What Nick Fuentes Gets Wrong About Women

It’s generally true in politics that coalitions win elections.

Unfortunately, it’s also true that those coalitions are rarely united by shared ideals — they are, instead, a conglomerate of individuals who tend to believe very different things while sharing a common political goal. When it actually gets down to the nitty-gritty details of governing a country, the inevitable result of winning an election, coalitions suddenly discover that, while they may agree that South American gangsters should be deported and tax cuts should become more permanent, they disagree on much more important and fundamental issues.

It was this truth that became unavoidably clear over this past weekend when Tucker Carlson sat across a table from Nick Fuentes and said, “So tell me, what do you believe?”

The question touched a nerve. Since then, commentators have assured us that there’s a “growing conservative schism;” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts first released a video defending Carlson and then, after receiving backlash from his staff, apologized; House Speaker Mike Johnson publicly commented on the interview, stating that “we shouldn’t be giving a platform” to antisemitic speech. (READ MORE: The Right’s Nick Fuentes Problem — and Tucker Carlson’s Role in Mainstreaming It)

The interview has been criticized more for its existence than for its content. Carlson’s decision to invite a man as antisemitic as Fuentes (whose Rumble viewership numbers average half a million and whose social media presence is rapidly growing) to a discussion was ill-advised.

Of course Fuentes’ antisemitism is concerning, but it was hardly on full display, nor was it the only concerning view he articulated in the more than two-hour discussion. His comments on women demonstrated exactly why the kind of “ultra-conservative” young men who flock to these kinds of male influencers tend to be wifeless.

Both liberals and conservatives tend to recognize that the current dating scene is a rather dismal place. They point to the internet, online dating culture, and, above all, the political differences between young men (who lean very conservative) and women (who lean very liberal) as being the primary culprits. The problem, Fuentes assures us, doesn’t lie with the young men, but with the young women, who are just “very feminist.”

Look, Fuentes is not entirely wrong. Young women today grew up in a culture that sold them “girl power” and taught them that they should prize their corporate office jobs; kids and homemaking, with a little help from the medical industry, could wait. What Fuentes does get wrong — and hilariously so — is the fix to the feminist problem.

Women, as far as Fuentes is concerned, are “very simple.” (Carlson, who quite probably has more self-control than I do, didn’t laugh in his face.) The picture Fuentes paints of ideal home life? The man is the entrepreneur, the “conqueror.” His wife should be engaging in unbridled “hero worship.”

It’s perhaps worth pointing out that no poet, philosopher, or theologian of almost any tradition has ever dared call women “simple” — much less in the public square. Men of former ages had, at least, that much common sense. As far as Fuentes is concerned, men are destined to be the “rulers of the universe”; women are the “universe.” (By his own admission, Fuentes has never lived with a woman.)

Funny. That’s not what the Western tradition — the thing we’re trying to conserve as conservatives — has ever taught.

Until very recently, the Anglican and Catholic Englishmen would stand at the altar, in front of God and man, and hand their wives a band of gold and silver, professing, “With this ring I thee wedde: with my body I thee worship: and with al[l] my worldly goodes I thee endow.” (READ MORE by Aubrey Harris: We’re Winning the Marriage Fight in Spite of Ourselves)

One assumes that the good clergy of the Anglican and English-speaking Roman Catholic Churches of past centuries weren’t into encouraging idolatry (especially given the protestant tendency towards iconoclasm) but were instead invoking the spirit of St. Paul, who tells men, “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

The authority so many young conservative men dream of exercising on the home front does not come from their inherent superiority, complexity, or power — to believe so ignores the very basic truth that, as different as men and women are, they are still equal in dignity. Liberal feminism, for the record, started with this proposition, and it was right to do so. Where it went wrong was when it insisted that men and women were not only equal, but identical.

Fuentes rejects even the fundamental proposition of equality. Women are intended to be a “helpmate,” he protests, never mind that centuries of Christian teaching (and Christ’s himself) affirm the divine paradox that the master must become the servant to truly be the master.

The whole conversation would be merely hilarious if it weren’t so shockingly demonstrative of the problems afflicting the young Right today. Unfortunately, Fuentes (and influencers like him) have the ear of conservative young men. The result is a growing number of wannabe-husbands who’ve been told that the home exists solely to serve them, their idiosyncrasies, and their hubris.

These ego-feeding lies are hardly the way to address the dismal dating scene or to set up happy and healthy conservative families. Instead, they merely serve to feed the liberal-feminist beast and send us into a dangerous spiral designed to destroy the very thing they claim to restore: the home.

READ MORE by Aubrey Harris:

Spat Between Gaines and AOC Shows What’s Wrong With the Democrat Party