Composite: The Guardian\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Five days a week, thousands of fans gather online to watch Nick Fuentes hold court about the dangers of non-white immigration, feminism and \u201corganized Jewry\u201d. Usually dressed in a dark suit and tie, he lectures to his far-right followers, known as \u201cGroypers\u201d, about what he argues is the insufficient radicalism of Donald Trump\u2019s Republican party and what he describes as the perfidies of the state of Israel<\/a> and its American supporters.<\/p>\n Fuentes\u2019s fixation with Israel is not rooted in concern about the war in Gaza but a belief, in his telling, that Jews are responsible for most of society\u2019s problems. Fuentes, who is 27 and lives in Illinois, has called Adolf Hitler \u201creally fucking cool\u201d and compared the Holocaust to the baking of cookies.<\/p>\n Despite that \u2013 and despite having said that Republican vice-president JD Vance is a \u201crace traitor\u201d for marrying an Indian American woman \u2013 Fuentes has ascended in recent weeks from the influential but unacknowledged outer dark of the American right to a position within striking distance of the mainstream Republican party. He has been interviewed on several major platforms in rapid succession, culminating in a friendly, two-hour chat last month on Tucker Carlson\u2019s popular online talkshow. He and Carlson discussed a variety of subjects, including their shared dislike of Christian Zionists. Fuentes also said, casually, that he is a fan of Joseph Stalin.<\/p>\n The result of that interview has been a bitter and widening civil war within the American right that has exposed longstanding fissures \u2013 between conservatives and populists, Zionists and Israel skeptics, mainstream Maga right and far right \u2013 as well as revealed the extent to which a Republican party that has been flooded in recent years by extremists now seems unable to contain them, or even agree if it should. A power struggle already under way inside many rightwing organizations, people familiar told me, has now spilled into the open.<\/p>\n After Carlson interviewed Fuentes, some Republican politicians, including the senators Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz, condemned his decision to do so. Pressure also built on the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank with personal and commercial ties to Carlson, to distance itself from him. Instead, the foundation\u2019s president, Kevin Roberts, issued a video statement which noted that while antisemitism \u201cshould be condemned\u201d, \u201cconservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class\u201d. A \u201cvenomous coalition\u201d, he said, was trying to \u201ccancel\u201d Carlson.<\/p>\n This delighted Fuentes. The Heritage Foundation is \u201cthe brain of the conservative movement\u201d, he correctly told his viewers on a recent evening, whose policy ideas and talking points are \u201csort of like gospel for [Republicans] in the US Congress. It\u2019s a big deal\u201d. Staff from the Heritage Foundation often go on to work for Republican legislators and draft federal law; Groyperism, he argued, was now \u201cinside the institutions\u201d.<\/p>\n An upside-down American flag, sometimes used as a pro-Trump symbol, flies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. Photograph: Jos\u00e9 Luis Maga\u00f1a\/AP<\/p>\n Roberts soon backtracked. He issued a second statement more explicitly condemning Fuentes. He has also apologized for using the terms \u201cvenomous coalition\u201d and \u201cglobalist class\u201d, saying he did not realize their antisemitic connotations.<\/p>\n But a civil war broke out at the organization, in the form of information leaks, anguished meetings, and fighting on social media. Many current or former employees expressed horror at Roberts\u2019 seeming initial reluctance to distance Heritage from the far right. \u201cI gave my soul to that place \u2026\u201d someone told me, choking up. (Like some others I spoke to, this person asked for anonymity to speak freely and to avoid drawing online harassment.)<\/p>\n Not everyone sees it that way, however. Under the slogan \u201cNo enemies to the right\u201d, some populists have fiercely defended Carlson, or argued that the controversy is being exploited by \u201cBoomerCons\u201d, \u201cReagan zombies\u201d and \u201cright liberals\u201d trying to protect a dying conservative establishment from a new right<\/a> populist tide.