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If, by the stroke of good fortune or just being a normal person, you had not heard of Nick Fuentes until this month, chances are you\u2019ve heard of him now. Nick Fuentes is odious and despicable. He\u2019s what I would call a racist\u2019s racist. He\u2019s just this troll. Nick Fuentes has said a long list of very vile things. Big time. He\u2019s a booger eating, white supremacist, Holocaust denier. The reason everybody\u2019s talking about Fuentes is Tucker Carlson, who is arguably, at this point, the most significant media figure on the American right. Hosted Fuentes, a person he has feuded with in the past, for a very friendly two hour chat. I wanted to meet you. I\u2019ve heard about you. I\u2019ve heard about you, about the problem of Israel, but the problem of American Jews and whether or not they fit in this country or their loyalties are elsewhere. If you\u2019re China first, you should live in China. If you\u2019re Mexico first, you should live in Mexico. If you\u2019re Israel first, maybe you should go live in Israel. It was the kind of conversation you would not have heard among mainstream figures on the American right in recent decades. What we are watching is a very old strain of the right vying for control of its future. This right goes back to Pat Buchanan. It goes back to Charles Lindbergh. The idea that the right should be an ethno nationalist coalition, which doesn\u2019t have room for immigrants, very much does not have room, maybe for Jews. That is really not comfortable with anyone who\u2019s not what they call a \u201cheritage American\u201c. We do need to be Christian. We do, on some level, need to be pro-white, not to the exclusion of everybody else, but recognizing that white people have a special heritage here as Americans. This has been a logic and an ideology that Trump has broken into the mainstream. That\u2019s what we\u2019re all about. America first. And that is now following itself to its full expression. If you buy into this, well, it has a place that goes. And now we are seeing more figures on the American right. Truly going there. To talk about it. I want to bring on John Ganz. Ganz is sort of hard to describe. He\u2019s, I think, he\u2019s become a popular political theorist and historian. He writes the great Substack \u201cUnpopular Front\u201c. He wrote the book \u201cWhen the Clock Broke\u201d which is about the politics of the 1990s, and Pat Buchanan and David Duke and how they prefigured Trump. But he\u2019s somebody who has been tracking these ideas and the way they are taking hold on the right and where they come from in our country very, very closely. So I wanted to hear what he thought now that they were breaking this far out into the open. As always, my email ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. John Ganz, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for having me. So let\u2019s say that. Blessedly, you\u2019ve never heard of who Nick Fuentes is. Maybe you\u2019ve just heard of him in the last few weeks. Who is Nick Fuentes? Nick Fuentes. I would say, is the most popular representative of neo-nazism in America. Expand. Well, by his own story. He comes from a middle class background in the suburbs of Chicago. He became interested in political activism. He was a fervent Trump supporter. And then he ran afoul, according to him of some gatekeepers in the conservative movement, namely Ben Shapiro, who accused him of anti-Semitism when he asked questions about US policy towards Israel. And then, over the years, he assembled a following of other disaffected young men and he launched two campaigns that he called the \u201cGroyper wars\u201d to basically pressure mainstream conservative figures to move rightward on issues to do with race, with LGBTQ issues, and with Israel. And the subtext being there, the Jewish question, Jews. So he\u2019s not that subtext oriented compared to some people in this movement. I mean, he\u2019ll talk about an admiration for Adolf Hitler. He doesn\u2019t just talk about Israel. He talks about \u201cthe Jews\u201c. We have to go a little bit further than to say something\u2019s up with the Zionists or Israel. It\u2019s not Israel, it is the Jews. And once again, remember who is responsible for it all, the Jews. They are responsible for every war in the world. It\u2019s not even debatable at this point. Hitler was a pedophile, and kind of a pagan. It\u2019s like, well, he was also really fucking cool. There\u2019s something, there are figures here who it feels like they try to keep a mask on. Yeah and he doesn\u2019t. He doesn\u2019t. And I think that\u2019s a key part of his appeal. I think that his viewers find that refreshing. They find it titillating and they find it to be reflective of their politics. You mentioned the groypers. Yeah. What\u2019s a groyper? Well, this, let me tell you a story of how I became. I learned what groypers are. I was writing a piece for The New Republic about five years ago, about the riot, and I was learning about what were young people on the right what were they thinking about. How did they respond to Trump, and what was the future of conservative media and elites in the Trump era. And the course of this, I kind of befriended some young right-wing guys, and they kept on talking about groypers groypers, groypers and I didn\u2019t really know what it was. And then I realized that they were kind of a subculture of online, of trolls and kind of marginal figures. And they had often as their avi or their avatar profile picture this kind of grotesque toad that looked like Pepe the Frog. And it\u2019s my understanding that this subculture is larger than Nick Fuentes and not necessarily under his control or direction, but that he speaks for them. He attempts to speak for them and to unite them into of sort of political force. But what do the groypers believe? I mean, this is a very meme heavy, online, trollish subculture that is endlessly dancing on the edge of \u201coh, aren\u2019t we just joking?\u201d Yeah and so pinning it down can be a little bit like trying to pin smoke. Because you focus in on a view of meme. It\u2019s like, oh, you have no sense of humor Yeah, but it\u2019s a classic. First, you\u2019re making jokes about the gas chambers, then you\u2019re thinking about sending your enemies to them Yeah, I think it\u2019s a little difficult for people to understand because we\u2019re accustomed to thinking of politics coming from ideas, coming from intellectuals, elites, media figures that disseminate ideas. And this kind of goes in the other direction. It bubbles up from message boards, it bubbles up from memes, jokes, ironic playfulness. But basically the text, not the subtext of all of them is kind of a constant barrage of propaganda that\u2019s anti-Semitic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, you name it. And also a lot of content that is conspiratorial, obviously, that sees shadowy actors running the government and is also deeply dissatisfied with the state of America and the prospects it has for people like them. So you write this piece on. I actually read a couple pieces on the Groyper-fication of the Republican Party, and you wrote, quote, \u201cHere is the thing to understand, every single person under, say, the age of 40 on the right is exposed to extremely high levels of Groyper content everyday in group chats on their social media timelines and Discord chats, et cetera. Groyperism totally suffuses the cultural environment of the right.\u201d And this point about the people under the age of 40, this idea that there is a pretty big difference in what the 20 somethings on the right are like and what the 50 somethings are like. I hear that from the right all the time. So for people who do not have texture of that cultural environment, what are you describing? What are they seeing? What is that culture environment look and feel like? Well, I mean, just recently, there were a couple of leaks about, Politico reported one of them, about group chats. And basically, yeah, it\u2019s an environment where there\u2019s a lot of sharing of memes and jokes and repetition of memes and lots of joking about the Holocaust, joking about Hitler, joking about. Blacks and making jokes about slavery. And it\u2019s just a kind of anarchic indulgence of a very sadistic id that usually involves the humiliation of minorities or women. So a lot of the energy of this and a lot of the way it would get defended, is that right in the late 2010s, early 2020s, it\u2019s big enemy was the woke mob, cancel culture. The thought police, the gatekeepers. And you would hear this described as. Joking but a provocation about that. It is showing that you can say what the cultural enforcers don\u2019t want you to say. Richard Hanania, the dissident right figure and intellectual, describes it in \u201cThe Based Ritual\u201d where people on the MAGA right get together and keep upping the ante to show that they are not part of the establishment, they\u2019re part of this counter-revolutionary force. How do you think about the interplay between whatever that was. Because I take it as there was of culture that emerged in response to censoriousness and then the movement into actual belief? Well, yeah, I think that was a way that people could justify to themselves what they were seeing on an everyday level, and some people could say to themselves and to others that basically they were participating in a cultural revolt against this censorious, this censorious state of affairs. And that was their interest, which was to tear down those norms and to open a space of freedom, freedom to do. What is the question. Is it just to say and do racist things. I don\u2019t know. So I think it created a structure in which those ideas spread rapidly. Even to call them ideas is wrong. These memes really spread