The fight about Fuentes

Last week, the most prominent podcast of the new right hosted one of the most vile influencers of our time. Tucker Carlson invited Nick Fuentes—a virulent white supremacist and anti-Semite, a Hitler admirer known for his hatred of blacks and women, and the pedophilia-winking leader of the “groypers,” an online movement of disaffected young white men. In the interview, Carlson lobbed softballs, avoiding any serious challenge to Fuentes’s toxic views. The two even posed together for a photo, smiling arm in arm. In all of this, Carlson effectively normalized Fuentes to a mainstream audience.

The fallout came swiftly. A number of conservative voices condemned the interview, and attention quickly turned to Carlson’s relationship with the Heritage Foundation—a premier conservative think tank that has also funded and promoted his work. Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s president and Carlson’s close friend, rushed to his defense. Roberts framed the episode as an exercise in free speech and denounced what he called the “venomous coalition” seeking to “cancel” his friend on the right. The real issue, he insisted, was not Fuentes’s ideology but the suppression of dissent on U.S. policy toward Israel.

The right soon split. Some invoked “No Enemies to the Right” (NETTR) reasoning to defend Carlson and Roberts, warning against internecine purity tests while the left poses an “existential threat.” Others wondered what this moment reveals about the moral direction of American conservatism—and about the institutions now shaping it.

Many defenders have claimed, in line with Roberts, that this entire episode is really about foreign policy—that the old guard is using charges of anti-Semitism to attack MAGA’s “America First” vision. One piece even called the backlash “a political op” and a “proxy war” by the interventionist GOP establishment on MAGA foreign policy, seeking to smear America First political leaders as bigots and regain control of the Republican Party. Such reasoning is used by many to dismiss the concerns raised about Carlson’s platforming of Fuentes.

This framing is naïve, if not deceptive. While there are legitimate debates over Israel and U.S. interventionism, the concerns about Fuentes go far beyond that. Critiquing Israeli policy is not anti-Semitic. But Fuentes is not a mere critic of Israel; he is a true bigot, a man who openly celebrates Hitler and traffics in racial hatred and misogyny. (For an overview of Fuentes’s toxic views, see this video by Ben Shapiro.) Carlson’s decision to platform him, and to do so warmly, is therefore indefensible.

The deeper issue is not foreign policy but the moral character of conservatism itself. What kind of movement are we becoming—and what are we normalizing? Within the Christian new right, groyper-like rhetoric has gained a foothold: anti-Semitism, holocaust denial, pro-Hitler memes, racial fatalism, and conspiratorial talk about “the Jewish question.” Prominent figures also engage in reckless rhetoric about blacks, condemn interracial marriage, and declare “black culture” irredeemable. Too few leaders in these circles resist such poison; too many amplify it.

That is the background to the Carlson-Fuentes affair. Beneath it lies a growing unease about what the new right is willing to excuse—and whom it is willing to embrace—in the name of fighting the left. Carlson, a self-identified Christian who has warmly welcomed figures from the new Christian right on his show, has now signaled that even open bigotry may be worth overlooking for the sake of political solidarity. And this raises an obvious question: Why invite Fuentes at all, if not to press him for his views, unless one wishes to test just how elastic the moral boundaries of the movement have become?

The justification we often hear is pragmatic. Fuentes is so popular among young men that he cannot be ignored. The right needs to rally Fuentes’s audience to achieve political victory over the left, which must be defeated at any cost. Some go even so far as to say that the right needs to listen to these men drawn to Fuentes, for they have legitimate grievances. Fuentes’s followers, we are told, represent a disillusioned generation of young white men—angry, alienated, and searching for meaning. They have been humiliated by the system, vilified in public discourse, and left without cultural defenders. Their rage, we are told, must be understood. We need to “hear their pain,” and we cannot push back too hard—otherwise we will lose them and political battles. One might say this is “toxic empathy” for groypers.

Charlie Kirk at least grasped this danger. Over the past few days many have lamented that this controversy has fractured the fragile coalition of Christian conservatives that Charlie helped galvanize before his death. Whatever one thought of him, Kirk had no time for white supremacy or anti-Semitism. He worked to keep groypers out of his movement. He understood that such compromises pose too much danger to souls and such alliances with evil are not worth the potential political victory they promise.

Every movement faces moments that test its soul. For Christian conservatives, this one is not about free speech or foreign policy, but about moral clarity. We can fight the evils of the left without coddling the evils of the right. Otherwise, we all lose.