Still catching up, I note that all of the remaining conservatives and a good many people who identify as being on the right have loudly condemned Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, which prior to 2021 was a think tank and is now basically a policy-and-propaganda quango, for his soft-soap treatment of Tucker Carlson and Carlson’s softer-soap interview of Jew-hater Nick Fuentes. (The linked story details the history of Heritage’s descent, in which Roberts’s hiring was, in substantial part, an effort to quell unhappiness over criticisms from Carlson, who was urging donors to send their lucre elsewhere.) This is necessary and commendable and, without abandoning larger concerns and criticisms, I see no reason to be churlish about saying so.
I might add that I have no problem with a journalist interviewing a loathsome figure. But what Carlson does is as much journalism as what Robin Leach used to do. I would also note this story from the New York Post detailing substantial anger at Roberts from within Heritage, and this striking passage: “’If we are labeled on the same side as Nick Fuentes, then we deserve to lose,’ chimed in a fourth Heritage colleague [in a group chat], who later added: ‘Talking with some of the interns I think that there are a growing number of them who actually agree’ with the views Fuentes espoused.” That problem is not generational alone. On the other hand, the generational problems are certainly there and are hardly confined to either the Heritage Foundation or the right. Human beings have short memories and ancient prejudices.
Commentary already having been thick on the ground, I will add only this useful contrast. Here is Mark Goldfeder, a lawyer, announcing his resignation from Heritage’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism: “When I agreed to join this effort, it was because I believed that combating antisemitism must remain a nonpartisan moral imperative–one that transcends politics, ideology, and institutional affiliation….Elevating [Carlson], and then attacking those who object as somehow un-American or disloyal, in a video replete with antisemitic tropes and dog-whistles no less, is…moral collapse disguised as courage.”
And here is a contrasting statement, which we might describe as moral degradation disguised (barely) as forceful hard-headedness. It comes from an academic whose writings have been influential for another person who is rightly described as being closer on this issue to Roberts and Carlson than to their critics, and who happens to be the vice president:
Perhaps my view on this is influenced by the fact that I am a political liberal with a conservative disposition, and thus, in our Bizarro universe, likely qualify in either case as an enemy at the gates. Maybe it’s that I’m a Jew, and thus entirely accustomed to being counted simultaneously as the enemy at the gates, the conspirator inside them, the monster under the bed, and anything else a poisoned, ruined mind can concoct. Maybe it’s that I’m sensitive to a metaphor in which Nazis and antisemites are described in milquetoast terms as “factions within the city” rather than as enemies. Or possibly it’s because I believe that treating principled morality, and an allegiance to the eternal over the blindingly transient, as “idiocy” is a path to sin and brutality–and, at that, it’s generally a path the traveler is eager to travel, and for which finding a rationale in which he gets to congratulate himself for his toughness is closer to bonus than impetus. Who knows. But I prefer the first statement.
I meant what I said about not being churlish. The fact that many conservatives and people on the right have condemned Roberts is good and praiseworthy, and I can take up larger arguments another time. Nor, despite everything else that’s going on and all the other issues with antisemitism, do I think the current controversy is a mere distraction. But I must note, given the subject matter, the recent news that the regime, or “factions” within it, is actively considering a revision to American refugee policy that would both decimate it in terms of numbers and, within that low number, prioritize not, say, victims of attempted genocide, but white South Africans and members of the German far right. Modern Jews may debate the degree to which their history counsels universalism on certain issues. As one of those Jews, however, may I say that I hope those who are angered by Roberts will next turn their attention to the possibility that there are “factions” within the government that seem to think “None is Too Many” is a how-to book.