rapidly and made it so people who may have been uncomfortable with it or may have found it at variance with the way they were raised to look the other way and say, we are in a sense playing around. And the first thing that does, it seems to me, is you\u2019re breaking down an immune system that people have. And you can\u2019t extricate in my view, from Trump. No if you have any hint left of that attachment to old norms and mores and courtesies Yeah well, then you can\u2019t be a true Trumpist because he doesn\u2019t attach to any of that. And so you begin like demonstrating a cultural affinity to that kind of politics or provocation and politics of no rules. Once you\u2019ve done that, then you actually don\u2019t have that immune system anymore. You\u2019re breaking down the immune system that was supposed to protect against people like Donald Trump himself. Absolutely I think your point about Trump being the originator of this is important. When Trump appears and people seem to forget this for some reason, in 20 1615, there was a lot talk about the Alt right, a term that\u2019s not used very much anymore. But these people, who had previously been on the fringes of American politics, greeted the arrival of Trump, basically with rapture Yeah, ecstatically, ecstatically. And they knew that this was their kind of guy. They knew that the things that he said would open a space for them if he wasn\u2019t precisely a perfect vehicle for their politics. It was a real big breakthrough. So you have these people crawling out of the woodwork. You have Richard Spencer, you have the Charlottesville riots. And then there is kind of a backlash. And those people seem to get pushed out. There\u2019s not that much talk about Alt nationalism, the Alt right anymore. And Trump also doesn\u2019t really seem to be adopting some of their preferences in foreign policy and also not he makes some very tasteless remarks about Jews, but not an ideological anti-Semitism that they would want him to do. So this thing kind of goes on the back burner, but it\u2019s very much suffusing the culture of young right wingers who are not they\u2019re in the intermediate and lower ranks of the various bureaucracies, the various staffs of conservative institutions. And yeah, it never really fully goes away. But then something else happens, which is that as weak as the gatekeepers are in this modern era, there are still people with keys to various gates, and by the end of Trump\u2019s first term, Trump is banned on most of the major social media platforms. Certainly, a lot of these figures are banned on them. And as Trump makes his return, and then very specifically when Elon Musk buys Twitter renames it X takes off functionally, all of the guardrails, then the ability of all this to flood into the conservative nervous system really changes. I want you to watch a clip from Tucker Carlson here that I think is interesting. Unfortunately for the Guardians of the old system, the old Republican Party people have been allowed to describe it accurately, mostly because Elon Musk opened up X. And, when he did that get all kinds of filth and nonsense and lies, but you also get some truth, actually, quite a bit of truth. And one of the main things that people are telling the truth about, that they didn\u2019t tell the truth about before, is that our foreign policy really doesn\u2019t have much to do with what\u2019s good for the United States. And once those words have been uttered, they can\u2019t be taken back. So Carlson here is talking about Israel. I would say maybe he\u2019s not entirely talking about Israel, but that dynamic he\u2019s describing that Musk taking over x is a hinge point seems true to me. Does it track for you. Absolutely I mean, all of these figures reemerge when they had been pushed out and they created a media ecosystem that is suffused with these ideas. So first of all, yeah, you a lot of people online are looking for information. They\u2019re looking to understand an extremely complicated world they encounter, and they have a sense that perhaps the establishment views are either misinformed or misinforming them or are just flat out boring. And then they discover a narrative about things that\u2019s more appealing. Simplifying seems persuasive, exciting. And also it cannot be discounted that Nick Fuentes in particular is extremely entertaining. And yeah, gravitate towards these crackpot ideas. Look, the United States, its support of Israel is a perfectly legitimate topic to dispute and to have differing views about and to criticize. And more and more people are coming around to that position. They saw what was happening in Gaza and they were deeply upset by it. And they look for commentary and opinion on that. And the commentary and opinion on that they get is not what the New York Times\u2019 is saying or what the New Yorker is saying, or even left wing outlets like the nation or something like that, they get. Nick Fuentes. They got Candace Owens, they got all these kind of crackpot views about it, which take that discussion about real world issues and a mixture of rational discussion and commentary that\u2019s actually somewhat sophisticated, I would say, in Fuentes case, and then channel that into propaganda for anti-Semitism. And I think it\u2019s important to realize again, back to your question about ideas and the diffusion of ideas that not everyone is aware that they\u2019re being propagandized. They are in an information environment where this is what they see. And it becomes normal. And in a sense, they get captured. They are in, people love to talk about the liberal bubble. Liberal elite bubble. There is an equivalent bubble of the hard right. So yeah, that brings this kind of deformed version of the public sphere fear that Musk allowed to happen. And I think one could argue intentionally. I want to get at a bit of backstory here before we get into the Tucker Carlson Nick Fuentes interview, because this is not the first time Nick Fuentes has broken through to the mainstream of conservatism Yeah there\u2019s a very famous dinner at Mar a Lago where Donald Trump is dining with Kanye West, noted anti-Semite, and Kanye brings Nick Fuentes. Sure at the time, Trump looks like the past of the party. People think, he\u2019s like on his way out. It\u2019s going to be Ron DeSantis in 2024 or someone like that Yeah and I think they also buy the idea, which Trump says afterwards. And I take as even plausible that he doesn\u2019t really know who Nick Fuentes is. I think people buy with Trump that he talks to a lot of people. And one reason I think this is breaking through in the way it is twofold. You don\u2019t have any of that deniability on Carlson\u2019s side. And now everybody understands that the future of Trumpism is up for grabs. How would you describe the role Tucker Carlson plays on the right now. I think that he strives to be a person of great influence in directing the policy, staffing, messaging of the Republican Party. And to a certain extent, he has deep ties to people in the administration. Help get JD Vance named vice president. Absolutely and he\u2019s a figure. I would say it is more helpful to interpret him as a politician. I agree with this. I think that he basically understood the direction of the Republican Party and remade his entire image itself to fit in with it. And he has been very smart about that. And he realized, the old institutions ain\u2019t what they used to be. Does it really matter that he\u2019s on Fox anymore. Apparently not very much. So his creation of a New persona really is the story of the transformation of the Republican Party. So at this point, how would you describe what Tucker Carlson\u2019s politics are. What poll of right wing ideology does he seem to hew to and represent. He represents a tradition that\u2019s sometimes called isolationist, which views, America\u2019s entanglement with foreign alliances and interventions in other countries to not necessarily be in our interest, not necessarily dovish, but definitely the United States should apply force when it wants, when it needs to in its own very direct self-interest. I believe that he calls himself a Christian. I believe he represents a Christian nationalism, which is non-zionist or anti-zionist. Again, there are some roots in that. And the old right that goes back for the pre-war. He is a very hostile to immigration. He seems to have a very strong sense of white ethnic identity and thinks that it believes that it\u2019s a problem for the country if there are too many non-white immigrants. Forgive me if I\u2019m misremembering this. Didn\u2019t you do an interview with the son of a Ku Klux Klan member Yeah. Oh, my God, I\u2019m so glad you brought that up. So I was working on a piece in 2020 about the conservative movement, and Tucker was a big part of it. And his kind of transformation into a populist, into a right wing populist. And I got a remarkable quote from someone who was the child of Don black, a Ku Klux Klan leader and a big figure in the White nationalist movement. The person that got the quote from, just to be clear, left the movement and was highly critical of it. But here\u2019s what they told me from the perspective of my family. Tucker\u2019s making the same points they\u2019ve been trying to make their entire lives, but much better. He\u2019s found a wider audience and the ideal method of expression for many of the same ideas. My father\u2019s a little baffled still that it\u2019s Tucker Carlson. Sometimes someone who he always never liked because he saw him as a Shill for the Bush administration and the Iraq war. That\u2019s bringing white nationalist ideas to the Fox audience. I got this quote. I\u2019m not a very experienced journalist at the time. This is beginning of my career. I got this quote, and I brought this to my other sources for the story, who