A Sign of Hope and a Sign of Concern
Tucker, Fuentes, and Heritage. Oh My!
Out of the corner of my eye, I have been paying some attention to the ongoing conflict in some areas of rightward politics over Tucker Carlson’s interview of Nick Fuentes and the subsequent defense of Tucker by Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation. The story got a nod in yesterday’s tab-clearing post, for example.
My initial reaction to this story was that it reinforced my negative views of both Tucker Carlson and the Heritage Foundation. Additionally, I learned as a result of this story that Heritage has an authoritarian policy on speech wherein they officially speak with only one voice, and that the members of Heritage are not allowed to voice public dissent. You know, as is befitting an organization that sees itself as a “think” tank.
At any rate, Will Sommer this morning pointed out that the conflict continues to ripple, Groyper War Consumes the Biggest Right-Wing Think Tank.
BEN SHAPIRO DID SOMETHING UNIQUE on Monday. Not only did he open his show with a fiery intervention in the right’s roiling feud over white nationalist Nick Fuentes—he devoted his entire show to the topic.
“No to the groypers!” Shapiro said at one point, defiantly.
The conservative commentator’s exhortation was the latest shot to be fired in the civil war that has been roiling the right since last week when Tucker Carlson welcomed the racist, antisemitic, Holocaust-denying Fuentes into the conservative mainstream with a friendly interview. It’s a conflict that has consumed the MAGA movement, unnerved activists, drawn in top lawmakers, and left some conservative institutions in a state of upheaval. Shapiro, taking his turn on Monday, called it “the most important thing happening in the country.”
[…]
But Shapiro had a third target that would have seemed baffling just a week ago: the Heritage Foundation, the monolithic conservative think tank that serves as one of the main pillars of the Republican establishment.
So, on the one hand, it is a hopeful sign for the health of the American polity that there is an active faction that sees Nick Fuentes and his ilk to be outside the realm of acceptability.
I mean, this is a headline in the NY Post, of all places: Heritage Foundation in revolt over Tucker Carlson defense after controversial Nick Fuentes interview: ‘Footsie with literal Nazis’.
On the other hand, it is more than concerning that there is a faction that is defending Tucker Carlson’s platforming of Fuentes and that that faction is linked to what is essentially the intellectual (I use the term advisedly) wellspring of the current administration.
I prefer the days when anyone or anything like Fuentes and his groypers would be anathema to mainstream politics.
The following from the Post piece is quite concerning.
“If we are labeled on the same side as Nick Fuentes, then we deserve to lose,” chimed in a fourth Heritage colleague, who later added: “Talking with some of the interns I think that there are a growing number of them who actually agree” with the views Fuentes espoused.
Cool! Young people who are working at the center of conservative intellectual power and who are doing so because they want to have prominent roles in American politics are groypers.
But, you know, people who are concerned that elements of the American right at ranging into fascism are alarmists. Amiright?
I think Charlie Kirk’s death was an instigating factor–it’s led to a plethora of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
When the GQP has made a BIG EFFING DEAL about any criticism of Israel or support for Palestinians to be intolerable instances of antisemitism, and has used this to fire people, deport people, harass people, illegally detain people, etc., can they grant actual antisemites like Fuentes doublethink exceptions that most voters will swallow?
I’m shocked…SHOCKED…to hear that the Heritage Foundation – the home of White Christian Nationalist Russell Vought – is attracting young Nazis. This is what happens when a party – aided and abetted by the legacy media – normalizes a grossly unfit, mentally disordered con artist as its leader. This is what happens when media whores and grifters like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro are presented as “thinkers” who supposedly lend intellectual heft to rightwing lunacy. That Nick Fuentes is a bridge too far is laughable. Fuentes is a product of the relentless xenophobia that comes from Trump, Miller and Vought.
I just don’t think there’s anyone capable of median entry-level work at a think tank on the right who wouldn’t be a Groyper. That’s just not happening in 2025. Everything the conservative movement has encouraged in its successful path to power has led to Holocaust denialists being the rank-and-file of DC.
Like if you’re twenty-three and appalled by Groypers, you aren’t going to be listening to Ben Shapiro and thinking about taking a fellowship at Heritage. This is the logical future of people who can put your average policy-like paper together for the conservative movement.
After all the crap about Harvard et al conservatives are reminded that antisemitism has always been mostly a Right Wing thing. Shocked to find out that
gamblingantisemitism is going on!ETA sorry Charley.
Ben Shapiro is fine with people who hate blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, trans people, but antisemites are a bridge too far for him. If he wasn’t Jewish does anyone seriously believe he would give a rat’s ass about antisemitism?
@Lucys Football:
He’s even been slow on the uptake when it comes to condemning right-wing anti-Semitism. When Kanye started getting into it, he bent over backwards to excuse it (he attributed it to Kanye’s mental illness and claimed Ilhan Omar was worse), and he kept Kanye’s defender Candace Owens in his organization for more than a year, only deciding to can her after she started becoming truly explicit about it.
I do agree, though, that it’s the only form of bigotry he cares about. It’s the old pattern where conservatives only care about an issue if it concerns them personally.
Trump infamously invited Nick Fuentes to Mar-a-Lago, to dine with himself and Kanye West. Conservatives made excuses for Trump’s platforming of those antisemites then, just like they’ve downplayed and excused Trump’s praise of Hitler and Musk’s Nazi salute.
So Tucker Carlson and Heritage Foundation are just following the lead of the hatemongering scumbag president that’s supported and enabled by Shapiro et al. These conservatives should therefore blame themselves.
@DK:
IMO, the only reason El Taco is not explicitly antisemitic is Ivanka’s husband. If he were to alienate Jared, he’d alienate Ivanka, and his chances to have sex with his daughter would evaporate like morning dew.
@DK:
As I said in a previous post. The media refuses to call outright racism racism when it comes to Trump and his allies. They just can’t bring themselves to say what it blatantly obvious.
@Lucys Football:
Totally and totally.
I take no comfort in finding brief alignment with a monumentally hypocritical activist bigot like Ben Shapiro.
@Kathy:
Speaking of Ivanka’s husband …
How do we know that Trump’s not openly anti-semitic?
It’s very simple; he pardoned Jared’s father, Charles Kushner. /s.
@DK:
No no, Trump simply sat down to dinner in his own home and some strangers joined him. He had no idea who they were. Surely this has happened to us all at times?
I’ve long predicted there will be epic infighting on the American right once Trump departs the scene. We can expect open hostilities to the Mar-a-Lago mafia to break out from Republicans in other states and even within Florida, from the DeSantis wing. The ideological differences papered over because Trump was the pathway to victory will spill out into the open, along with straightforward struggles for power within the Republican Party led by state interests unwilling to accept leadership from the likes of Vance, Rubio and Miller.
@Ken_L:
One can hope.
@Kathy: “When the GQP has made a BIG EFFING DEAL about any criticism of Israel or support for Palestinians to be intolerable instances of antisemitism, and has used this to fire people, deport people, harass people, illegally detain people, etc., can they grant actual antisemites like Fuentes doublethink exceptions that most voters will swallow?”
IMHO, it’s all coherent. They do not support Jewish people as people, but as sacrifices for Armageddon.
The conservative institutions have always harbored racists and anti-Semites, but in past eras they were relegated to the quiet rooms and used as useful idiots for tax cut support.
But like the lady in the fable, now it is the tiger coming back from a ride with the smile on its face.