It is rare that a two-minute statement from a think tank president becomes major news, but Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts achieved that this week with his social media video defending Tucker Carlson’s decision to interview and thereby promote the racist, Jew hating, and misogynistic views of Nick Fuentes.
Roberts opened his video by stating, “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic,” as though Carlson has become a controversial figure for denouncing Israeli government policy, such as the conduct of the war in Gaza. Carlson, like anyone else, is free to criticize the way Israel defends itself. Literally millions of Jews do that every day. So Roberts’s first words were beside the point, a deflection.
Roberts wanted to shield Carlson from criticism for the sympathetic interview he conducted recently with Fuentes, a self-proclaimed white nationalist influencer. On his podcast, Carlson lobbed Fuentes softball questions and let him spread his poisonous lies unchallenged. You can get an idea of who Fuentes is from what he has said, including, “We’re in a holy war” with Jews and “we will make them die in the holy war,” and “they will go down with their Satanic master.”
Fuentes also regards Adolf Hitler as “cool,” praises Joseph Stalin, and is deeply misogynistic, boasting that “Women are coy. They want me to rape them. They want me to beat the shit out of them.”
He’s quite the charmer.
When Carlson had Fuentes on his podcast, he did not challenge his guest on any of these past statements, nor did he push back against Fuentes’s claims on the show that the biggest challenge facing America today is “organized Jewry.”
Roberts, in his video statement, described the organization he leads as an intellectual leader of the conservative movement, which it certainly has been. But an intellectual leader of the conservative movement should demand that the movement confront the likes of Fuentes, not run cover for friends who refuse to do so.
It is true that, as many conservatives lament, the left sets the rules and then the right enforces them. This can lead to unnecessary internecine quibbling that weakens the right in its battle against the poisonous ideas of the left.
But just because conservatives too often form circular firing squads does not mean that the polar opposite should be the rule — that everyone on the right, no matter how ugly their sentiments and rhetoric, should be given a pass.
Roberts said, “the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” which is true so far as it goes. But it does not go very far. It does not address the crucial issue of whom it is morally acceptable to welcome as friends. Roberts may have admitted that, “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says,” but then he went on to say “canceling him is not the answer either” without ever contradicting any of Fuentes’s hateful positions. Some 24 hours later, in a written statement, Roberts tried to do some much-needed damage control from his earlier enabling of Fuentes’s hatred. It is a start. But much more needs to be done.
Contrast Roberts’s treatment of Fuentes with the courage of the late Charlie Kirk, who routinely faced down Fuentes acolytes in college campus debates. Asked by a Fuentes supporter if he was willing to “build a big tent” with Fuentes, Kirk answered authoritatively, “I don’t align with Jew haters, sorry. I’m not going to put up with Jew hatred in the conservative movement.” Faced with another Fuentes-inspired white nationalist at a separate Turning Point USA event, Kirk unflinchingly said, “You, sir, and your ideology is not conservative. It is right-wing identitarian. It has no place in the conservative movement. GET OUT OF LINE!”
THE FBI MUST ANSWER FOR ITS ARCTIC FROST SPYING OPERATION
Kirk knew what Roberts failed to acknowledge in his statement, that there is evil on both sides, and it remains evil even if it comes from the fringes of one’s own tribe, right or left. Roberts wants only to fight the left and leave the lies and hatred of Fuentes and his ilk to fester on the right. That is neither moral nor prudent. Giving comfort to Fuentes and his ideas will weaken conservatism and help the left.
True leaders must be willing to call out lies from within their own ranks. Silence is surrender. Every time a figure like Roberts, who leads a prominent and important organization that does excellent work, excuses bigotry for the sake of partisan unity, he teaches the next generation that power matters more than principle. Conservatism cannot defend civilization if, to adopt a useful tautology, it refuses to defend civilization.