Thoughts On The Carlson Interview

I watched nearly all of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes because I was mostly mystified at what Carlson could possibly find enlightening about a moderately intelligent disciple of identity politics with zero life experience beyond self-promoting stunts. If you don’t know who Fuentes is, he’s a podcast host who promotes textbook antisemitic theories, has repeatedly praised Hitler, denied the Holocaust, practices identity politics, and absolutely hates Charlie Kirk. He’s part of a vocally-growing fringe that claims to be on the right, but shares too many commonalities with the left for that claim to be seriously considered.

Fuentes, who calls himself a Christian, began early in the interview stating his “admiration” for Stalin, a notorious atheist who brutally enforced godlessness as state policy and murdered millions. Beyond that, Fuentes demonstrated a serious ignorance on a cornerstone of our republic, e pluribus unum, and received no push back. Fuentes said that other countries were losing their identities because of unfettered, mostly illegal, immigration, and the U.S. will, too. This isn’t an entirely untrue statement, but it begs the question when repurposed as an ethnic issue for the United States, as was done in this interview. The issue is that those countries are not the United States. You can’t go to France and be French any more than you can go to Italy and be Italian. Europe is a quilt of various nations built on centuries of their own, respective homogenized culture with individual languages and practices. The United States was not. The United States has one commonality shared by its citizenry: the desire to be free. The Founders chose our national motto, e pluribus unum, to represent the thirteen colonies and its various inhabitants that created our republic. Its inhabitants. Many of them weren’t native Americans, they were European immigrants and the only common thread between all was the desire to be free, a desire which creates a shared culture.

Our Founders didn’t mandate the practice of a national religion (see Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists who were eager for the new nation to cement their denomination as the national faith practice) yet, because they were greatly informed by their own Christian (or deist, some) beliefs, fervently supported protecting religious liberty, including opposing religious tests for public office and writing the Establishment Clause. You were given a free nation in which the control of your rights were placed under the dominion of the divine, far from the reach and perversion of man. That’s it. Just want to be free. (This is also why Marxism views Christianity with such hostility. Christianity = true freedom.)

The U.S. wasn’t created as an ethnostate, but as a free one, and freedom as the shared belief and defining culture. Assimilation to this freedom, not rejection of it is the requirement. Anything short of that fails the expectation set out by our Founders, not just in the debate over our founding documents, but in countless letters they wrote to each other in which they honed our the nation’s founding principles. In fact, some of the Founders might be considered a bit progressive by today’s conservative standards on the subject of (legal) immigration, specifically entry. Granted, times were different and the borders weren’t teeming with entrants (mostly illegal) as they were just a couple of years ago, but — and this is significant — they believed in a quarantine period of sorts before allowing immigrants to make or shape law in the country. During a debate at the Constitutional Convention Mason stated: “Citizenship for three years was not enough for ensuring that local knowledge which ought to be possessed by the representative.” And he wasn’t not wrong. The only culture under threat by the rejection of assimilation is freedom.

There is a difference between opposing limitless immigration, legal or otherwise, and insisting that the United States is a one-denomination dominated ethnostate. There is a difference between believing that Israel is a strategic ally in the Middle East and believing a theory of Biblical prophecy concerning end of days. It seems that those opposed to Israel conflate the two to detract credibility from the first. I also don’t understand how anyone can have more hatred for Christian Zionists over a doctrinal dispute than the Islamist terrorists colonizing and slaughtering people in the Middle East and genociding Christians in Africa.

There is also a difference in criticizing policy decisions of the Knesset and maligning Jewish people for simply being Jewish. Most of the people I see critical of Israel can’t tell you the difference between Issac Herzog and Benjamin Netanyahu, they’re just complaining about “Zionists” because they see other people doing it and are convinced by the authority or influence of those they see to do the same. An interfaith disagreement has nothing to do with whether or not a people that thousands of years of antiquity show living in the same area have the right to exist as a nation today in the same area. These are two separate issues. Additionally, if one thinks it’s heretical to interpret Revelation in this way, isn’t it also then heretical to disregard Paul in Romans 14:3-10? Is it not also heretical to fashion idols out of race?

In this conversation AIPAC comes up frequently as the organization accused of buying off the U.S. for Israel. It’s only fair then to note that while AIPAC is funded by American individuals and organizations, it spends sizably less compared to foreign Qatari lobbying — $3.3 million in 2024 compared to Qatar’s $8 million. Qatar has spent $255 million in the U.S. since 2017 on lobbying and public relations. China spends even more. One of the reasons perhaps why pro-Israel lobbying resonates better in the U.S. than islamist lobbying is because one demographic shares more western values than the other and people are receptive to this. The intentional or unintentional absence of equal financial scrutiny here betrays the stated concern for influence over the U.S. government.

Carlson says later on that he believes it is ungodly to blame all of Gaza for Hamas. Per the context of his remarks, he’s referencing those who say that Israel should unleash its full military capabilities in the strip because Gaza is lost. It sounds noble to not want to blame the entirety of Gaza for the actions of Hamas, but it also seems inconsistent to blame all of Israel, all Jews, or all post and pre-millennialists, too.

This is where geopolitics and feelings don’t mix. While it’s true that not all of Gaza is responsible for, or as depraved as, Hamas, it’s absolutely true that the vast majority of Gazans overwhelmingly voted for Hamas in their 2007 elections, monitored by a handful of international observers. It’s also true that the majority of Gazans, as well as Arabs in the West Bank, supported Hamas leading up to the 2021 elections, which is why the Palestinian Authority suspended elections before blaming it on Israel to obscure the reality that Hamas was well on its way, per numerous polls showing landslide support, taking over the governing body of the two territories. There are also countless videos showing civilians — numbering in the hundreds if not thousands, spitting on hostages and cheering beside Hamas as they show off corpses. There are countless stories of freed living hostages detailing how they were kept in private homes of Gazans.

Elections have consequences. Supporting terrorism has consequences. Launching a genocidal terror attack against a sovereign entity has consequences. It’s a reality of the world in which we live. Some believe mitigating future losses by harsh action now — albeit two decades too late because Israel listened to the west — is the only response left as everything else has absolutely, unarguably, failed. It’s neither genocidal nor ungodly to acknowledge this development that has come by no one’s hand but Hamas and those who empowered, and continue to empower them. It seems like a sleight of hand to blame the victim for the transgressions of the repeat aggressor.

Fuentes tries to unsuccessfully package his worship of identity politics in the veneer of statecraft. He defends it by saying “it’s a reality.” Not for Christians. Christians aren’t to make idols of race or creed. He ironically betrays his own arguments by pushing against certain types of collectivism with his approved brand of collectivism. If he’s upset at being judged by the most simplified of arguments it’s only because he’s chosen to define himself that way.

Fuentes on Charlie Kirk (who called him “vermin”) days before Kirk’s murder: “I took your baby Turning Point USA, and I f**ked it ... I just get a sick sense of satisfaction out of it ... We [groypers] own you, we own TPUSA, and we own this movement ... Mr. ‘Family Man.”

There are two ways to go, western man: Charlie Kirk’s way, a successful man who was happily married at the time of his murder, who preached Gospel and reconciliation, but also penalty and grace. Or the way of Nick Fuentes, a single 20-something who was caught accidentally streaming gay porn during his own live stream. You decide.

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