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Last week we had a conversation about Tucker Carlson’s interview of Nick Fuentes. This week we see two more salvo’s in the conversation:
New York Times: Nick Fuentes Was Charlie Kirk’s Bitter Enemy. Now He’s Becoming His Successor. [Archive]
Ben Shapiro on X [YouTube]:
I attribute some material amount of Trump’s political rise to the mainstream media covering him so much. One, because he drove engagement; two, because I think they thought he’d be easy to beat. Fuentes was catapulted into the mainstream when elements of the media and the left tried to pin the Kirk shooter as a far-right groyper. I didn’t believe Trump would succeed, so maybe I shouldn’t trust myself, but I struggle to believe that Fuentes will actually go mainstream. Shapiro plays many clips of Fuentes. To me, it sounds like Fuentes is joking in some, but I think they are extreme enough that at least most Republicans will be turned off. With Shapiro entering the ring and what my Twitter feed is feeding me, it seems like there are definite battle lines being drawn on the right.
Shapiro’s fellow Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh:
It’s hard for me to gauge “normie” right circles, as before Kirk’s assassination, I couldn’t have definitively differentiated between Kirk’s and Crowder’s campus antics. It seems like Kirk may have been the most influential -if not, very possibly ascendant to be - figure on the right. Not sure through Kirk's sheer influence, but also keeping the coalition together and keeping the more radical wing at bay. I wonder if Trump will weigh in.
It’s hard to do the, “we are principled civic nationalists who believe in the inherent dignity of every human being,” routine when your organization employs Matt Walsh. Walsh believes basically the same things as Fuentes does. The only difference is that Walsh believes that Jews are part of based White Western Civilization, and Fuentes doesn’t. It’s incredibly transparent why Ben Shapiro is taking such a firm stance on this issue in particular. This is why Fuentes is going mainstream.
I consistently see people talking about Matt Walsh like he's some turbo bigot who's openly making insinuations, but upon inspection of any of these claims they always seem to just...fall apart? Like today he kinda went viral with a list of things he thinks Republicans need to pass. And it was like all sorts of reasonable things like dismantling SNAP entirely, banning people from holding public office if they have a citizenship from another country that hasn't been renounced, requiring English literacy to run for office, banning immigrants from countries where >10% of immigrants from said country are receiving public benefits.
Other times he has done things like advocating expanding the use of the death penalty, he ran lead on the Tennessee anti-transing of kids legislation, etc. It all seems pretty in-bounds, just a bunch of stuff that can get the pearl clutchers to do said clutching.
You are correct that Matt Walsh’s positions are standard conservative ideals taken to their logical conclusion, my point is that Nick Fuentes’s positions are also conservative ideals taken to their logical conclusion. The only difference is that Fuentes would count Jewish identity as foreign citizenship, which it essentially is under Israeli law.
Lots of people in the US can apply for citizenship elsewhere and be let in. By a quirk of genetics, I could apply for Irish citizenship and be accepted. My mom did it, my blue tribe siblings are doing it. I refused, because I'm American, married to an American, with American kids.
But because the offer is open, should I be forbidden from ever holding office? I reject allowing another country's absurd citizenship policies to effect what Americans can do in America to that degree.
I’m not the one who wants to forbid dual citizens from holding office, Matt Walsh is (if @anti_dan is to be believed). My point is that in terms of the actual legal rights possessed by a person, being a Jewish American is functionally equivalent to being an Israeli-American dual citizen living in the USA.
But if a Jewish person (or a person of Irish or Italian descent) has made a choice in their life to refuse to apply for Israeli (or Irish or Italian) citizenship, then they do not have dual citizenship. They are American, full stop. It is consistent to believe that someone who has a foreign citizenship they have not renounced should not hold US office and still allow Americans with the mere ability to apply for citizenship in another country to hold office.
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Eh, no it isn't. In particular, if a Jewish non-Israeli visits Israel, they still have full US consular support.
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Sure, but why should I, as a native-born American who would qualify for Israeli citizenship, be bound by Israeli law? If Italy was willing to accept me as a citizen because of my ancestry, would that count as a citizenship from another country even if I never applied? Your "only difference" is in fact an enormous difference. Being Jewish does not make one Israeli. Even being Jewish and feeling favorable towards Israel does not make one Israeli.
I don’t think this the point. I highly doubt that Zohran Mamdani is bound by Ugandan law. Is Matt Walsh simply confused about the state capacity of Uganda and Somalia?
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So make the case. What part of expelling Somalis or killing SNAP means we should pogrom the Shapiros?
Applying the same logic Walsh and other MAGA voices apply to non-white, non-Christian minorities with left-skewed voting patterns and possible dual loyalties (and particularly to members of said minorities who hold positions of power and influence) to a particular white, non-Christian minority group whose members enjoy non-renouncable de facto foreign citizenship, are disproportionally involved in left-wing activism, and use their considerable access to positions of power and influence to cancel anyone who suggests that their commitment to lobbying on behalf of their foreign homeland might possibly constitute dual loyalties, even when individual members of said group (cough, Sheldon Adelson, cough) are entirely specific that their primary loyalty is to their foreign homeland, gets you to something like Nick Fuentes' views on Jews.
More locally, there are regular posts complaining about "rootless cosmopolitans" on the Motte by people who think they are talking about Blue tribe Yankee elites and don't know that the expression started out as an antisemitic slur. It is unsurprising that a political movement that sees "rootless cosmopolitans" as the enemy will come for the OG rootless cosmopolitans eventually.
If you hold the (entirely mainstream on the right) viewpoint that people who self-define as hyphenated-Americans should be excluded from positions of power and influence, deciding that this applies to people who act like Israeli-Americans is a matter of Noticing things. And frankly, things that are easier to Notice than the black-white achievement gap. "America is for everyone who plays by the rules and lets of fireworks on 4th July" is intellectually coherent. "America is for heritage-Americans" is intellectually coherent. "America is for heritage-Americans plus Jews" is not.
Judaeo-Christian is an obvious crock of shit to anyone who actually believes in either Judaism or Christianity. (Basically, letter vs spirit of the law). A substantial minority of American evangelicals believe that scripture requires Christians to be unrequitedly nice to Jews, but conservative Catholics (who have been the brains of the operation for decades now) don't read it that way.
You can do right-populism in way which is explicitly anti-Muslim and sees Hindus and Jews as part of a big-tent anti-Muslim coalition. In European countries where most of the unwanted immigrants are Muslim you see this happening - Hinjews were a big part of the British Conservative Party's right-populist turn under Johnson (which admittedly turned out to be fake) and are part of the coalition behind RN in France and PVV in the Netherlands. But in a country where the majority of unwanted immigrants are Hispanic, that isn't the way MAGA is doing right-populism. Given the natural alliance between Hindus and Jews as market-dominant minorities (in the West) whose principal enemies (in their home countries) are Muslims, I wouldn't be surprised if American Jews see MAGA anti-Indian racism as a warning sign.
Self-define is not act like. It's the difference between "they proudly call themselves a Nazi" and "they're on the right, so their policies are Nazi-like, so they're a Nazi".
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I mean, when Matt Walsh says 'dual citizens shouldn't be allowed to run for office' he's not talking about me- I could, in theory, claim Dutch citizenship through my grandfather. I've never bothered because I don't particularly want to live in the Netherlands, and in the US this is not an uncommon situation(although the most common country is likely Italy). This is a roughly analogous set of circumstances to Jews technically having access to Israeli citizenship.
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