Enough. Absolutely Enough.
Platforming antisemites is fine—if they flatter convicted felon Trump. Everything else? Dangerous.
Let me be as clear as humanly possible: there is no version of a healthy democracy—or a healthy political party, or a healthy media environment, or a healthy moral compass—where defending, excusing, or platforming Nick Fuentes is acceptable. None. Zero. This isn’t a “controversial figure.” This isn’t a “he pushes buttons.” This isn’t “just talking to people,” unless the conversation topic is How Do We Mainstream Fascism in Three Easy Steps? This is a man who denies the Holocaust, idolizes white supremacy, and openly celebrates the idea of eliminating Jews from public life.
And convicted felon Donald Trump—the sitting President of the United States—looked at all of that and shrugged.
Actually, he did worse than shrug. He praised Tucker Carlson for doing it. Because Tucker “said good things about me.” Because, apparently, the bar for acceptable company in Trumpworld begins and ends with complimenting Donald Trump, not “does this person deny genocide?” Because the moral weight of genocide denial means nothing compared to the dopamine hit of a loyal media sphere.
This is a man who spends his days scolding college campuses for not cracking down hard enough on antisemitism—provided, of course, the antisemitism comes from students he already dislikes. But when it comes from his own side, from white nationalists and Holocaust deniers, suddenly he turns into a philosopher of free expression. Everyone else is a threat to Jewish safety; his allies are merely “controversial,” the political equivalent of a slightly ugly holiday sweater. He wants to police eighteen-year-olds with bullhorns, but he’ll happily excuse a man whose fanbase literally chants about a “white Christian America.”
Let me repeat this: if you are defending Nick Fuentes, you are defending antisemitism. There is no clever rhetorical escape hatch. There is no “well, I didn’t know.” There is no “people have to decide.” When Trump says, “You can’t tell Tucker who to interview,” he is not making a procedural point about press freedom. He is normalizing the presence of a Holocaust denier in mainstream conservative discourse.
This is the same Nick Fuentes who dined at Mar-a-Lago. The same Nick Fuentes that Trump pretended not to know—as though showing up to dinner with Kanye and a notorious antisemite could somehow be an innocent mix-up, like forgetting your cousin’s birthday—except most birthday mix-ups don’t end with Holocaust deniers on the guest list. Three years later, he still plays the same game: I don’t know him, but thank you for the shout-out. And Fuentes—predictably—thanks him again.
This isn’t accidental. This isn’t a slip. This is the shape of the modern right—a Rorschach test where everyone keeps seeing swastikas and somehow it’s our fault for noticing.
And I’m done pretending otherwise.
Because the silence that follows this? The hedging? The “well, he’s just meeting people”? The commentary class that bends itself into pretzels—artisan, hand-twisted, small-batch pretzels—to defend Tucker Carlson as merely “raising questions,” even as he invites Holocaust revisionists onto his show like it’s Sunday brunch? The think tank presidents who panicked only after their own staff revolted?
It all adds up.
It adds up to a political movement that has decided that antisemitism is tolerable—maybe even useful—if it comes wrapped in white-Christian identity politics and delivered by a pundit who once boosted their ratings.
And guess what? Jews notice. We see it. We hear it. And we’re not stupid—despite the growing number of pundits who seem shocked every time we point out the obvious.
If this had come from a left-wing podcaster interviewing a left-wing antisemite, the right would be calling for congressional hearings. If a Democratic president defended someone with Fuentes’ views because he’d “said good things about me,” Fox News would have a countdown clock labeled DAYS SINCE THE PRESIDENT EMBRACED A NAZI—updated hourly, with theme music.
But now? Now we get mealy-mouthed excuses from elected Republicans who have convinced themselves that condemning antisemites is optional if it risks angering the Dear Leader.
And if you’re a Jewish conservative still making excuses—still insisting that Trump is the “best friend Israel ever had,” still pretending you don’t see the pattern—then let me say this with all the love and exasperation of someone who has run out of patience: you deserve better than this gaslighting, which at this point could power a mid-sized city.
We all do.
At some point, we either draw a line or we admit we don’t have one. And Donald Trump has made it abundantly, humiliatingly clear: he does not have one. Tucker Carlson does not have one. Kevin Roberts certainly didn’t have one until it threatened his HR department—the one constituency conservatives always discover at the most convenient possible moment—and even then, he still has not retracted his previously uploaded video.
And telling the country that Holocaust denial is just another “controversial opinion” is not neutrality.
It’s complicity.
I’m tired. I’m furious. But I’m not confused.
There is no excuse. There is no defense. And there is no future for a political movement that can’t distinguish between free speech and platforming fascists.
Enough.
America has been warned.