Conservatives -- We Have a Problem

Nick Fuentes riles the conservative movement

I firmly believe free speech is truly the one unalienable right that underpins our freedom and prosperity as a nation. But — I’m beginning to think we can have too much of a good thing. The problem I see is the gaggle of articulate, earnest but too often uneducated and foolish young people trying to earn their living, and even get rich, by broadcasting their political views with podcasts. These folks are influencing millions of listeners, often in nefarious ways. To attract attention they make incendiary statements and invent crazy accounts of what they claim is really going on behind the scenes. These folks have the effect of dividing conservatives at a time when we need to be unified.

I’ve read and heard a lot recently on the theme “no enemies to the right.” What that means is that conservatives ought not criticize anyone on the conservative side of the national debate, no matter how controversial or far out on the fringe their views may be. That makes sense in some contexts, but there is a good case that if we fail to denounce the really vile stuff said by some professed conservatives we risk the loss of our moral authority. The Left is losing its credibility and any semblance of moral authority in part because it enforces a “no enemies on the left” doctrine. But it keeps them unified as a voting block.

One crucial problem for conservatives is who gets to decide what’s vile and what’s only being characterized by the Left as vile. A good example is the January 6 riots. Many conservatives believe this was a national disgrace because of the violence, while other maintain it was a legitimate protest against voter fraud that was pushed over the line to violence by Leftist agitators and FBI plants. If you’re a conservative, the worst epithet you can throw at someone these days is calling them a “fed.” That means a federal agent up to no good. The Left, of course, maintains it was an armed insurrection — one of the worst events since the Civil War — and some conservatives can’t bring themselves to disagree energetically.

The Left is ever on alert to detect any hint of white supremacy, fascism, Islamophobia, homophobia, or anything that contradicts their oppressor-versus-oppressed narrative. If you should let it be known that you oppose mass migration into the U.S., ipso facto that becomes white supremacy. Any joke, statement, posting to X, or any other social media that might indicate you would like all illegals to be sent home becomes white supremacism and can get you banned from polite company if they have their way.

One of the talents we need to develop today is the ability to tell when someone is being vilified unfairly by the Left so we can ignore it. Many conservatives don’t seem to have this talent. They are too eager to assume that because someone is accused in a major media outlet or on a formerly credible TV news source, they must actually be a Nazi or fascist or a white supremacist or whatever. Evidence for this is that many conservative “authorities” assume Victor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, is a far-right authoritarian running a dictatorship. They simply take the word of European Union officials in Brussels. If you really dig into it, you’ll find that this is false. Orban has been elected in completely honest elections. His sins are that he refuses to allow migrants into Hungary, and he refuses to allow teaching of the far Left agenda in the country’s schools.

The latest controversy to hit the blogosphere and even the newspapers concerns a particularly foolish young podcaster named Nick Fuentes, who has built a following of about 35,000 subscribers for his podcast called America First, and has attracted more than 700,000 followers on X. I had not heard of him until I read something about his recent interview with Tucker Carlson. Tucker formerly had a popular evening show on Fox News, but now does podcasts from his basement. You can listen to the interview HERE.

Nick Fuentes in his podcast studio.

Of course, I had to listen to the Fuentes interview with Tucker — took a couple of long walks plugged into my iPods to get through it. The criticism of Tucker is that he conducted a soft interview, failing to call out Fuentes on any of his alleged sins. I have to agree with that. Tucker didn’t ask any hard questions. But they did talk about some issues where I thought Fuentes was correct.

Fuentes is highly critical of marijuana use, video gaming and pornography among young men, and he makes solid arguments against those things, despite the fact that many of his fans are young men who are into weed, gaming and porn. He also criticizes women, saying they’re too liberal, they’re overweight, and they don’t really want a working career. He and Tucker agree that our society is and ought to be a patriarchy — it’s just human nature. That’s a defensible position, but Fuentes uses language that seems designed to offend, so naturally, he is condemned by feminists.

Ultimately, the Tucker interview wasn’t actually controversial, it was just that Tucker allowed Fuentes into mainstream conservative circles despite his vile views concerning Hitler and Stalin. More on that below.

After this interview the President of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, weighed in with a video on the controversy. It’s very short and you can see it HERE. I think his statement is quite appropriate, but he definitely leans toward a “no enemies on the right” philosophy. I think he also recognizes that intense criticism of Tucker Carlson and others largely originates on the Left, and is then echoed by a few conservatives. The Left hypocritically uses antisemitism as a cudgel against the right, while at the same time supporting those who would see Israel destroyed, so we have to examine accusations of antisemitism carefully.

With this kerfuffle roiling the media, I decided to dig into it as much as I could with a reasonable investment of time and energy. I listened to a couple of Nick Fuentes’s American First podcasts and tracked down other things he’s said.

Fuentes comes across as very bright and articulate, but I think he has foolishly chosen to express controversial opinions on Hitler, the Holocaust and Joseph Stalin, former head of the USSR. When the entire world “knows” that Hitler was the devil incarnate and the Holocaust was the worst example in the history of genocide, you ought to know better than to argue over “historical context” and arcane factual nuances. Fuentes invited getting himself branded a Nazi and Holocaust denier because he foolishly grabbed hold of that “third rail.” It doesn’t matter what he actually said. He talks about this stuff HERE.

He has also staked out a controversial position on Joseph Stalin, choosing to argue that Stalin was a great leader and a remarkable figure despite personal handicaps. Whether Fuentes is right or wrong to call Stalin a great leader is irrelevant, he just ends up looking foolish talking in glowing terms about one of the world’s worst mass murderers. Listen to what he said HERE.

