The Carlson Effect

The podcaster's flirtation with an antisemite has crippled a key conservative institution

No enemies on the Right? As if!

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These are days storm and stress for American Jews. In New York City, an outright antisemite has been elected as mayor. In the person of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party has mainstreamed antisemitism at the level of national politics. Since October 7, 2023, the party’s Hamas-hugging progressive base has made plain its hostility to the Jewish state and the Jewish people—with no pushback from party leaders.

Sad to say, however, American Jew bashing is not confined to the Left. On the other side of the political divide, a key conservative institution, the Heritage Foundation, has been shaken to its foundations by an antisemitic scandal that would have infuriated the late William F. Buckley, Jr., who labored so heroically to purge conservatism of the world’s most ancient prejudice.

Yes, Comrade Mamdani is a scum-sucking monster of evil—but so is the odious Tucker Carlson. He is, admittedly, clever enough to pass off his antisemitism with a wink and a nod. Tucker is just asking questions, you see. But those questions are directed to lunatic conspiracy theorists like Darryl Cooper, a fake historian who would have you believe that the evil genius who engineered the Second World War was not Adolf Hitler but Winston Churchill.

Ten or fifteen years ago, that wouldn’t have mattered very much. Today, however, Tucker Carlson bestrides the landscape of social media like a colossus. His podcast is one of the most popular on the Web, with an audience of millions. Carlson has a big megaphone. And he uses it to promote racism, antisemitism, fake history, and zany conspiracy theories. And since few of his numerous fans have received much in the way of an actual education, they lack the antibodies that would suppress the infection.

Look what just happened to the Heritage Foundation, formerly one of American conservatism’s most important institutions, now irretrievably damaged by the misconduct of its own president, Kevin Roberts, who rushed to the defense of Tucker Carlson after the podcaster conducted a fawning interview with Nick Fuentes. In case you didn’t know, Fuentes is one of the most horrible people in America—racist, antisemitic, an admirer of Adolf Hitler, an out-and-out Nazi.

The Fuentes interview was roundly condemned by conservatives both inside and outside Heritage. But Roberts was having none of that. He not only regards Carlson well as an ally worth cultivating but counts him as a personal friend. In an intemperate video statement, he denounced Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition” intent on sowing division within the conservative movement but said that “their attempt to cancel him [Carlson] will fail.” In his view, it seems, the conservative movement can’t afford to cut ties with Jew bashers and Hitler huggers.

And it turned out that Roberts had something of a point, for while many people associated with Heritage pushed back against his statement, others came to his defense. Many of them were younger staffers, one of whom had this to say:

I condemn Nick Fuentes’s hateful rhetoric. That being said, I would like to point out that some of the most vocal people against Tucker Carlson have been calling him an antisemite since he started to hold more anti-interventionist views. A handful of young colleagues and I had no issue with the points you made in the original video. As a young person, many of us are generally tired of foreign entanglements, while our problems in this country worsen. My question is: Is there room for people that hold our perspectives on the path forward? (Emphasis added.)

Note that the staffer’s pro forma condemnation of Nick Fuentes was followed by a defense of Carlson that whitewashed his bigotry. As a matter of fact, his anti-interventionist position springs from his antisemitism, not the other way around. And this young staffer had “no issue” with Roberts’s statement—no issue, that is, with his condemnation of people who were objecting to the promotion of outright fascism on a major podcast.

Once again, I find myself contemplating Oscar Wilde’s quip that youth is wasted on the young.

Where people like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are concerned, I have no problem with sowing division in conservative ranks. In the first place, they’re not even conservatives. The radical Right has far more in common with the radical Left than it does with conservatism as Mr. Buckley framed it. The virulent antisemitism they share is only the most prominent example of that commonality. And that’s the other thing. “No enemies on the Right” is bad advice when the guy a few places to your right is wearing a brown shirt and clutching a copy of Mein Kampf.

Maybe the Heritage Foundation will weather this fiasco, though I have my doubts. Some prominent people have already cut ties with Heritage and more may be headed for the exits soon. After the damage he did with his deplorable defense of Tucker Carlson, Kevin Roberts should have been sent packing. But he’s still in the presidential chair, having issued a groveling apology in which he claimed, none too plausibly, that he really hadn’t known much about Fuentes. That’s not a good sign.

But the clouds clotting the skies over Heritage do embody a silver lining. It was heartening to see how many conservatives, including elected Republicans, condemned both the Carlson/Fuentes interview and Kevin Roberts’s original statement. That stands in stark conduct to the paralysis and silence of the leaders of the Democratic Party in the face of their own river-to-sea antisemitic radicals, one of whom is the mayor-elect of New York City.