<\/p>\n The turmoil has engulfed more and more of the right. Earlier this month, two board members of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), another influential conservative group, resigned; in a public letter, they alleged<\/a> that a \u201ccadre\u201d hostile to liberal democracy \u2013 with an agenda different from, and more radical than, Trump\u2019s \u2013 have \u201cworked together, behind the scenes, to wrest control of conservative institutions from actual conservatives\u201d, in the process infiltrating \u201cwhite supremacy, antisemitism, eugenics, and bigotry\u201d.<\/p>\n Conservative institutions […] are now squeezed between a strident Maga mainstream and a naked far right<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They noted that ISI recently unveiled a new podcast whose first guest, Curtis Yarvin, has defended slavery, said that white people have inherently higher IQs than black people and called<\/a> for the American republic to be replaced with a dictatorship. Conservatism, they argued, is in an \u201cexistential\u201d crisis.<\/p>\n Coming shortly after Politico revealed<\/a> that a number of prominent young Maga activists had a racist and antisemitic group chat, and in the aftermath of a poor Republican election showing and rising Maga disappointment in Trump\u2019s second term, this internecine battle has become a referendum on the future of the right \u2013 as well as a vivid illustration of how conservative institutions anxious to prove themselves radical enough for the age of Trump are now squeezed between a strident Maga mainstream and a naked far right.<\/p>\n No one wants responsibility for creating the monster. Yet everyone I spoke to, when pressed, agreed on at least one thing: that the Fuentes-Carlson-Heritage scandal has exposed a deep schism in the right that will explode open when Trump departs the White House. So far, the person most pleased about that is Fuentes.<\/p>\n If you are young, male and spend a lot of time online, you have probably encountered clips of Fuentes \u2013 somehow square-jawed and baby-faced simultaneously, and usually either grinning wolfishly or leaning at the viewer with a news anchor\u2019s seriousness.<\/p>\n Although Fuentes is banned from YouTube and other platforms for violating hate-speech policies, Elon Musk allowed him back on X last year on freedom-of-expression grounds. Since then, Fuentes\u2019s posts and video clips seem to have become algorithmically turbocharged; on election night, 2024, he took to social media to deride pro-choice women: \u201cYour body, my choice. Forever.\u201d His post was viewed<\/a> more than 90m times; some schools reported<\/a> boys taunting female classmates with the phrase. (Fuentes could not be reached for comment.)<\/p>\n In October, before it was removed, his podcast briefly<\/a> became the highest-trending on Spotify, ahead of the podcasts of Joe Rogan, Amy Poehler and Carlson himself. In recent months, Fuentes has appeared on popular shows including Red Scare, the PBD Podcast and System Update with Glenn Greenwald.<\/p>\n Fuentes grew up in a middle-class, mostly white, suburb of Chicago, in a Catholic family. Neither of his parents attended college. (His father is of Mexican American descent, hence his Hispanic surname.) He was a debating star in high school and the student body president. His parents \u2013 though not his twin sister \u2013 may partly share his racist views, according to Patch<\/a> and Mother Jones<\/a>.<\/p>\n As a teenager, Fuentes adored talk radio, particularly Mark Levin, a rightwing and staunchly Zionist commentator known for his outraged tone and for arguing with callers. Fuentes listened to him \u201cevery day\u201d in high school, he told Carlson: \u201cI actually liked how he was kind of obnoxious and mean to his callers, vicious \u2026 I thought that was funny. But I\u2019ll never forget one show \u2026 he says: \u2018America is becoming a majority non-white country. Does anybody think that\u2019s a good idea?\u2019 And I was thinking to myself, yeah, that actually doesn\u2019t sound so good.\u201d<\/p>\n When he arrived at Boston University, in 2016, he shocked liberal classmates by wearing a Maga hat and telling a video interviewer that he was voting for Trump. \u201cPeople were threatening to find him and beat him up,\u201d a student who led a libertarian group at BU at the time told me.<\/p>\n The libertarian group decided to hold a public debate between Fuentes and a leftwing student, two days before the presidential election; 400 students turned up. Fuentes attacked multiculturalism, according<\/a> to a campus newspaper, but denied he was racist. \u201cIt has nothing to do with race, everything to do with culture,\u201d he said. \u201cAsia has taken our culture and done well for themselves. The Middle East? Not so much.