were young people on the right. And I thought I had something dispositive. I thought I had something that showed Tucker Carlson\u2019s playing around with things that you really shouldn\u2019t, that he\u2019s moving in a very disturbing direction. They shrugged. They didn\u2019t care. And I found that to be shocking and disturbing. And I think that anecdote says a lot. I also think and I think this is very important to understanding Tucker and the role he plays is he understands something. Trump understands, but not everybody does, which is the modern right. Even more than the modern left is driven by attention Yeah, Trump has remade it around an intentional economy. Sure and there isn\u2019t somebody behind a Trump as good at attention as Trump is. JD Vance certainly isn\u2019t. You don\u2019t have to be the president to be the leader of MAGA that it is very plausible to me that you would have a JD Vance nomination, but actually the next leader of MAGA is Tucker Carlson that I think what Tucker Carlson is trying to be is the authentic voice of MAGA, who, because he doesn\u2019t have to do all the political coalition work. He can be pure than someone like JD Vance, who I think fundamentally agrees with Carlson at this point Yeah, but has to maintain or attempt to maintain viability in Michigan Yeah, absolutely. Here\u2019s the thing Yeah I think Carlson views himself in that role for sure. Tucker Carlson was the median, I would say, not conservative Republican to a certain degree. Toed the party line on most issues. Iraq, all this kind of stuff. American foreign policy. On MSNBC, he was on MSNBC. He was also tried to present himself as a kind of reasonable. He was like a good time, libertarian rich kid Yeah, there\u2019s that too. And it\u2019s interesting. He takes the pull tie off. There\u2019s a degree that there\u2019s costume changes here. He takes a pull tie off. He now has this more folksy look, checked shirts and so on and so forth in his cabin, et cetera, et cetera. He\u2019s cultivating an image of himself as down to Earth and folksy and not part of the establishment. And it\u2019s hard to take when you realize he\u2019s the product of it. And then. But there\u2019s something important to understand about Tucker Carlson\u2019s turn, I think, to anti-Semitism in particular. I believe that anti-Semitism functions as an epoxy for elites that don\u2019t really want social changes that would affect their prominence and in fact, want to shore up their prominence and need mass support and need a target and need a story about economic dispossession, a world that doesn\u2019t seem to make sense, that serves their interests. You see this in a lot of different places. You see it in Russia. The czarist regime kind of invented anti-Semitism for this purpose. The protocols of the Elders of Zion are created in this regime of that\u2019s feeling the pressure of a mass population that\u2019s becoming dissatisfied with it creates anti-Semitism as a way to rechannel that energy. You see this in France, where you have an aristocracy and the clergy that is pushed into old institutions, sees its prominence in the society losing out. It\u2019s losing its world. And then it needs to find a mass politics, a way to attack its enemies. And anti-Semitism becomes very useful for that. So anti-Semitism always works to create a kind of coalition. There\u2019s a street gutter crackpot anti-Semitism, and then you have what you could call more respectable anti-semites. Let\u2019s say Charles Lindbergh. A person who was highly respected, a respectable person, a great hero to many Americans, but found had a racial view of the world and found anti-Semitic ideas persuasive. Henry Ford, Henry Ford. So you had these respectable anti-semites and crackpot anti-semites and their coming together, I would say, this is the creation of an actual anti-Semitic politics. And this interview between Fuentes and Carlson is this almost textbook. You have the anti-Semitism of the gotr Fuentes, and you have the anti-Semitism of a declining aristocracy. Tucker Is this kind of comes from this preppy background. Father was an ambassador. Stepmothers Swanson. And sees an America that\u2019s not the way he wants it to be. That\u2019s declining that doesn\u2019t look the way he looks like. That has norms that he doesn\u2019t share. And you have Fuentes who comes from he didn\u2019t go to college. He dropped out of college. He comes from a modest background. He is dripping with resentment to a world that he feels doesn\u2019t have a place for him in his self, a self-described proud incel. And also very interesting that he does not try to hide it or pretend that he is not socially maladjusted in some way, and that lends him authenticity and makes people gravitate towards it. So yeah, that is the most perfect in that interview, in that moment, the most perfect encapsulation of anti-Semitic politics, declining aristocracy, held down dissatisfied kind of mob bringing them together. And you have a kind of coalition itself. Let\u2019s get into that interview. I want to play a clip for you that almost felt to me like the heart of it. Israel is unlike every other country in the sense that because the Jewish people are in a diaspora all over the world, there are significant numbers of Jews in Europe, but also in the United States. And because of their unique heritage and story, which is that there are stateless people, they\u2019re unassimilable, they\u2019re resist assimilation for thousands of years. And I think that\u2019s a good thing. And I guess what I\u2019m saying is that if you are a Jewish person in America, and again, it\u2019s not because they\u2019re born, but it\u2019s a rational self-interest politically to say, I\u2019m a minority, I\u2019m a religious ethnic minority. This is not really my home. My ancestral home is in Israel. There\u2019s a natural affinity that Jews have for Israel. And I would say on top of that for the international Jewish community, is that they have this international community across borders, extremely organized. That is, putting the interests of themselves before the interests of their home country. And there\u2019s no other country that has a similar arrangement like that. No other country has a strong identity like that. This religious blood and soil conviction, this history of being in the diaspora, stateless, wandering, persecuted, and in particular the historic animosity between the Jewish people and the Europeans. They hate the Romans because the Romans destroyed the temple. That\u2019s why Eric Weinstein goes to the Arch of Titus and gives it the finger and takes a picture. We don\u2019t think like that. As Americans and white people. We don\u2019t think about the Roman Empire in 2000 years ago. They do. And so I guess that\u2019s really and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s me saying the Jews, the Jews are Jews. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s me being hateful. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s me being collectivist. I think that\u2019s understanding that identity politics, whether you love it or hate it, whatever you feel about it, it\u2019s a reality that we live in a world of Jews and Christians, of whites and Blacks. These identities mean something to us and they mean things to each other, and we can\u2019t wish them away. And it feels like white people and Christians are the only ones that do that. There\u2019s no question about that. Your last point for sure. One of the reasons they do that is because they\u2019ve been taught to hate themselves. Of course, since the Second World War. All right. That\u2019s what you might call a rich text Yeah, sure. How do you read it. Well, I mean, he\u2019s an extremely talented rhetorician and communicator, and he does a few things. He presents us a vocabulary that does not sound shocking to people, that uses words and terminology that wouldn\u2019t frighten people, that talks. Sounds like a rational discussion of politics, a rational comment on politics. And then weaved into this is all of the material of classic anti-Semitism. The Jews are an unassimilable group, self-interested, internationally organized, internationally organized, very tightly, and all talking to each other and working as one mind who don\u2019t have the interests of their host at heart, have their own interests at heart and are animated by a deep hostility to the people that surround them, to the societies they find themselves hatred towards Christians, towards white people, so on and so forth. That is classic anti-Semitism. But he keeps on saying things like, it\u2019s and that\u2019s a good thing or something like that, or it\u2019s not really. I\u2019m not trying to be hateful. He presents it as if he\u2019s having a discussion of politics like any other. And the other move in there Yeah in addition to the Jews are obsessed with the Romans, which I have to say, I don\u2019t feel very obsessed by the Romans. I kind of like that Yeah but the other move in there, which you see a lot on the right and a lot on the White identity. Let\u2019s call it Yeah is look the Jews are just practicing their identity politics. Don\u2019t we just have to practice ours Yeah and that final move Yeah which is the one where Tucker says, well, there\u2019s no doubt about that. We white Europeans, the heritage Americans, were taught to hate ourselves. There\u2019s been no rational self-interest since World War two. That is, I think, a very fundamental move of Trumpism. That\u2019s the bridge Yeah of anti-Semitism to Trumpism. This MAGA right has spent years saying, look, the whole left plays identity politics. It\u2019s time for white people to stand up for themselves. You\u2019re getting all this anti-white racism. And here it is. The Jews are the danger to that. If they\u2019re going to practice their