The rise of Donald Trump has spawned all too many new normals within a Republican party that is now purely defined by unconditional support for Trump. As seen in the many posts about Dick Cheney’s death, extremely conservative far right extremism means less than nothing even for a former Vice President, without wholly submitting to Trump’s mandate. In such an environment, where Trump support is the sine qua non of the GOP, there is now plenty of room for an avowed racist, misogynist, and virulent anti-Semite like Nick Fuentes. Fuentest can hurl his abhorrent views and throw reckless blows at other Trump supporters, and yet still enjoy wholly safe acceptance. And that is causing an all-too-well-deserved problem for the GOP.
It has all come to a head by way of Tucker Carlson’s softball interview with Fuentes on his extremely popular podcast. Tucker offered precious little pushback (Though he didn’t fully adopt Fuentes’s radicalism), forcing the hard-right conservative think tank “The Heritage Foundation” to choose a side. They chose to accept Fuentes over abolishment. The backlash from some Trump supporters against Fuentes and The Heritage Foundation is now lit, as reported by The New York Times:
Conservatives who detest antisemitism were shaken by the interview. They were even more alarmed when Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation — long a bastion of the conservative establishment — defended Carlson. “The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians,” he said in a video, describing Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition” who are “sowing division.”
This, of course, is utter bullshit. It took Trump, and the demand for total allegiance, the purity pledge, and loyalty tests to push The Heritage Foundation into a corner. As intolerable as The Heritage Foundation has been for decades, pre-Trump, they would absolutely have thrown a clear racist anti-Semite overboard. That is no longer an option. When Trump himself accepts anyone loyal, it gives The Heritage Foundation no room to move.
And let’s be clear. Fuentes doesn’t hide or polish a thing. He doesn’t do it with a wink, dodging the deep underbelly of anything. He proudly puts it all out there:
Jews are running society, women need to shut up,” he said, using an obscenity. “Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part.” His sneering, proudly transgressive attitude has made him a hero to legions of mostly young men who resent all forms of political gatekeeping. The conservative writer Rod Dreher, a close friend of Vance, warned, “I am told by someone in a position to know that something like 30 to 40 percent of D.C. G.O.P. staffers under the age of 30 are Groypers.”
This is utterly terrifying. This is the basis for the worst evil imaginable. The model has played out before. In the 1920s, Germany was the center of the universe as it dominated in science (Einstein, Oppenheimer, Schrodinger), music, engineering, education, and the arts. It was the envy of the world. Not a decade later, it was the most vicious nation to ever grace the earth after a significant portion (but certainly not all) embraced a madman who demanded full loyalty and all power.
Similarly, Trump allows all of this because he only cares about undying loyalty as a predicate to all power. He has said that very fact, “I value loyalty over all else,” even abject incompetence. Anyone who serves Trump is allowed, setting the stage where the former Right-wing “Mind” now must accept Fuentes or risk losing its place in the center of the GOP.
Yes, this is well deserved for a GOP that contined to move hard right over three decades.
Of course, the fight itself becomes the match to flame a furious fight for Trump’s ultimate loyalty himself, and we know how that has played out over time. Fuentest will almost surely be accepted now. But it’s important to note that some Trump loyalists believe this is a breaking point.
These comments led to an uproar among some of Heritage’s donors, staff members and supporters, and Roberts attempted to quell it by denouncing Fuentes. But he still seems to think that Carlson was right to give him a hearing. In a message to the Heritage staff obtained by National Review, Roberts rejected “censorship and purity tests,” writing, “Canceling one person today guarantees the purge of many tomorrow.”
In the end, we already know how this will eventually play out, and it might well prove to be important. Within the hushed walls of camps like The Heritage Foundation, some will back away, likely still supporting Trump over Democrats, but never again feeling totally aligned. For them, the magic is over. This will surely not be a majority.
It is equally true that some in the middle, the independents who voted for Trump on the basis of perceived inflation, immigration issues, and anti-DEI positions, will now back away from the open embrace of racism and anti-Semitism. Not all Trump voters (as opposed to real supporters) will tolerate this and feel pushed into sanity. They might not vote for Democrats, but they might well stay home over voting MAGA.
Trump is already falling in polls, though not nearly enough. This war – and it will be a war, just not out in the open- will rock the GOP. Whether it actually propels some changes is still an open question, especially with Trump essentially playing both sides by not saying a thing about the issue. All too predictable.
But it certainly is worth noting. The comparisons to Germany are deserved and devastating. The nation as a whole would be overwhelmingly against such abuses. But Germany started out more moderate, too. The extremes grew over time. Centralized power held by a minority also took steps and took time. Against a majority backlash, Trump is accruing even more centralized power, power so authoritarian that opposition becomes moot. There isn’t a means to push back on a man willing to use the full military to suppress all dissent.
The Heritage Foundation’s open embrace of Fuentes, spurring a backlash even among the most extreme, all while Trump sits back and does nothing, is breathtakingly foreboding. The only way it could be worse is if the entirety of MAGA simply didn’t care, looked the other way.
Cheer on the ones that find this intolerable. You don’t have to like or accept them in any way. But hope that they start to amass more power and end this matter within their own ranks. It is, however, highly doubtful that they will win. It will be ugly for some time, though, probably vicious behind closed doors.
Many in the Jewish community saw exactly what was coming in Germany and fled. We are starting to see the same patterns here, Jewish Americans and those sympathetic leaving Trump. But unlikely to be enough.
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You think that’s bad, there’s a fake MAGA psychic Betsey saying horrible things about Dick Cheney and saying we should forgive that monster Hilter while watching that idiot Carlson and she doesn’t believe that God exists and religions are fake. What a stupid God hating hypocrite!