State of Tuesday: CONSERVATIVES IN DISARRAY
We’re entering bizarre, yet totally predictable territory.
Greetings, Dear Reader,
We’re entering bizarre, yet totally predictable territory.
Heritage is in damage control. Conservatives are pooh-poohing each other. Meanwhile, Mamdani is poised to take over Trump’s hometown and “Arctic Frost” looms heavy.
And before all of this came to pass, I had a fateful conversation among friends in which I called it all inevitable.
CONSERVATIVES IN DISARRAY
Certainty is a rarity in this business, but nevertheless, it does seem almost certain that Heritage’s President Kevin Roberts was getting bad advice.
The whole thing started with Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes. Fuentes is relevant for two primary reasons. First, he’s rapidly become one of the most popular podcasters in the country. (More on this later.)
Second, philosophically and politically, his stated belief is that the U.S. government should show preference for white people. He thinks America should be a white, religious ethnostate. He reiterated this belief, albeit in the most moderate tones imaginable, in his time on Tucker’s show.
“We do ... on some level ... need to be pro-white. Not to the exclusion of other people, but just recognizing that white people have a special heritage here.”
Special racial status is by its nature exclusionary. We know this from history as well as recent history when universities gave bonus points to black applicants simply for being black.
Right along with Fuentes’s belief comes disdain or outright hostility toward other ethnic groups. And this isn’t casual racism, like asking why black people talk in movie theaters. It’s visceral, deep-seated hatred.
I understand what racial division looks like. I lived in two majority Hispanic communities. The Koreans hate the blacks, the blacks hate the Koreans, and everyone hates the Puerto Ricans and their obnoxious parades. Racism, contra prevailing university claptrap, is not for whites only.
Chief among Fuentes’s ethnic targets is, of course, Jews. And that’s where the real trouble starts for everyone.
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A few months ago, in friendly company with various Republican operatives and communicators, I raised the issue of Israel.
“Is JD ready for it?” was the primary question I asked, under the assumption JD would be assuming Trump’s mantle in 2028.
The spine of the question is rather simple: Youth on both political ends of the spectrum are growing tired of Washington’s tether to Israel. It also doesn’t appear to be the kind of disregard that abates as years pass. No, in fact, it’s growing; it’s not irrational, and it can’t be ignored.
What’s more, this Israel debate is diverse. It ranges from people on the left who think the country should be outright annihilated all the way to the right, where intellectuals and common youth alike openly wonder how getting tied up in regional conflicts is in the interests of Americans.
Setting aside the most bloodthirsty among us, including the viciously and explicitly antisemitic, a growing chorus is openly asking why we keep getting stuck with the tab for Jerusalem’s foibles.
The national security blob would say going to war with Iran actually deters Beijing, but that explanation is losing its purchase. More and more, such adventures are viewed as they rightfully should be, in my opinion: Protecting and enriching the interests of wealthy and aging global elites at the cost of very young lives.
So the youth is understandably skeptical and getting more hostile by the day.
At best, Washington’s entanglement is a hefty bill in a time that calls for rapid redeployment of resources. Yes, China needs deterring and artificial intelligence needs power and 20 million illegal aliens need lassoing. But also can we start building homes again? Can we underwrite trades instead of universities?
At worst, it’s an obligation to another endless war in which we send the treasure of our youth to go die without a clear understanding of the upside. Something about showing Putin who’s boss?
They’re not buying it.
I believe that these unbelievers in old foreign policy assumptions will hit a critical mass on both sides of the aisle in the next 5-10 years.
I hope JD is ready for it.
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Nick Fuentes is popular. Why is he popular? It’s obvious and layered at the same time.
First and foremost, he speaks uncomfortable truths loudly. Coming off a decade of vicious suppression for things as pedestrian as “hey, do these masks actually work?” you can see why someone as unapologetic as Fuentes would gain traction.
In a world where the prevailing left was both in control of institutions and utterly insane, someone saying obvious things in the most offensive, obnoxious terms imaginable is bound to gain a following.
And what was so insane about them? Let me count the ways.
They said men can be women. They suppressed studies showing child sex changes were actually bad. They suppressed studies showing the vaccine didn’t work well, or worse, actually hurt people. They shut down churches and schools. They arrested people for going outside. They told us to ignore the dozens, then hundreds, of illegals loitering outside the convenience stores and street corners and hardware stores in small-town America. It’s good actually. Ignore the unchecked immigration. Ignore the crime. The crime isn’t actually happening. How about this: Let’s legalize the crime! They instituted policies that were explicitly hostile to white people. They did this everywhere, from book scholarships at high schools to entrance exams to job applications to movie castings in Hollywood. They even held blacks-only events. They paraded nude men in front of children and called it progress. They even made it quasi-legal to assault people who spoke up about all this. Then they started assassinating us.
Given all that, why Fuentes is popular is obvious.
Second, a lot of what he says when he isn’t raving about “Jewry” or white nationalism is actually correct. Washington’s chief consideration at all times should be: How does this serve Americans? Rapidly altering the demographics of a town, city or state over just a handful of years is a recipe for disaster.