politics, you have to practice yours Yeah, precisely. I mean, look, at the core of the Nazi ideology is a social Darwinistic view of the world, divided into almost different species of being who are engaged in an endless war with each other, and the Jews are particularly important part of that worldview. They are the most threatening of these beings, and trying to launder what is a kind of biological essentialism about the nature of the political through, well, normal interest group politics. Of course, in America we have coalitions. We have representatives of different ethnic groups who advocate on each other\u2019s behalf. Well there\u2019s a Congressional Black Caucus. What\u2019s wrong with that. Why Why shouldn\u2019t white people do that. It is a different kind of politics. It\u2019s not just like, oh, they should be able to practice their own identity politics, and they can be integrated through the political process, and their interests are taken care of and balanced with other people\u2019s interests. No, the idea is that this group is impossible to assimilate and also national unity. The success of the nation, its health is impossible to accomplish without their expulsion. This is the view, and this is The view that Fuentes continually hammers on. There is a lot here that\u2019s tricky to talk about, because you\u2019re at this endless morass of the intersection of anti-Semitism and Israel. Sure one move I\u2019m seeing from a lot of people on the right at the moment is, why should we be talking about what this rumble influencer thinks about the Jews when the left is electing Zohran mamdani? When there\u2019s been these years of debate about anti-Semitism on the left and also super clearly I\u2019ve met Zohran Mamdani, voted for Zohran Mamdani. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything anti-Semitic about him at all. But I think you see in the way he has been treated and then also what is happening on the right. A distinction that is worth understanding, a structural distinction that. Anti-zionism on the left often pushes towards what I would call liberalism, a belief that all people should have equal rights, that there should be universalism. There\u2019s a different version of it if you\u2019re more socialist and Marxist. But the left tends to push towards a universalism. And a lot of the anger at Israel, which is I think much of it merited, is the way it betrays universalism for the Palestinians living under its control. Sure on the right, it\u2019s pushing towards ethnostate politics that the fundamental argument and a way in which Israel has tried modern Israel has tried to create New coalitions is to say, hey, we\u2019re all ethnostates here. But once you buy into the ethnostate frame, then the fact that you see Jews as an ethnic other right in your society pushes somewhere very different. Absolutely pushes towards ideas of expulsion. Pushes towards ideas that are a fifth column within that they are leading your country to betray its actual interests in order to they have dual loyalties. But there is this weird thing where it is, there\u2019s been a rise of Jewish figures or Jewish aligned figures who want to embrace ethno state politics. Sure I mean, you have Yoram Hazony Jewish lives in Jerusalem, the founder of natcon going to the natcon conference, which he started saying, look, you don\u2019t have to the Jews to be a national conservative, but there\u2019s nobody ever said and this is for my Jewish friends. Nobody ever said that to be a good natcon you had to love Israel. Nobody ever said that to be a good natcon you had to love Jews. And so the one point of anger. I have at a lot of people on the right, who I think have been playing FTSE with this for a long time, is that the. Once you embrace the ethnostate concept, this is where that leads. Well, I certainly am of that opinion. I think, again, let\u2019s take this from another angle. Like the way you\u2019re talking is in terms is a little highbrow. It\u2019s in terms of intellectuals like Yoram Hazony. But let\u2019s look at this from the ground up. You have a conservative movement that is embraced, as you said before, an extremely provocative tone, a tone of open bigotry in certain cases. And basically, the deal that the pro-Israel right thought it could make is we can engage in a good deal of racist demagogy we\u2019re O.K with it, especially maybe directed at Muslims Islam. But the line that we draw is when it happens to juice when it turns into anti-Semitism. That is not a consistent position. That is an extremely self-defeating position. So when I talk about glorification, I don\u2019t mean to say it\u2019s only that people with these extremely specific views about Israel and Jews are taking over the right. It is more that there\u2019s a general atmosphere of moral anarchy, of acceptance, of extremely hateful and divisive views. So it\u2019s not. And that creates, as we\u2019ve discussed, there\u2019s no immune system. There\u2019s no barrier to anti-Semitism. Well, that also goes to the energy that MAGA, Trumpism that the modern right generates from transgression Yeah once you have begun to exhaust the energy of transgression about how you talk about immigrants Yeah, Trump comes down the escalator, says they\u2019re sending rapists and murderers over here. There\u2019s a big outrage. But now being much more Democrat on the right. I mean, that\u2019s rigueur. Who cares. Once you have moved past a bunch of the energy on Dancing around racism. Once you have moved, on traditional gender roles. This is the boss battle of Western speech taboos, right. right. And you have seen this didn\u2019t begin last week or two weeks ago Yeah you saw Elon Musk respond to somebody laying down a conspiracy that it\u2019s Jewish elites pushing immigrant voters to take over the country by saying, you\u2019ve really spoken the truth here. You have a lot of the podcast bro faction that has turned more. Like Joe Rogan. Bringing on revisionist historians. Sure who was Germany really the bad guys in World War two. What have we not been told about that. And so you bring these two things together that you want to build an ethnostate and you are ideologically opposed to there being anything you can\u2019t talk about. And you make your money and your attention on these algorithms. And it\u2019s almost a hydraulic process towards anti-Semitism Yeah the thing about a Kik getting an excitement from it, Sartre said it\u2019s amusing to be an anti-Semite. There is something. Look yeah. Mamdani, for example, who some people say is an anti-Semite because of his positions on Israel. He\u2019s very careful to say, I\u2019m not an anti-Semite and to express sensitivity to Jewish concerns and go to synagogues. And I mean, Mamdani is a liberal. O.K yeah, exactly Yeah but he also does not whatever you think is at the heart of his politics. He does not Jew bait. Bet, right. He is not practicing politics. That is based on the enjoyment of the harassment and getting a rise out of Jews, in other words. And Fuentes absolutely does. Tucker does to a more subtle extent. Candace Owens does. And that also attracts people because people who feel powerless are very attracted to it because there\u2019s someone you can harass and pick on, and it\u2019s part of their strategy to take over the right in their direction is to do this in a way, workplace harassment against their Jewish allies, to bait them, to get them to overreact, to unsettle them. The other thing you mentioned is that the taboos are breaking down because World War II and the Holocaust is a long time ago. And the generation that experiences is gone, and the politics that were created out of the consensus that it created is disappearing. So some of it is just the passage of time. Again, this is tricky to talk about, but you can\u2019t get away here from how much Israel post October 7, the war in and the flattening of Gaza has destabilized politics around this everywhere. And again, I think the ways in which it has created tensions on the left have gotten most of the attention for the past couple of years, but in fact, it\u2019s cracking open the right. And you hear it in this Carlson Fuentes interview. You hear it in the questions getting asked of JD Vance at various events. Thank you for the opportunity to speak and I\u2019m just confused why that there\u2019s this notion that we might have Israel something or that they\u2019re our greatest ally. I\u2019m just confused why this idea has come around. Considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours, but also openly supports the prosecution of ours Yeah, so now that MAGA, on some level, it has really rooted itself in this isolationist, very much America first position. And this young very online. One looks at what has happened in Gaza and I think correctly sees it as immoral Yeah but two asks why are we involved here at a time when we\u2019re pushing Europe out on its own. Sure, sure. When we are aggressively insisting that we have no stable alliances except what is directly in our self-interest at a given moment, there are ways, many, many, many ways to be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic. But there is also a way in which the I think desire among Jews to say that what Israel is doing never can be connected to anti-Semitism breaks apart. And I never quite know how to talk about this, except that I feel like we\u2019re all living through it right now Yeah. I mean, it\u2019s very difficult. I mean, to put my cards on the table. I\u2019m on the left side of the political spectrum. And I\u2019ve been extremely critical of Israel and especially its conduct in the war, which I believe they probably committed a genocide and absolutely extreme war crimes. But what happened also was the creation of an enormous amount of free propaganda for anti-Semitic agitators. And also