Tucker and Nick versus Jesus

Christianity is not a costume, and Jesus is not a mascot for Jew-hating weirdos.

Tucker Carlson recently hosted Nick Fuentes—who is such a Jew-hating weirdo that he once tried to blame the Mossad for his gay porn habit. During the softball interview Carlson proclaimed that he dislikes Christian Zionists “more than anybody. … It’s Christian heresy, and I’m offended by that as a Christian.” As a fairly non-observant Episcopalian (is there any other kind?) Carlson is an unconvincing avatar of rigorous Christian theology. But doctrinal orthodoxy isn’t the point—Carlson does not care about the spiritual implications of, say, pro-Israel dispensational theology.

Carlson’s fixation on Jews and Israel arises not from spiritual fervor but from wading further into the ideological fever swamps. Fuentes, meanwhile, has cultivated a relatively young and overwhelmingly male audience as a sociopolitical shock jock who will say anything; he’s a fan of Hitler—and Stalin.

For many on the right, including some of Carlson’s friends (perhaps now former friends), the Fuentes interview was the last straw. It was not just that Carlson was promoting a Hitler fanboy (whom Carlson himself had derisively dismissed in the past), but that he was also betraying the legacy of Charlie Kirk, who had remained loyal to Carlson even as Carlson became more and more of a headache. Fuentes hated Kirk because Kirk rejected Fuentes’ foul ideology, but Carlson is now helping Fuentes try to take Kirk’s place as a guide for young men on the right.

But whereas Kirk offered young men a hopeful vision of a better way to live, grounded in love for God, family, and community, Fuentes offers them only bitterness and resentment. Kirk’s faith was genuine, but Carlson, Fuentes, and others of their ilk put on Christianity the way ’80s metal bands flirted with Satanism—as part of a rebellious pose that was mostly a way to sell albums. Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” was not an ode to Satan, but they got a lot of free publicity from protestors who thought it was. Invoking the Prince of Darkness was (mostly) about cultivating an aura of danger and rebellion. While sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll have obvious appeal, the allure of the occult was mostly due to the response it provoked. It appealed not so much to a sincere devotion to Beelzebub as to the adolescent desire to assert independence.

Young men still get a thrill from defying their elders and dabbling in the forbidden. And false teachers are exploiting that by selling them heretical versions of Christianity as edgy and rebellious—from those promoting cartoonish patriarchy to Fuentes and the like selling Christianity as racial identity. Just look at how Fuentes and his fanboys have tried to make “Christ is King” not a confession of faith, but an online insult, a way to stick it to the Jews. Christian identity is, for them, not about belief in, let alone relationship with, God, but a costume to be put on for reasons of politics, culture, or just online trolling.

Treating God as a prop and religion as a costume is blasphemous, and a declaration of de facto atheism. It is also dangerous. Selling young men a distorted Christianity is worse than selling them a (largely) pretend Satanism that was mostly just pleasingly distorted guitar riffs. It may be even worse for their souls, and it will do more damage to the church. And we won’t get any good music out of Fuentes and the rest of Carlson’s many lunatic guests. For all of their posturing, Fuentes and his fanboys are boring, stuck in juvenile transgressions and resentment.

The irony is that true Christianity is indeed rebellious and countercultural. The self-sacrifice and self-control it teaches are the opposite of the self-promotion and self-indulgence our culture praises. And it offers a better way of life, based in love and directing us toward genuine flourishing. But this requires repentance rather than resentment. It requires discernment, sifting good from evil, rather than mindless reaction and unthinking inversion (e.g., concluding that Hitler must have been great because liberals regard him as the epitome of evil).

And it requires bowing before the true King. Fuentes and his fanboys do not believe that Christ is King even as they say it, but Jesus really is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end. For believers this is a promise of hope, but for those who mock Christ by making Him a meme for hatred, it is a call to repent while there is still time.