountain, big f—ing deal” and asserts “white people are every single bit justified in being racist.”
And for the MAGA faithful, be forewarned: He loathes President Donald Trump, of whom he says: “You suck. You are fat. You are a joke.” And he condemns Vice President JD Vance as “A fat race mixer who’s married to a jeet who named his son Vivek.”
But instead of condemning Carlson for giving this bigot a platform to soft-pedal his venom unopposed, some like Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts focused their ire on what he called the “venomous coalition” of conservatives criticizing Carlson who he says are “sowing division.” No, it is Carlson who is sowing division by lifting up the flaps of the conservative big tent and trying to let someone like Fuentes in.
This should not be hard: Anyone who associates with or uncritically platforms a Nazi and racist should be anathema to the right.
But for some it is hard. The new slogan among those who excuse Carlson’s embrace of Fuentes (along with his bizarre defenses of Vladimir Putin, Nicolás Maduro and — most recently — Zohran Mamdani) is “no enemies to the right” — an appropriation of French Revolution’s dictum “no enemies to the left.” With respect, the lesson of the French Revolution for conservatives is not that we should emulate the Jacobins. And, sorry, Nick Fuentes is my enemy, and so is anyone for whom Fuentes is not an enemy.
The Carlson-Fuentes defenders claim their critics are engaging in cancel culture. Wrong again. Free speech does not mean freedom from criticism or from the consequences of your speech. You cannot spread racist, antisemitic and misogynistic claptrap and expect that you will not be shunned for doing so.
As for the argument that we should focus our attention on the left, we can’t effectively oppose the left if we don’t keep our own house in order. Conservatives can’t complain that Democrats call us fascists if we let actual fascists into our movement.
If we want to convince the American people to support our cause, then we need to be clear what conservatism stands for — and what it does not. That requires we keep out Nazis, along with their enablers. These cranks want to hijack the MAGA movement for their own vile purposes. We need to stop them from doing so.
There can and should be vigorous debate among different factions inside the conservative tent. But we must draw a line somewhere — and it should be self-evident that fascism is over that line. If conservatives can’t agree on that, then we will end up like the left — beholden to antisemites in our midst.
The post What ‘no enemies to the right’ gets so wrong
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