\u201d<\/p>\n Nick Fuentes holds a rally in Michigan, 11 November 2020. Photograph: Nicole Hester\/AP<\/p>\n Despite a hostile crowd, Fuentes was \u201carticulate and confident, and had that air of somebody good at public speaking\u201d, the libertarian-group leader recalled. Fuentes\u2019s politics at that time seemed to be \u201cstandard Maga. I mean, there was nothing that Trump himself hadn\u2019t said.\u201d<\/p>\n Impressed by his debate performance, some fellow young conservatives got Fuentes a slot on Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), a startup that aspired to be unapologetically Maga at a time when Trump was still polarizing within the right. This would be a pattern: seeing Fuentes\u2019s oratorical gifts, conservatives would elevate him, then regret it.<\/p>\n Fuentes soon alienated his new friends by bucking the pro-Israel line standard at many conservative publications. He also exhibited more unsettling behavior. RSBN was forced to apologize when Fuentes, during an anti-Islam rant, called<\/a> for the \u201cglobalists \u2026 that run CNN\u201d to be \u201cdeported or hanged\u201d. Soon after, a conservative social media account leaked a candid video in which Fuentes described interracial sex as \u201cdegenerate\u201d and said that he was harmed in daily life by Jews.<\/p>\n The leaker hoped to discredit Fuentes, but only half succeeded. Drummed out of the Maga mainstream, he embraced a new and potent audience. After he was seen in 2017 at the notorious Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, he dropped out of college and became a full-time white nationalist.<\/p>\n Fuentes cultivated himself as a suited-and-tied pundit dedicated to the Maga-adjacent slogan \u201cAmerica first\u201d. In 2021, he held the inaugural America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) as a far-right response to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which he is barred from attending. He was also present at the 2021 riot at the US Capitol, though he did not enter the building.<\/p>\n This anger is a preview of the fractiousness we\u2019re going to see when Trump is no longer the superhero of the new right<\/p><\/blockquote>\n David French<\/p>\n Fuentes also began embracing the rhetoric of Christian nationalism, casting himself as a traditionalist Catholic, decrying feminism, and using crucifixes as props \u2013 although a rival white nationalist who lived with Fuentes for a time has said<\/a> that he rarely attended mass and loved HBO shows such as Euphoria and The Sex Lives of College Girls. Fuentes has also argued that many women \u201cwant to be raped\u201d and has claimed, perhaps facetiously, that \u201cthe only really straight heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel\u201d.<\/p>\n Around 2022, Fuentes became friendly with the rapper Kanye West, whose own views had grown antisemitic and conspiratorial. That relationship climaxed, that year, with Fuentes and West dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. (Trump later said he did not know who Fuentes was.) Trump\u2019s agreement to meet them was widely criticized, but did not incite nearly the outrage on the right that Carlson\u2019s interview has now.<\/p>\n That is because Trump is \u201che-who-must-not-be-critiqued\u201d, David French, the conservative New York Times columnist, told me. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen this a lot in the second Trump term. People feel free to get angry at Pam Bondi over the Epstein files, or at Pete Hegseth, or at Robert F Kennedy Jr, but Trump is always left out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet Fuentes\u2019s mainstreaming is forcing open a bloody ideological divide that only Trump\u2019s cult of personality has so far kept scabbed over. \u201cThis anger,\u201d French said, \u201cis a preview of the fractiousness we\u2019re going to see when Trump is no longer the superhero of the new right.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, Fuentes\u2019s main media outlet is his nightly livestream on Rumble, an online broadcasting platform. He is often hours late to his own show. While they wait for \u201cNicker\u201d, fans with usernames such as \u201cCruiseBasher\u201d, \u201cShekelSnatcher\u201d and \u201cBadGoy74\u201d argue with each other and trade racist jokes. Sometimes users spam the chat with false information that the evening\u2019s program has been cancelled, leading others to wonder if they are spies of the Mossad.