Ben Shapiro has spoken!
The conservative commentator spent his entire show yesterday on a monologue denouncing Tucker Carlson for interviewing Nick Fuentes, a self-proclaimed antisemite and racist who is nevertheless gaining influence among Gen Z MAGA types. Fuentes has been persona non grata on the right for a long time, but young conservatives disagree with older conservatives about U.S. military aid to Israel, and Fuentes’s long-standing opposition to that policy is attracting younger members of the GOP, particularly males, to his way of thinking.
And that’s worrisome, because while I too think the U.S. should be less supportive of Israel, Fuentes has a whole host of other views that are bad and insane. He thinks women fantasize about rape, that Adolph Hitler was objectively cool, and that most black people should be put in prison.
And so Shapiro is calling him out — and he’s also calling out Carlson for interviewing Fuentes without fundamentally challenging him on any of his crazier statements. Let’s watch:
“The issue here isn’t that Tucker Carlson had Nick Fuentes on his show last night. He has every right to do that, of course. The issue here is that Tucker Carlson decided to normalize and fluff Nick Fuentes, and that the Heritage Foundation then decided to robustly defend that performance. Those who criticize both Tucker and Heritage aren’t ‘canceling,’ they are quite properly drawing a moral line.”
Later in his monologue, Shapiro explained that people like Carlson, who platform such ideas and don’t debate them, have no place in the conservative movement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaRJlL5mOF8
“If Republicans decide to cower to before the likes of neo-Nazis and their propagandizers, they deserve to lose. And they will lose. Neo-Nazis and their propagandizers are not Republicans, they are not America First, they are not MAGA, they sure as hell aren’t conservative.”
I like and admire Ben Shapiro a lot. I also like Tucker Carlson, even though I disagree with him quite often. I think he should have grilled Fuentes harder. It’s fine to spend some of that interview asking Fuentes personal questions about how he arrived at his views, but at some point, if your guest is known for repeatedly claiming that Hitler was a hero, you have to call him out on that. So I agree with conservatives who are calling for fringe racists and antisemites to be vigorously denounced — not canceled, mind you, but debated and defeated.
That said, pro-Israel conservatives need to be honest about the reason that Fuentes is gaining ground. It’s not because love for Hitler is spreading, or that young people are becoming more racist and anti-semitic. It’s because Israel’s recent actions — its military campaign over the course of the last two years — is a major image problem for that country.
Some people on the right, and even in centrists or mainstream circles, are trying really hard to avoid this obvious fact. Our social media feeds have been flooded with pictures and videos of Palestinian women and children being blown apart by Israeli bombs. It seems obvious to me that the rise in antisemitism on both the right and the left has something to do with Israel’s war being a much more central news and policy topic in the last two years.
It’s true, of course, that Fuentes would remain an antisemite even if American foreign policy exactly mirrored his preferences. And antisemitism, one of the world’s oldest prejudices, will endure in the hearts and minds of far too many people, regardless of what happens. But it’s extremely naive to think that Israel’s actions, and the U.S.’s backing of them, are playing no role in increasing antisemitism. Just as anti-Muslim sentiments increased after 9/11 and anti-Japanese sentiments increased after Pearl Harbor, the images of dead and injured Palestinians that have almost certainly damaged Israel’s standing in the eyes of many. And the reputation of Israel, the home of the Jewish people, is inexorably tied to antisemitism.
To be abundantly clear, this doesn’t mean it’s correct or fair to change one’s feelings about an entire ethnic group because of a government’s actions. Collective guilt and collective punishment are evil tendencies. Nor does it mean that the U.S. turning its back on Israel is necessarily good policy. But Fuentes-ism is spreading — and winning — in part because Israel’s standing with conservatives, in particular young conservatives, is falling.
Everyone who aspires to swiftly stem the rising tide of antisemitism should hope for the decreased salience of Israel’s wars as a focus of political discussion. At the very least, if the U.S. would adopt a true America First policy and cut off foreign military aid, not even specifically to Israel but to all other nations, it would go a long way toward minimizing this issue. I suspect that would be the best way to counter the bad ideas that Nick Fuentes holds.
Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.