a lot of people becoming curious about US foreign policy history. There is a certain extent to which they\u2019re grabbing a lot of people who otherwise would be getting involved in the political process in a really positive way. They say, why is American foreign policy like this. Should we be doing this. What\u2019s the history behind all this. Like, why are these people fighting. Why are they killing each other. They have legitimate and interesting questions. But instead that curiosity, that legitimate curiosity is being picked up by people who have another motivation here. I don\u2019t think that Tucker Carlson lost much sleep over the Arabs who died in Iraq war. I have no I\u2019m not defending the war in any way, but I just have 0 sympathy for them or their culture. A culture where people just don\u2019t use toilet paper or forks. And I don\u2019t really believe it when he now gets very sentimental about people in Gaza. One of the reasons that I\u2019m mad about Gaza is because the Israeli position is everyone who lives in Gaza is a terrorist because of how they were born, including the women and the children. That\u2019s not a Western view. That\u2019s an Eastern view. That\u2019s a non-Christian. That\u2019s totally incompatible with Christianity. So I hate that attitude. It\u2019s genocidal. I think it\u2019s highly cynical. I think when Fuentes expresses some of the most spiteful, dismissive attitudes towards human suffering you can imagine on his podcast, on his show, and then he gets very sentimental about this issue. This is just a straight up genocide. These people are starving. They\u2019re literally dying. It would be formally called the famine, except that Israel will not let any international personnel inside the strip to assess this, to make that declaration. And that is to drag people in and to think, well, these people have a heart and they\u2019re interested in the same topic as I\u2019m interested in. I think it\u2019s highly cynical. I think it\u2019s highly cynical. I think one way you can tell if these views are motivated by impartial analyses of American foreign policy or much more. Partial views about the Jews is whether or not they tend to coexist with unrelated anti-Jewish conspiracies. So in some ways, what I found most telling was another clip from the Carlson Fuentes interview. With OnlyFans, it\u2019s like having a TikTok. It\u2019s like, here\u2019s my Linktree, here\u2019s my Instagram account, here\u2019s my Facebook account, here\u2019s my YouTube, and here\u2019s my OnlyFans. Why would any of this be legal. I think that well indicated, maybe there\u2019s an intelligence benefit to that Yeah, maybe there\u2019s a political benefit to that. I think that well, why wouldn\u2019t you arrest the people who run something like that. They should be if you had a Christian government. Or how about just a government that cares about its people. I mean, is Iran a bigger threat or is OnlyFans. Iran\u2019s not turning my daughters to prostitution. So to even parse this clip, you have to know that one of the big anti-Semitic conspiracies of this era, is it Jews in general, and maybe the Israeli government in particular is behind a lot of porn. The reason that Jews run the porn industry, I think, is because they\u2019re not Christian. And not only are they not Christian, but they\u2019re against Christianity and the people that were the pioneers of porn, they are quoted as saying, this is like a middle finger to God. Kanye West has talked about this. David Duke has talked about this. And here you have Fuentes and Carlson gesturing at this. Maybe there\u2019s an intelligence benefit to all this porn we\u2019ve got out there. Now if you had a real Christian government, we wouldn\u2019t allow it. And that\u2019s where I think you see something else. It\u2019s happening in the soil here, as opposed to just old school isolationism on American foreign policy Yeah I mean, it\u2019s every dissatisfaction with the modern world, every social problem. You relate back to that issue. That\u2019s the explanation for it. It simplifies every single social issue, and it makes a recognizable enemy responsible for it. That\u2019s not New. You have that same thing going back in European anti-Semitism, blaming every single social problem, back to the Jews. I think one of the things that has unnerved me most in the last few weeks was a tweet from Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation and the architect of Project 2025. And Roberts got himself in a lot of trouble. And we\u2019ll talk about it for immediately coming out and defending Carlson. But around the same time, he had had Jonathan Haidt, the critic of the internet at Heritage, to talk about porn and digital addiction and other things. And he sends out this tweet. He says, thank you for reminding everyone at inherited yesterday, the tech tycoons like Leonid radvinsky and Solomon Fridman are profiting to the tune of millions by preying on America\u2019s young men and women. We are proud to be in this fight with you. It is time to arrest, prosecute, and convict the sick perverts behind OnlyFans and Pornhub. And the key thing about this tweet is you could have chosen to single out no one. Or if you\u2019re going to single out only two people, there are a lot of people you might choose the CEO of OnlyFans is named Kylie Blaire. But Roberts, who is at the center of establishment Republican politics, the head of the Heritage Foundation. He chooses these two people with very Jewish names. It was very hard for me not to read this as Roberts, or whoever\u2019s writing for him is pointing towards some affinity with this part of right subculture. I think you\u2019re absolutely right to pick up on that. I mean, Pat Buchanan used to do this what they used to say about Pat Buchanan is he always talks about Goldman Sachs, but not Morgan Stanley. And Pat Buchanan always would say when he was opposing some US foreign policy thing that had some consensus behind it, he would mention Kissinger. He would mention Richard Perle. He would mention those guys. Would he mention Jeane kirkpatrick? Would he mention Alexander haig? No Some of those names not important. So yeah, continually hammering on that is a big part of their politics. I mean, it\u2019s the center of their politics. But it just struck me. And this is true for Robertson, the way he responds to a lot that\u2019s happening where you might think, oh, is this just the intentional side of the right. Is this just the people who are trying to create big events for the YouTube algorithm. And maybe it starts there, or for the X algorithm, maybe it begins there. But when you see it jump these lines, I mean, you then also have the Kevin Roberts response to the Carlson Fuentes interview, which, I mean, maybe it\u2019s worth watching that too, because I think it has some of the same dynamics. My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first, and to America always, when it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies. We should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, and technology. But when it doesn\u2019t, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington, we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else\u2019s agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains, and as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail. He\u2019s in a bit of hot water for that now Yeah he is Yeah but that was his first instinct Yeah, well, I mean, he. Yes, I think that\u2019s his first instinct. He wanted to defend Tucker, who I think he views as extremely important part of conservative movement or the right wing now and wants to maintain a relationship with him obviously. But yeah the Heritage Foundation is essentially part of the nervous system of the conservative movement. It\u2019s one of important think tanks that comes up with policy that supports the work of intellectuals and elites and the conservative movement. And yeah, watching that being and watching the institutions seem to break in that direction was remarkable. And that caused a firestorm. He has apologized. He has walked it back. His friend Yoram Hazony flew in from Israel to try to things over Yeah, it was a very weird video and it struck me as almost coming from sci-fi. I was so taken aback by it. And then he falls back on. What they all fall back on now is anti cancel culture anti wokeness which means O.K there\u2019s no standards anymore. We don\u2019t cancel people. But there\u2019s another interesting part of this when he says my loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always Yeah one of the things that you see when you begin diving into the fissures on the right about this Yeah is for some time there\u2019s been a fairly close embrace between evangelical Christianity and Israel. And that has in some ways solved this coalitional problem on the right. And what you hear Fuentes doing, what you hear these, people coming up and asking JD Vance questions, doing what you hear. In some ways, Tucker doing is really saying that doesn\u2019t make any sense. And then the Christian Zionists who are well, Christian Zionists, what is that. And I can just say for my self, I dislike them more than anybody because. Like what. Because it\u2019s Christian heresy. And I\u2019m offended by that as a Christian. I mean, look, the attachment of evangelicals to Israel is a particular current in evangelical Christianity, dispensationalism. It\u2019s one that some argue has very deep roots in American past because of Calvinist ideas and American Christian Zionism going back to the founders. And there\u2019s something to that. But this emerges really as a mass phenomenon, kind of in the 1970s, right, where evangelical Christians are looking at what\u2019s happening in Israel as kind of signs of the coming apocalypse. And that becomes