Antisemitism Flares Up on the Right - Galston
The virus of antisemitism in recent years has infected American politics on both the far left and far right. Murderous hatred of the Jews has fueled Hamas since its founding. To support Hamas, as some on the left have done, is to associate oneself with Jew-hatred, knowingly or not. And after Oct. 7, 2023, there’s no excuse for not knowing.
Now, with Tucker Carlson’s infamous interview of Nick Fuentes, the parallel infection on the right has broken out in public. Mr. Fuentes has called Adolf Hitler “awesome” and has pronounced himself a “fan” of another mass murderer and antisemite, Joseph Stalin. He has denounced “organized Jewry in America” and asserts that “Jews are running society.” He has said that Jewish concerns about Oct. 7 are “un-American” and that reports of rapes and other Hamas atrocities on that day were “all a lie” and that “none of it was real.”
Mr. Fuentes’s solution for all this is a “total Aryan victory” and rule by a “Catholic Taliban.” Among the policies of this new regime would be the “death penalty” for an “occult element at the high levels of society, specifically among the Jews,” that is “suppressing” Christianity. Much of this Mr. Fuentes said before his conversation with Mr. Carlson; some of it he repeated during that conversation, evoking barely a whisper of disagreement from his host.
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Although Mr. Fuentes has more than a million followers on social media, he’s too rough-edged and extreme for most conservatives. (He dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November of 2022, after which Mr. Trump said he “knew nothing about” Mr. Fuentes, who had come as a guest of rapper Kanye West.) Mr. Carlson, by contrast, can be smooth and affable with an air of perfect respectability. By acting as host to Mr. Fuentes without the antibodies of skepticism, he turned himself into a vector for the propagation of Jew-hatred. Mr. Carlson is one of the savviest and most experienced media figures in the country. He had to know what he was doing. Political hygiene demands his isolation.
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As recent events at Heritage show, avoiding the tough fights comes at a cost. Honorable members of the Heritage family are parting ways with the organization. Veteran conservative and former American Enterprise Institute president Chris DeMuth is among those who have resigned. A Heritage-affiliated antisemitism task force has similarly severed ties. Ian Spier, a lawyer who resigned from the task force, put it best: “Heritage has sent signals through its president that it doesn’t seem to take the problem of antisemitism and its rise in the GOP conservative movement seriously.” Republicans can’t say that they haven’t been warned.
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