The Right Is Having A Half-Assed 'Fight' About Nick Fuentes
I guess we should talk about it?
Last week Tucker Carlson did a sweet little sit-down interview with self-described white supremacist and Hitler stan Nick Fuentes. The whole thing went about how you would expect, with Fuentes saying a variety of deeply disturbing things — like expressing his love for Stalin and complaining about “organized Jewry” — and receiving practically zero pushback from Carlson, which led to a few people on the Right “condemning” Carlson for it, a few defending him, and a whole bunch of slightly more terrible people expressing their sheer delight at the mainstreaming of Fuentes and the appalling views they share.
So let’s dive in, shall we?
Perhaps the strongest condemnation of Fuentes has thus far come from Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish — and, somewhat ironically, attacked him in the way the Left traditionally attacks both of them, by calling attention to the words that came out of his mouth.
He sounds a bit like a liberal, talking about how it’s bad to be a giant bigot who goes around praising Hitler and Stalin all the time. It’s almost as if, when it’s something that hurts him, he’s not too fond of the kind of rhetoric he uses against the various groups of people he doesn’t like.
Ted Cruz, for his part, has been calling Fuentes a “Nazi” at every opportunity, despite having previously said, of the Left, that “they don’t kill you because you’re a Nazi, they call you a Nazi so they can kill you.” Does this mean he wants to kill Nick Fuentes? Could be!
Following the criticism of Carlson from Shapiro, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and others, Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, put out a video in which he half-heartedly “condemned” Fuentes whilst defending Carlson as a great hero of free speech. Rather than speak directly on Fuentes’s love of Hitler and Stalin or his insistence that women actually want to be raped, Roberts embraced the spirit of “No Enemies to the Right” and encouraged conservatives to spend their time attacking the Left rather than their neo-Nazi friends.
In case you were unaware, “No Enemies to the Right,” often abbreviated “NETTR,” is exactly what it sounds like. It means that the Right should never condemn people further right than they are when they say horribly bigoted or misogynistic things. Therefore, it is acceptable to go after Ben Shapiro for criticizing Fuentes, but not acceptable to attack Fuentes for calling all women “whores” who shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Strategically, this is a smart move on their part. The more views like those of Fuentes and his acolytes are mainstreamed, the more likely people are to accept more extreme actions, policies and rhetoric from the GOP. By condemning him, they are accepting the left-wing narrative that being a racist or a bigot is a bad thing, and that people on their side are even capable of saying anything bad or deserving of condemnation.
In his statement, Roberts suggested that sidelining Fuentes and his views would be bad, pointing to the “success” they’ve had in “debating” the Left. Except the thing is, debate only helps the person with the most reprehensible ideas, by presenting them as reasonable ideas that merit engagement. If a person who believes the moon is made of rock and metal holds a debate with someone who believes the moon is made of cheese, the only real winner, regardless of the actual outcome, is the person who believes the moon is made of cheese — because there absolutely will be people who had never before considered that possibility wondering if perhaps they are right. This is why Republicans are obsessed with “debate.”
Also on Team It’s Bad to Praise Hitler is Laura Loomer, which is pretty surprising considering that she, herself, has appeared on Fuentes’s show.
“What KevinRobertsTX needs to understand,” she posted, “is you can respect someone’s right to free speech but also condemn them and their wicked behavior that is rooted in a desire to fracture the evangelical GOP base. Tucker is the demon who he says scratched him in his sleep. How’s that for venom?”
Here she is, back when they were pals, toasting with him to “the hostile takeover of the Republican Party.”
The “civil war” has even caused some upheaval in the Heritage Foundation itself, with Roberts’s own chief-of-staff resigning in the wake of his comments.
Naturally, there have also been those who have complained that Fuentes’s popularity is actually the fault of the Left — what isn’t? — suggesting that we pushed people into his arms by criticizing Charlie Kirk, who shared most of his views.
You will notice, however, that no one ever worries that conservatives attacking mainstream Democrats are pushing people to the left. No one says “Oh boy, you’d better tone down your rhetoric against trans people and poor, or they’ll all be forced to care about other people even more!” because the very idea of it is absurd. That’s just not how human beings work. “Oh, I’m so mad that you called me a Nazi that I’m gonna go out and be a Nazi!” does not make sense.
I will, however, concede that some Democrats and liberals did do one thing that I believe led to a certain normalization of anti-semitism, and that was insisting that everyone on the Left who opposed Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, who said that this whole thing would turn into the human rights nightmare that it did, in fact, turn into, was actually just a virulent anti-semite.
This would also be why you have House Speaker Mike Johnson, when attempting to counter the discussion of Fuentes and other actual anti-semites, repeatedly insisting that the anti-semitism of the Left has “seeped into” the Right and “now,” “even some people on the Right” are becoming anti-semitic.
You know, because that was simply never the case before now.
It wasn’t just incorrect, it was strategically stupid. It gave Republicans the moral upper hand and allowed them to “cancel out” their own bigotry problem with a big ol’ “Both sides!” It also put many Democrats in the position of not being able to say that there was any difference between those who opposed Israel’s actions for humanitarian reasons and those who actually did just hate Jewish people and were excited to use this situation to further their bullshit. It allowed the actual anti-semites to align said bullshit with humanitarian concerns and give it, as far as some people were concerned, legitimacy. Particularly once we turned out to be right about everything.
It’s also allowed people who we damn well know are not motivated by humanitarian concerns, ever — Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, etc. — to later take up the mantle of “You can oppose Israel’s actions, as a country, without being an anti-semite” while still actually being anti-semitic as all hell. Indeed, this is exactly what Kevin Roberts claimed about Carlson’s position.
However, if you want to know where this all really started, look no further than the White House. Donald Trump is the one who normalized saying abhorrent things. Things which both Shapiro and Cruz initially condemned him for … before they joined him and decided everything he said and did was wonderful and perfect. Donald Trump is the reason Nick Fuentes exists and why his followers think it’s perfectly fine for him to say the things he says and believe the things he believes.
Nick Fuentes is exactly where Republicans have been headed ever since Trump stepped off that escalator — and, quite frankly, before then as well.
This is why I don’t really buy any reports of “civil war” on the Right. They all essentially believe the same things, and Republicans are quite capable of pretending that, as long as someone is one of them, they never said or did the things they said or did. Or that they had a good reason for it. Or that they were just trolling. Or that it doesn’t mean their other ideas are also bad and hateful, because all ideas exist in a vacuum.
They learned how to shut up and support Trump, and they will do the same for Fuentes. The best we can hope for is that there is such a thing for people as the Right “going too far” and that this is what ends up tanking them.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
<...complaining about “organized Jewry”>
I've worked on group projects.
NOBODY has their shit together well enough to secretly organize, take over, and control the world.
So apparently the Republicans have evolved from “pass the budget or else we’ll starve your Nana” to “pass the budget or else you won’t be able to fly home to see your Nana at Thanksgiving.”