Also, can we please start arresting the criminals again?
Like most extremism in history, it garnishes itself in enormously popular ideas. Entire villages turned themselves over to ISIS in Iraq because Baghdad’s death squads were a decidedly worse option. We’ll cut your hands off if you smoke or drink and your women are slaves now, but you won’t be dead and you’ll have security, running water and food.
If the officials have abandoned you to the excesses and insanities of the extremists on the left, or worse, joined in the fun of destroying everything you love, the Fuenteses of the world start to look like much more attractive leaders.
It’s an absence of effective, constructive and, yes, even zealous leadership that gives rise to folks like Nick Fuentes. It’s the absence or disruption of discourse that makes them more attractive.
We’d do well to remember both.
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What’s happening to Kevin Roberts right now is what’ll happen to JD eventually if he doesn’t learn from the mistakes and lean into questions as easily foretold as “Why are we going to war for Israel?”
Following the interview with Fuentes, Heritage came under immense pressure to distance itself from Tucker. I imagine what we saw in public was just a smidgen of what they were getting in private, I’m sure in no small part from viciously pro-Israel donors as well.
Heritage made a critical mistake here: It stealth-edited its site to remove mention of Tucker.
At that point, blood is in the water. The calls for a statement hit a critical point, and Roberts made another mistake: He actually made a statement.
Remember, aside from stealth editing their site, at this point, Heritage itself has done nothing wrong. Certainly nothing to merit a statement. They didn’t interview Fuentes, Tucker did.
You can watch the Roberts statement for yourself. The tone is weak. The overall message – besides that he stands with Tucker – is rather unclear. Leaving things like racial hatred open for interpretation is bound to get you pilloried. Good lord, Kevin, the left thinks everyone right of Don Lemon is a Nazi.
What did you expect?
In it, he says he’s against cancellation. A few days later, Heritage fires his top aide, a father of four, for reasons not explicitly stated.
Then he sprinted through every podcast imaginable over the weekend, doing damage control. He finally landed at Hillsdale College, where he explicitly apologized and condemned antisemitism in direct terms.
The funniest part of all this is none of it was necessary. The second funniest part is that nobody in their right mind actually believes Roberts or the Heritage Foundation is a hotbed of antisemitism. Almost none of it is honest.
Heritage should have just done nothing. Would they have lost money from deep-pocketed donors who also happen to demand frequent loyalty statements to foreign capitals? Yes, definitely.
But losing money and remaining distinguished is orders of magnitude better than losing money and debasing yourself.
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As we consider the factional spat that’s wracked conservatives this week, I think this tweet from Adrian Vermeule is relevant.
The main thing most of my people in DC, the White House and Capitol Hill have been discussing amid all this is: Why aren’t we talking about the “Arctic Frost” disclosures showing how the IC teamed up with Obama and Hillary to overthrow a duly elected administration? Why aren’t we talking about how Mamdani got so popular? Why in the world are we debating whether the Heritage Foundation is antisemitic when the Ivy Leagues allowed swaths of terrorist sympathizers to disrupt the educations of Jews and gentiles alike?
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Tucker did the right thing talking to Fuentes. Suppressing people only makes them more popular. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say.
I used to love talking to the Nation of Islam guys when I lived in New York City. It wasn’t long before the conversations became comically feverish.
We can Monday morning quarterback the Tucker interview all we want, but it won’t be the last one Fuentes has. I’d love to see Fuentes go on Piers Morgan next. I’d love to see him so popularized that people reacquaint themselves with the folly of institutionally imposed racial hierarchies the same way I saw the crazy in the eyes of the Islam types, the same way we saw the crazy in racially preferred college admissions. I’m shocked we need to do that again, but it appears we do.
I hate to sound like an absolutist here, but I think the cure to folks like Fuentes is actually more engagement with him, not less.
One bit that went unnoticed by the frothing mania following the interview is how often Tucker attempted to intellectually inoculate Fuentes’s thoughts on Jews, specifically in biblical terms.
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My last thought on this is that all of it should provide a rough roadmap for JD, should he in fact take the White House in 2028.
The debate around our relationship with Israel is only going to get more pitched.
If we leave it to the savages on both sides, it’ll turn into another Heritage situation or another campus situation, but way worse.
Best to head them off, to stand up and say something compelling and true, to implement diplomacy and policy that’s reflective of American interests and also compassionate to longstanding alliances, and to do all of that without a single trope in sight.
Otherwise they’re going to come for you, Mr. Vance, and what Roberts went through will pale by comparison.
WHAT I’M READING
This is worth the read.
Democrats And Republicans Find A Common Enemy In Your Backyard
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End of an era.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney Dies At Age 84
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Bureau of Bad Coverage.
Leaked Dossier Accuses BBC Of Doctoring Trump’s January 6 Speech In Documentary: REPORT
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The great Mary Rooke.
ROOKE: Democrats Deploying Go-To Weapon With Obama. It Didn’t Work Before
WHAT I’M WATCHING
Let The EBT Smash and Grabs Begin...
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