Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and the war for the conservative soul

'Tis the season for disputations and theses nailed on doors. Reform movements simmer for years, then a single act draws a bright red line. Last week, one of our most influential platforms chose to give one of the right’s most infamous fiends a mainstream showcase. For many, though, Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes didn’t just cross a line. It obliterated it. Now we have a choice: Either take Fuentes seriously or seriously reconsider anyone who does.

I criticized Carlson’s interview with Fuentes on my show last week. The next day, I defended Tucker’s larger legacy against calls to “cancel” him. After taking a few more days to watch, think, and pray, here’s a fuller accounting — organized as a thread of theses, but shaped into a single argument.

Because if we’re going to have a debate, then let’s have a real one.

How we got here

Fatherlessness in the home and timidity in the pulpit have produced a generation of young men who never learned how to shoulder responsibility — preserve, provide, protect — or to wield authority with Christ-like meekness — power under control.

Anger among young men, especially young white men, over the wreckage handed to them is justified. The right now faces a generational reckoning over decades of failure. Attempts by older leaders to bottle that reckoning will only push exasperated men toward Fuentes and his imitators.

We can keep this coalition together if we hold fast to truth, reject bigotry, and refuse to platform malevolence.

On Nick Fuentes

Fuentes is a malignant satanic force. He speaks the language of slander and accusation. Unless he repents, he offers nothing we need. We can address the real grievances of young men without creating our own Louis Farrakhan.

Mainstreaming Fuentes would splinter our already fraught coalition, poison donors and advertisers, and make us politically impotent.

On Tucker Carlson

Fuentes gained so much oxygen and wreaked so much internal havoc because Carlson chose to do a largely softball interview that amplified him. Tucker owns that choice. If you worry about distractions from the mission, take it up with the person who booked the guest. He could have been talking about Arctic Frost. He chose Nick Fuentes instead.

The tone contrasted sharply with Tucker’s tough interview of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) over Israel. Extending more empathy to Fuentes than to Cruz sends the wrong moral signal and understandably raised suspicions about Tucker’s recent editorial choices.

Also true: Over the last seven years, no one on our side has produced a more important body of work than Tucker Carlson.

On the rules of engagement

A generational reckoning will color outside the lines. Don’t cancel people willing to go there. The last generation’s political strategy failed often enough that we should err on the side of hard reassessment.

But disagreement — even sharp disagreement — is not “cancel culture.” If you want to replace a narrative, expect scrutiny. That’s a reckoning, not a psyop.

On the Heritage Foundation

Kevin Roberts is one of the finest salt-of-the-earth patriots I know, and Heritage under his leadership has fought real anti-Semitism. Reasonable people can critique Heritage’s handling of this moment, but the institution must equip itself for the fights in front of us, not yesterday’s battles. Some in and around Heritage want to rewind the clock to 2005 and used this episode to try.

On the Jewish reaction

Conservative Jewish friends have reasons to feel skittish given history’s lessons. I will oppose anti-Semitism and the mainstreaming of Fuentes and his copycats down to the last molecule.

On who this is really about

I’m not worried about Israel’s ultimate fate. If modern Israel plays a prophetic role, God will protect and preserve it. If not, God will judge it.

No, I’m worried about us — our souls and our movement. No culture descends into “it’s the Jooooos” and comes back stronger.

On what should unite us

As Charlie Kirk said, “Islam is not compatible with Western civilization.” People who fixate more on Jews and Israel than on the threat from political Islam reveal their priorities.

Criticizing Israeli policy does not equal anti-Semitism; I criticized Israeli COVID policy at the time. We may even need more policy criticism to sustain the Arab realignment President Trump helped forge. Your prophetic view of Israel is irrelevant. Without a Jewish state, Islam would focus all its energy on Christendom — as it did for the first 1,300 years of its existence. From a foreign-policy standpoint, a Jewish state functions as a strategic buffer between Islam and the West.

On false choices and narratives

October 7 followed the neoconservative script: Israel granted more “agency” to the so-called Palestinians as a proto-two-state solution. The Palestinians then elevated Hamas, the architects of October 7, right on Israel’s doorstep. Some on our side now demand more of the same and unknowingly converge with the neocons they denounce.

People who were dead wrong about the risks of striking Iran earlier this year should come clean, as Vice President JD Vance said recently. Their silence exposes them.

Yes, some of the Tucker-Fuentes noise is a pre-emptive proxy fight over the 2028 presidential election, given Tucker’s friendship with Vance. We cannot afford to let 2028 maneuvering fracture the coalition before the midterms. Lose the midterms and much of the Trump agenda stalls and 2028 gets much harder.

It’s too early for primary shenanigans.

On the fallout

If Tucker had dropped that interview a year from now, Democrats would have used it as a midterm wrecking ball. They’d spend untold sums to make Fuentes the face of the right. It would devastate us.

RELATED: Zohran Mamdani becomes first openly socialist mayor of New York City

Photo by Angela Weiss/Getty Images

On the future

None of this feels random. After Charlie Kirk’s martyrdom, the dam broke. I can attest he worked to keep Fuentes and the Groypers on the margins. A month before he died, he invited me into a one-on-one Signal chat to build a strategy to keep malignant forces from gaining a foothold in our movement. He believed God would never bless their darkness and that it would destroy us spiritually and politically.

Now we see: our apostolic leader murdered, Democrats embracing Islamist politics through Zohran Mamdani, and a sudden internal split over Fuentes. Consider it a spiritual counterattack to the revival seeds we saw at Charlie’s memorial.

Pat Buchanan had insights. Bill Buckley had insights. Both had blind spots. Trump, perhaps unintentionally, kept the best of Buchanan’s realism without the worst. We can keep this coalition together if we do the same: Hold fast to truth, reject bigotry, and refuse to platform malevolence.

Come, let us reason together.