In late October, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson posted a YouTube interview with Nick Fuentes, a popular white-nationalist and openly antisemitic pundit. At first, I didn’t want to watch it. I thought Fuentes didn’t deserve that big of a platform and that his views were abhorrent. But I began hearing friends talk about it on the campus of the conservative college that I attend, and many were praising the two, so I decided to watch. From Fuentes praising Stalin to calling for an exclusive, pro-white Christian movement, the podcast was the clown show I was expecting. But when I heard Fuentes decry that “organized Jewry” had too much influence, I couldn’t watch anymore. I had to turn it off.
Being a young Jew at a Baptist college, it worried me. Would this rhetoric spread and become mainstream among many of my peers? But the podcast also shocked me. Growing up, I never expected a major political pundit to get away with making openly anti-semitic remarks. But here he was and all it seemed to do was attract more young fans. Did they like him because they liked his edginess or did they actually agree with him?
I had known about Tucker Carlson for a long time, but Fuentes was different. For me, one of his clips came up in a group chat once sophomore year of high school and I, as well as many of my peers, saw him as an outcast. He was like the Tate Brothers: He definitely had fans, but for many he was too crazy, too extreme to be taken seriously. That’s no longer the case. In the past year, I’ve seen him gain fame among my peers. It started with him becoming a feature in many of our instagram feeds to him being all over our group chats and debates. Now, you can’t miss him. He’s gone from being a pariah to mainstream. For many kids my age, the party of Trump and Vance can now be looked at as the party of Trump, Vance, and Fuentes. He might not hold elected office, but his massive online following and interviews with podcasters Bradley Martyn and Patrick Bet-David, he has been given a sense of legitimacy that has pulled him into the mainstream.
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My peers love that Fuentes isn’t politically correct. He makes many points, like on Israel, they agree with. But even when he makes comments they see as fringe, it boosts his popularity because he’s edgy and willing to say whatever comes to his mind. Someone will say they like Fuentes because he “tells the truth about Israel,” referring to his statements that Israel holds too much influence over American foreign policy. When I or someone else mentions his praise for Hitler, they don’t get shocked. “Obviously he’s joking because he wants to get reactions from people,” one classmate told me. My peers aren’t Nazis, but they’re too easy to dismiss hurtful statements as just humor. They agree with him on many of his main points, but they also like him when he does say radical things. He’s edgy, willing to say anything, and not politically correct. That has become his perfect recipe to get young male fans.
I feel like more and more we are expected to take these comments in stride. Before, comments like these were crazy or crude jokes, but now it seems like it’s normal and appropriate. Before, a joke about Jews controlling the world would empty the room. Now it’s background noise. “It’s literally just jokes,” someone recently told me. “People get so dramatic and sensitive about some of this.” The bar for “edgy” keeps dropping, and the bar for outrage keeps rising. If you call it antisemitic, you’re the snowflake.
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Not every kid at my school is a white nationalist. Not even the ones who make some of the jokes. Most just want to fit in and to show they’ve rejected “woke” culture. But then there becomes a permission structure. If you laugh at the joke and share the clip, then it starts to become an actual belief and not a dumb joke.
In a campus culture that prides itself on being bold and contrarian, too many young men see cruelty as courage. But if nothing changes, the future of conservative politics will see much of the anti-semitic rhetoric as a badge of intellectual honesty. The adults in the room still have time to intervene. But every second they hesitate it will allow more students to think it’s okay. There is no “debate” about antisemitism and no casual way to flirt with hate and pretend it’s humor. My generation deserves better leaders than the ones teaching us that bigotry is bravery and hate is just a joke. My peers need to grow up, but a major elected leader like the President or Vice President could lead them in the right direction and to show that Fuentes isn’t mainstream.