extremely popular. And Israel is befriended, is cultivated because they think it is about to bring about the rapture and so on and so forth. Now it\u2019s true, I think, among younger Christians, younger evangelical Christians even I\u2019m not sure how much of a whole dispensationalism has anymore. It seems to be something that\u2019s of a lot of the things we\u2019re discussing of older generations. So I think that appears to be changing. I agree with you. But this goes to what you\u2019re talking about with Roberts. He did have to walk this back. He\u2019s apologized. He said he let heritage down. This has led to a bunch of interesting reporting on what\u2019s been going on inside the Heritage Foundation Yeah and one thing you hear in that reporting is that there\u2019s a big generational split where older staffers were furious at Roberts and are standing up in meetings saying, the right Bill Buckley always knew that you had to eject the anti-semites on the right. I see you rolling your eyes. His It\u2019s worth saying that bill Buckley\u2019s. The extent of his war against anti-Semitism has been overstated. Let\u2019s put it that way. But the younger, many of the younger Heritage Foundation staffers are standing up and saying, what did Kevin do wrong here. If there\u2019s not room for what he said, is there not room for me. And I think this is getting at just this very big thing, which is and it\u2019s what I understood. Roberts is doing that. You have a lot of people on the MAGA, right, trying to skate to where they think the puck is going Yeah and what they see among their young, among their staffers, among the people they interact with on social media, is that where it\u2019s going is around this much more. I would call it like white nationalist energy Yeah I think that\u2019s a good read on the situation Yeah, Rod Dreher, a writer who I consider to be on the far right but is horrified by everything that\u2019s going on. He wrote recently that a friend of in the who has connections to the Republican Party and the conservative movement, estimated that some 30 percent or 40 of young staffers were groypers. And I would say to that, well, the other half are maybe don\u2019t go to the last taboo of anti-Semitism, but definitely don\u2019t have any problem, throwing slurs around and trafficking and nasty ideas about that. That\u2019s my own commentary. But yeah, I think that you\u2019re absolutely right. I think that there is a marked generation gap that the younger staff of the conservative movement are much more open to Fuentes ideas. And they\u2019ve also come up in a situation they\u2019ve been since their introduction to politics. They\u2019ve been suffused. They\u2019ve been come up in an environment that\u2019s filled with this. They don\u2019t know a world before it. It\u2019s their common sense in a way. So yeah, I think that they are struggling with the fact that they\u2019re probably going to have staffing issues and they already are. And Trump has not criticized Fuentes. Like Trump can weigh in on things when he feels like it. He called Carlson crazy when Carlson criticized him for the Iran bombing. Trump is notably not weighed in on this Vance has only said he doesn\u2019t like the infighting. I think there\u2019s a lot of reasons for that. I think the main reason is, look, Trump gets a lot of mileage about seeming out to lunch or in his own world. The fact of the matter is he\u2019s a successful politician. He understands. And he\u2019s always understood from the beginning that this extreme right is a constituency that he can\u2019t really afford to alienate, that he has to court. I think his administration knows that they can\u2019t totally distance him. He\u2019s never completely distanced. His administration is full of these people. Well, yes, that\u2019s true, but maybe it was not true as true in the first term. No and I think they\u2019re very interested in what this section of the right has to say. And they realize, this is part of our coalition. We cannot afford to alienate them and attack them. So there have been conservative figures pushing back. Sure Ben Shapiro has particularly, I think, gone to war and has tried to call this out and really try to play the old, at least mythological William F Buckley role, trying to say, no, we don\u2019t do this. We don\u2019t go to groypers, we don\u2019t go to Nick Fuentes. There are lines in our movement. What have you thought of Shapiro\u2019s response, the reaction to it. A few things. First of all, the thing to remember about one of the other main figures on the anti-Semitic right is Candace Owens. Who was birthed within the Shapiro organization. So think about that. Well, hired by Shapiro organization, hired by the Shapiro cultivated and turned into a star. Yes part of them trying to skate to where the puck was going to get a younger audience, to get a hipper in the sense of conservatives, a hipper audience. And Mark Levin at the Republican Jewish conference says, what do you mean, we don\u2019t cancel people. We cancel David Duke. Donald Trump canceled. David Duke, we canceled Pat Buchanan. We canceled the John Birch Society. We canceled Joseph sobran. We canceled pornography on TV. We cancel stuff all the damn time. Hitler admires Stalin, admires Jew haters, American haters, Churchill haters. You\u2019re damn right we\u2019re going to cancel them in de-platform them. I mean, it\u2019s too little, too late. In my view, the opportunity has passed. Most of the people who saw where the Republican Party was going and didn\u2019t like it and were clearsighted about it, went into the never Trump movement, which was not politically viable. It\u2019s a group of people who I consider to have preserved their honor, but don\u2019t have a mass constituency. The party\u2019s not there. These people stayed with MAGA and everything. It represented the destruction of all these norms and institutions that would prevent something like this. And I just am also extremely angry and frustrated with the pro-Israel and neoconservative right for looking the other way when it came to the racist takeover of the riot. Zohran Mamdani perfect example of this. What has happened in the wake of the giant controversies that exploded about Fuentes going on. Tucker, the leaks of the chats. You have major figures on the right who are trying to redirect the conversation about anti-Semitism. Back to Zohran Mamdani. They\u2019re trying to make him the hate figure and to put can\u2019t we all come together. And so Ben Shapiro says, when has Tucker really criticized Oren mamdani? The number of times that Tucker Carlson has mentioned Zohran Mamdani since October 5 on his show is once, and it was in the context of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson talking about the appeal of zhan Mamdani. And then Steve Bannon goes, he attacks Mark Levin. He says, these guys aren\u2019t really MAGA. And he has a point because they weren\u2019t back then. They weren\u2019t with Trump from the beginning. And then he attacks Mamdani. Mark Levin is just nothing but hot air. Mark Levin, instead of running your mouth, what are you doing in New York City. I tell you what we\u2019re doing. We\u2019re going to denaturalize Mamdani. So it directs this energy. This energy of racial hate, really, that seeks to expel a racial other against the safer target. That strategy is not working anymore. That ability to keep the coalition by being like, look, just be as racist as you want, be as hateful as you want, but it\u2019s against it\u2019s designated enemies that are O.K. You people ask a rational question, well, why are these people off the table. And then the answer comes back. It\u2019s like, well, because of Christianity or because Israel represents Western civilization or some kind of rationalization like that. And the anti-semites say that makes no sense to us. And in a certain sense, yeah. Why not. If the world is divided into these racial groups and this is The way you are, and we practice a politics that\u2019s based on that, why make an exception. I mean, as you say, these guys started as opponents of Trump in 2016. Shapiro said Trump isn\u2019t breeds conspiracism conspiracism breeds anti-Semitism. Trump is happy to channel the support of anti-semites to his own ends. He O.K, so Ben Shapiro not a dumb guy. At that time, if you go back and you read actually a bunch of what he said back then, it\u2019s very, very, very prescient. The other thing is, what\u2019s the superpower. They\u2019re going to suddenly discover that they\u2019re going to do that. They couldn\u2019t stop Donald Trump They couldn\u2019t stop Donald Trump. They tried. Many of them tried. Ben Shapiro was an opponent of Donald Trump. Mark Levin was an opponent of Donald Trump. So they\u2019re going to finally discover some New secret weapon in 2024. I don\u2019t know where Levin was, but there was clearly an effort from Shapiro and others to make DeSantis the future. Sure, sure. And yeah, so I don\u2019t understand where they suddenly think they\u2019re going to. They\u2019re going to find the weapons or the Army that\u2019s going to support them in this war. Well, this is what I think is frightening when you look at their situation kind of coldly Yeah, they\u2019re kind of last. Best hope is that they don\u2019t believe Trump himself is an anti-Semite. Their last hope is Trump himself. And I mean, they\u2019ll say that when I appear on the show, he was more or less saying that Yeah, but they\u2019re all much more afraid of what\u2019s coming next, of JD Vance in particular, where I think the view many Republicans hold is advances quietly, functionally, where Carlson is that Vance is groyper adjacent, let\u2019s call it Yeah, I think that\u2019s right. And there is still an O line Republican Party to some degree. Ted Cruz has been coming