Then I listened to a couple of the latest America First podcasts, and there I found what I consider a real and dangerous problem with Fuentes. What he is doing is dredging up ancient Jewish conspiracy theories and placing them in contemporary context. Fuentes doesn’t hate Jews per se, but he sees a conspiracy between wealthy American Jews and American politicians to support Israel no matter what Israel does. He drops hints that Israel just may be conducting a “genocide,” but worse than that, Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. into a war with Iran in order to remove Israel’s most dangerous enemy.

The biggest error I see with Fuentes’s views is that he doesn’t find ANY benefit to the U.S. supporting Israel, financially or militarily. “America First” is the name of his podcast, and according to his logic, we simply CANNOT provide material support to Israel if America’s well being is our #1 priority. Tucker Carlson calls staunch supporters of Israel “Christians Zionists,” and he has nothing but contempt for them. This is simply wrongheaded and uninformed.

Israel is a vital ally in a part of the world that is otherwise extremely hostile toward us. If Fuentes and Tucker would like to do something useful, they might dig into what Andrew McCarthy and others call “the grand jihad,” or the ongoing project of the Muslim world to conquer the West by whatever means necessary. Destroying Israel, the “little Satan,” has been the first goal of that plan. If we were to allow that to happen, it would encourage the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist organizations to step up their game.

As Israel power has become ascendant in the region, a number of Arab nations have reduced financial support for radical Islam, and thus the Grand Jihad, and decided to become allies of the West. Saudi Arabia is foremost among those. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is modernizing and Westernizing his country as rapidly as he can. The goal is to attract tourists and investment from Western nations. If Israel were to fall, it would be much more difficult for MBS to continue his modernization program.

The presence of Israel, a thoroughly Western, liberal democratic and highly prosperous enclave in the midst of backward Arab states, is a huge embarrassment that Iran and others would love to remove. We can’t let that happen.

Further, Israel has developed a world-class technology sector. The Iron Dome missile defense system is but one testament to Israeli technological prowess. The U.S. simply must support and defend this important outpost of Western science.

I’m not a policy analyst, so I’m sure I’m leaving out many good reasons that Israel is a vital part of any rational “America First” foreign policy. Where Fuentes sees nefarious conspiracies between wealthy American Jews and American politicians to whom they make campaign contributions, I see only sensible Jewish support for their cherished Jewish homeland.

For example, Fuentes railed on and on in a recent podcast about leaked emails between Larry Ellison, a founder of Oracle and a multi-billionaire, and Marco Rubio from back in 2015 when Rubio was running for president. Ellison made sure Rubio was a friend of Israel before making a sizable campaign contribution. I can’t find any fault with that. Today, Ellison is a principal in the U.S. purchase of TikTok from China. Fuentes tells us this is part of a conspiracy that will enable Jews to control the content of TikTok and remove anything derogatory about Israel.

That kind of control may seem awful at first, but given the virulent anti-Israel movement here in the U.S., a movement that continuously slanders Israel as engaged in a “genocide” against Palestinians, and operating an “apartheid” state, it is only rational to want to shut off one of the conduits spreading these awful lies.

The other way Fuentes exerts his wrongheaded influence is to threaten to withdraw the votes of his “Groyper Army” from conservative candidates if they indicate they will give priority to providing financial and military support to Israel. (By the way, “Groyper” appears to be a made up word applying only to Fuentes’s fans.) But if Fuentes has as much influence as he seems to think, and young, uneducated men sitting in their parent’s basements smoking weed and playing video games are easily influenced — that voting block could have a significant impact on future elections.

Incidentally, I attended a “Megan Kelly Live” event in Ft. Worth recently. It was held in Dickey Arena, a 14,000 seat venue. I would estimate it was perhaps 1/3 full, or about 4,500 people. When the speakers asked who was their favorite to run for president in 2028, J.D. Vance was the overwhelming favorite. Fuentes specifically threatens Vance if he should declare that support for Israel is a priority for his administration.

This is why I fear we may have too much free speech. It’s far to easy for a young fool like Fuentes to exert outsized influence over vastly important politics such as maintaining a conservative administration in the White House for another couple of terms at least.

By focusing on Israel, which is no threat at all, Fuentes and Tucker are ignoring the real and growing threats we face, like that we can plainly see in the mayoral election going on today in New York. It’s almost beyond comprehension that New York would elect Zohran Mamdani, a socialist Muslim, as their mayor. Just the symbolic effects will be monumental — that a radical Left Muslim has taken over New York will embolden jihadis all over the world, and go a long way toward overcoming the huge setbacks they’ve suffered as Israel has defeated Hamas, Hezbollah, and then Iran. I’m hoping that Mamdani will lose, but Cuomo is a very bad candidate and Sliwa foolishly refused to get out of the race, so that’s not likely. God help us.

Zohran Mamdani at a rally during his campaign for mayor of New York.

Our real enemies are radical socialism, virulent Leftist antisemitism and the growing influence of an unassimilated Muslim population that wishes their new home, the U.S., no good. Look at what’s happening in Europe if you think I’m off base in that claim. London has had a Muslim mayor for many years, and it has led to awful consequences. France is threatened by a huge population of Muslims who enforce no-go zones in major cities. Even Sweden suffers with violence perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. Fuentes and Tucker only make it harder to elect the right people to fight our real enemies.

The only way I can see to counter the influence of Fuentes and Carlson is to call them out in honest debate and make them look foolish. Attempts to cancel them will not work because it only makes them larger in the minds of their followers. Ridicule is a very powerful weapon, and making them look silly should be easy because there is so much they don’t know. More extreme measures such as outright banning their podcasts are a really bad idea. The First Amendment must remain sacrosanct. The antidote to bad speech is more and better speech, so let’s get busy.

The above is my contribution.