out. If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil. Lindsey Graham but I just want to make it really clear I\u2019m in the Hitler sucks wing of the Republican Party. What is this Hitler shit. I don\u2019t know anyway, but it is the older Republican Party. I think that they made a deal with the devil in a certain way, and now they\u2019re paying for the consequences. Now, another way to read this. Obviously, it\u2019s all very scary. And these are bad things. And the transformation of the Republican Party into this stuff is not good. It wasn\u2019t great before in my opinion, but now it\u2019s really something else. The other thing is, this might be a politics that ends up when it\u2019s exposed to the public being too weird and too fringe. It has some mass constituency. It do well in a primary Yeah, maybe. Probably will it do well with the rest of the public. I don\u2019t know. Well, it\u2019s done well in primaries before. I think this actually gets to something important. So your book is very much about Pat Buchanan and earlier strains of this. For those who didn\u2019t grow up in the politics of the 1980s and 1990s or didn\u2019t write a best selling book on it as you did. Who\u2019s Pat Buchanan Pat Buchanan is a major figure in the conservative movement. He was a member of the Nixon administration. He kind of represented the ideological conservatives like the Buckley conservatives, the National Review crowd within the Nixon administration. He then went on to be a very important syndicated columnist, columnist, appeared on TV. He was a communications director for some time in the Reagan administration. Important loud voice on the right. He ran a few primary campaigns, one in 1992, which my book focuses on, which wounded George H.W Bush\u2019s candidacy. So there was kind of a constituency for his type of politics. He is also probably the person who expressed anti-Semitic views in public. The most notable anti-Semite in American politics for a very long time. I always think of this clip of Trump talking about Buchanan is worth revisiting. How about Pat Buchanan What do you think of that now. He seems to be the guy you\u2019d have to battle. Well, it\u2019s true, he\u2019s anti-Semitic. He\u2019s anti-black. He obviously has been having a love affair with Adolf Hitler in some form, and I just can\u2019t imagine this guy. I don\u2019t want you to hold back. Give me how you feel now. I mean these core answers. I can\u2019t imagine, that Pat is going to be very seriously taken as a candidate. So that\u2019s an earlier Trump incarnation flirting with a third party run for president Yeah, we often talk about the way Trump has been very consistent on certain things like trade since the 80s, but not on everything. There was a man, Pat Buchanan, a good guy, conservative guy. And it\u2019s not that we\u2019re Pat Buchanan. Look at that good guy. Wow young people, they know him. Pat Buchanan. We know Pat Buchanan. He came in second in the New Hampshire primary. And for 45 years, he made an unbelievable career of it. He was a hot item. He was on every show he came in. And it\u2019s been interesting watching so many of these figures. Nick Fuentes being one of them, but not by any means alone. Kevin Roberts, all of them really rehabilitate Pat Buchanan. Sure I think the Republican Party used to pride itself on not going down Buchanan\u2019s lane. It went down another lane instead, George H.W Bush and then George W Bush Yeah, but it seems like now Buchanan is winning. That\u2019s the thesis of all the work I\u2019ve been doing for the past decade in my book. Yes, I think that\u2019s true. And actually it was interesting. At the beginning of this presidency, I thought, oh man, I got something a little bit wrong. It\u2019s Pat Buchanan. Plus, you\u2019ve got to be nice to Israel, right. So they\u2019re like, O.K, we can be the trade stuff, the immigration stuff that but we\u2019re going to keep in place in order to keep the coalition together. This reflexive support of Israel, partly to do with Jewish Republicans and partly to do with Christian evangelicals. And then when this explodes, I was like, oh, well, I guess that never fully went away. And it wasn\u2019t totally submerged. And this coalition wasn\u2019t that stable. Well, also, it gets to this point that Buchanan has an internal logic Yeah and when you embrace it, it becomes hard to embrace 80 percent of its logic, but not percent of its logic. So there\u2019s this book Buchanan wrote years ago called The death of the West. JD Vance said it is the first political book he ever read. How would you describe the death of the West thesis and how it relates to modern Republican Party politics. It basically describes a world where the White race is submerged by the invasion of Brown peoples, and that needs to be prevented by any means necessary. Essentially, it\u2019s a work of polite white nationalism. And there\u2019s a tremendous amount about fertility rates in it. I mean, yes, even in the first Trump term, reading it, it was striking to me how much the modern right had fully absorbed this book by this guy who was, pushed out to the margins, or it seemed to be for a long time. But I mean, now I think you\u2019re going to pick a founding text for MAGA. People talk about all kinds of different weird thinkers. But death of the West by Buchanan feels to me like a pretty fair center of the canon Yeah I mean, look, critics of the right have often said there was a racial subtext to Western civilization in the way Buchanan used it. It\u2019s not a subtext. It\u2019s what Western civilization means. It means white people. It doesn\u2019t mean homer and Dante and Plato and so on and so forth, or in ideas. It means a certain racial stock that makes up Western people. And basically the division on the right now is are Jews part of that Western white people. So I guess one thing that part of this conversation then reflects is how much of this is all the internet and attentional dynamics. And as such, we are moving into this structurally and there aren\u2019t very good political answers to it. I mean, you\u2019ve had this line that one could even say that the internet itself is anti-Semitic, which also was a kind of provocative line. But I\u2019m curious because you\u2019ve been writing more. You gave the speech at UChicago where you were talking about the modern version of fascism as a response to the way the internet has destabilized the way we communicate, and the political sphere. How much do you see what we\u2019re in as a structural feature of the medium on which politics now primarily certainly political communication primarily takes place. Like what follows from an analysis like that. Well, I mean, the comment about the internet being structurally anti-Semitic, very speculative theory of mind that I cannot defend right now. But yeah, obviously the change in the way people consume media creates the possibility for New communities to form. People who would generally be cranks and fringe, people with a few audience members find mass audiences. So there\u2019s a component of that. There\u2019s also the fact that the internet makes. It\u2019s almost like the birth of cities is the way I think about it. It\u2019s almost like urbanization. It creates an enormous amount of what you might call sanitary problems. It creates an enormous amount of waste, pollution and stuff like this. And there we haven\u2019t come to a way of being like, O.K, well, we\u2019re going to decide how we govern this New city. It\u2019s very interesting though where does do people get into this stuff. You mentioned pornography. It comes from this really seedy underbelly of the internet. The bulletin boards or message boards and fortune, et cetera like that. It comes from a community that, consumes porn. Very edgy porn, sometimes illicit porn. It came from the same underbelly, the sewage of the internet from the gutter. It is the favored ideology of the very people who. Sometimes have addictive relationships to those things. And feel disempowered, entirely disempowered, to detach themselves from it, feel like they have no lives or future. The internet is their only life and future, but it also presents itself as a politics that would solve those problems. All of the things that happen because of modernization and the creation of this New of these New structures, we have the answer to fix them all. It\u2019s interesting. Fuentes openly says I\u2019m one of those guys, right. He\u2019s like, I\u2019m kind of a loser. And incel there\u2019s no women in my life, et cetera, et cetera. But the way he does that and the way he attracts an audience and the way he entertains his audiences when he has. Their questions come on. He sadistically attacks them. What do you mean, what do I think. That\u2019s your question. So Byron Donalds some Black Republican benchwarmer, gets up at the RJC and says, I love Israel, I support immigration. You say, what do you think about that. What do you I think about that dipshit. That\u2019s your question. The show is like, we hate immigration. We\u2019re against Israel Hey, so this guy says he likes immigration in Israel. What do you think about that. That\u2019s your question. What do I think about that. What do you I think about that fucking idiot. Because essentially that\u2019s at the root of this. It\u2019s about a certain type of powerlessness that comes to express itself in sadism. There is a degree of self-loathing among these people that it can\u2019t also be discounted. There\u2019s a degree to which they have accepted their position as being outside of society, as being unrepresented. And they just want to burn it all down. I think I have this theory about Twitter Yeah which is that whichever political coalition is in control of it at any given moment is going to pay dearly for that. So I think that the left had the wheel on Twitter, around 2020. And by 2024, a lot of the positions it got taken. For that reason, a lot of the culture that emerged on it ended up proving a profound political loser. And I remember people being terrified on the left when Elon Musk bought it. But what I see is the right is becoming Twitter poisoned X poisoned Yeah and that guy in a basement making fun of his followers, claiming to be an incel? Politics, right. It\u2019s very. I mean, I\u2019ve spent the last week immersed in prep for this. And you begin to think it\u2019s the world Yeah And then you look up and shake your head and you remember it\u2019s not. No And most people don\u2019t want this and have no. And the right seems so hooked in to its own attentional drugs at the moment Yeah and JD Vance seems to want to be the future of the right is very, very, very hooked in to its weird subcultures. And he has said that himself that I wonder if I mean, one thing you hear Shapiro keep trying to say to them is like, this is going to be a loser. And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s specifically the anti-Semitism, though that too. But the whole gestalt of craziness like Laura Loomer and Candace Owens and I mean, there\u2019s just so much as they try to absorb this in and Tucker Carlson and if I were to have some optimistic gloss on any of this. And I don\u2019t feel great about it, it\u2019s that that\u2019s a pretty weak politics, particularly after Trump, who has a very particular showman\u2019s capability and role in American culture. No, I think your point about Twitter being a kind of a mixed blessing or I think it\u2019s extremely useful when you\u2019re kind of putting together the campaign and the coalition and about to launch an attack. And when you\u2019re in power, you need to have normal Democratic tools to understand where the electorate\u2019s at and the types of explanations, ideas, memes on Twitter are a different reality, and it interprets what\u2019s going on in the rest of the world in a very distorted way. So an election happens, there\u2019s a negative result for your party. A normal political mind would say, maybe some of our messaging is bad, our policies are bad, the electors expressing issues with us. That gets metabolized in Twitter and all kinds of insane conspiracies and so on and so forth. So it definitely distorts what the notion of the rights public is. Now, that\u2019s very dangerous because they\u2019re living in another reality. But it also when they\u2019re in a Democratic society, yeah, it detaches them from the things that they could do to alter course. And yeah, I think that it\u2019s still true that a lot of the things that we\u2019re talking about are, as they say, very online and attract a kind of subculture. My only Warning about that is like, I think that a lot of young people grew up online. That\u2019s not a lot of people are very online. It\u2019s not that different from the norm. But what I would say is that I think sometimes we can overstate how bad how badly the young people are doing politically Yeah and what I mean by this is the 2024 election scared the hell out of Democrats about what was happening with Gen Z Yeah, and rightly so. Huge swing towards Trump. And so then when somebody like Nick Fuentes, self-described incel and brain poisoned edgelord, comes up and says, I am speaking on behalf of these young men. There\u2019s a tendency to say, well, O.K, I don\u2019t understand these young men anymore. Maybe he is right. And then I look around you, if you look at who Trump has lost support among Yeah, it\u2019s young people. He has cratered among young people. You looked at how Zohran Mamdani did in the election among young men Yeah incredibly well that the idea that the center of Gen Z culture is Nick Fuentes is also wrong, I think is a weird way. One thing you often see, I think, is that old people don\u2019t understand young people. And so they are a little bit gullible. About anyone arising with some amount of constituency saying I speak for the young now Yeah and young people, people care about the cost of living. They swing around based on that. It just there seems to me to be something here that even I don\u2019t think the Republican Party has the pulse of the young. No, it\u2019s that it has the pulse of its online young. And that is a very malformed sense of even the young public Yeah I think there\u2019s a lot to that. I think there\u2019s a lot to that. I do think, though, it must be admitted that this is a party with mass support, and it increasingly has tailored a message to try to get people who feel disaffected with the way things are going. So if there are a lot of other shocks and there isn\u2019t some way in which the country gets on a footing where people feel like they can be prosperous, where they can have decent lives, and these pathologies continue, that politics is going to get an additional purchase. I mean, it\u2019s one of the big dangers with America\u2019s two party politics. If one of the two parties becomes extreme, then it doesn\u2019t take that much for the extreme wing to come into power. You can take over a party Yeah with a fairly narrow part of that party being well organized Yeah different candidates split support in the primaries. And all of a sudden you have Trump in 2016 or maybe JD Vance loses in 2028. But then there\u2019s a big recession right. And Tucker Carlson runs in the 2032 primaries or somebody who\u2019s Tucker pilled or whatever it might be. And the issue you have there is that if the Democratic Party, for one reason or another, becomes unacceptable to people, then the fact that the Republican Party is run by groyper extremists, you make a couple political moves to the center and hide it a little bit during the election, then you\u2019re in real trouble Yeah I mean, my sense of our politics now is that on the one hand, the Republican Party is weakening itself, and on the other hand, the possibility of 20th century calamity style outcomes just keeps going up Yeah, I agree with you. But here\u2019s the thing about every single election happens and Americans say. This proves our theory of the case. The country is fundamentally changed. Here are the people who are important. Here are the people that are not important. This party has shown itself to be totally out of touch with the American people. This party is the wave of the future. And then another election happens. That narrative is forgotten or it\u2019s proven to be false very quickly. We don\u2019t really know what the electorate looks like until election day, so we\u2019re always guessing and saying, oh, well, there\u2019s a lot of these kind of people, a lot of this kind of people. We don\u2019t know what messages are going to be successful. Things come out of nowhere. Things disappear. Coalitions are never permanent. They\u2019re very fragile in American politics. They fall apart quickly. As you mentioned, the loss of young people, the loss of independents who weren\u2019t watching Nick Fuentes. They were pissed about their groceries. They were pissed about not necessarily being able to buy a house. So I don\u2019t think yeah, I\u2019m of two minds of it too. I do believe that there is a weakening of the party\u2019s mass appeal through its moving towards the other things. But my only worry about that is like these things have sophisticated techniques of propaganda to get mass support, and Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are exhibiting those things. They are. They know what they\u2019re doing. They know they are not the Nazis of yesteryear who were skinheads and put swastikas everywhere and scare people. They know how to deliver this message in a way that\u2019s palatable or more palatable. My sense of things in America is that if a along, that is, yes, there are problems with the establishment, but we need to make some changes to the way our economy works, and I don\u2019t particularly hate or want to kill or harm anybody. That message is going to be a lot more successful with people, because I think most Americans are not obsessed with sadistic fantasies of harming each other. So I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an inevitability that those politics will take over. But I do believe there are conditions under which they become more appealing and stronger. And it\u2019s a lot of the kinds of social dislocations we\u2019re experiencing now. And then always our final question, what are three books you recommend to the audience. So I recommend I\u2019m going to recommend two recent books and an old book and they\u2019re about this subject. This is not for reading for fun. One is \u201cTaking America Back\u201d by David Austin Walsh, which is a kind of history of the right\u2019s half hearted, let\u2019s say, attempts to police anti-Semitism. One is \u201cFurious Minds\u201d It\u2019s a new book by Laura K. Field, which is about MAGA intellectuals, the new right, and how they justify, explain, rationalize things that are going on, give arguments for it. And the third one is a very old book and a little bit forgotten. It\u2019s called \u201cProphets of Deceit: Techniques of the American Agitator\u201c, and it\u2019s by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman. And it\u2019s a extremely astute, detailed analysis of the techniques of anti-Semitic agitation and propaganda, especially in the context of the United States. John Ganz, thank you very much. Thank you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If, by the stroke of good fortune or just being a normal person, you had not heard of Nick Fuentes until this month, chances are you\u2019ve heard of him now.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":6707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[7816,7292,7817,2248,57,3353,1083,4185],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n