<\/p>\n Once he\u2019s on air, Fuentes\u2019s show is much the same each night. He attacks the Maga right from the further right \u2013 forcing mainstream populists to either engage with him, thereby letting Groyperism into the tent, or refuse and be painted as centrist sellouts. The late Maga activist Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was one of his biggest quarries; in 2019 Groypers began harassing Turning Point events and heckling Kirk for supporting Israel.<\/p>\n \u201cMy job,\u201d Fuentes said<\/a> in 2021, \u201cis to keep pushing things further \u2026 We\u2019re going to get called racist, sexist, antisemitic, bigoted, whatever. When the party is where we are, two years later, we\u2019re not going to get the credit.\u201d But \u201cthat\u2019s OK \u2026 We are the rightwing flank of the Republican party.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of Fuentes\u2019s power is that he is also a free agent \u2013 an enfant terrible who can react to events in a way that others on the right cannot. He can criticize Trump (\u201ctired\u201d, with an administration that \u201cis cooked\u201d), or Vance (\u201ca dork\u201d), or mock Maga conspiracy theories that others are reluctant to acknowledge are silly. And he can attack what was until recently one of the right\u2019s last true sacred cows: Israel.<\/p>\n For years modern conservatism was defined by rules set down by its intellectual architect, William F Buckley<\/a>. Starting in the second half of the 20th century, the right \u201cfused\u201d three seemingly unrelated tenets \u2013 social conservatism, foreign policy hawkishness and free-market libertarianism \u2013 into the united front of the Reagan revolution.<\/p>\n That coalition endured for decades. It also came to adopt a reflexively pro-Israel stance, particularly as evangelical Protestants, some of whom believe that Christians are biblically required<\/a> to support modern Israel, became a key Republican voting bloc. Rightwing Israelis also cultivated a close relationship with the American right because they believed<\/a> that conservative evangelicals would prove more reliable Zionists than liberal Jewish Americans.<\/p>\n In the eyes of many conservatives, Buckley\u2019s equally important legacy was practicing \u201chygiene\u201d by ejecting cranks and bigots from the movement. He exiled a number of writers \u2013 such as Peter Brimelow, Sam Francis, John Derbyshire and Joseph Sobran \u2013 for racist or fringe thinking, and in 1991, he accused<\/a> the conservative writer and politician Pat Buchanan, who was known for fulminating against Israel and its US supporters in terms that seemed to single out Jews, of rhetoric \u201camount[ing] to antisemitism\u201d.<\/p>\n Buchanan was also a hardline immigration restrictionist, isolationist and advocate for tariffs to protect American workers \u2013 views that were out of step with the right of the 1990s, but which now look like an uncanny prediction of Maga populism.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a constant yearning for something more and more radical … Rightwing support for Israel is almost like the last thing standing<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Laura K Field<\/p>\n Today a critical mass of people at conservative organizations, including many younger staff, are more sympathetic to Buchanan\u2019s vision than to Buckley\u2019s or Reagan\u2019s. Many view US institutions as irredeemably decadent and corrupt, and are less interested in \u201cconserving\u201d them than burning them to the ground. In some cases they are hostile not just to progressivism, but to liberal democracy itself.<\/p>\n This turn has been more radical than many older conservatives \u201chave been willing to admit to themselves, and a lot more radical than I think the American electorate really understands\u201d, Laura K Field, a political theorist and the author<\/a> of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, told me. Her book charts how the ideas of a small group of reactionary intellectuals influenced the Trumpian right.<\/p>\n In the process of this turn, she said, Buckley\u2019s cordon sanitaire against the far right \u2013 which some skeptics say was overstated to begin with \u2013 has \u201ccompletely broken down\u201d. Parts of the new right are eager to rehabilitate Buchanan and others expelled from conservatism decades ago, as well as mainstream newer figures such as Fuentes and Yarvin.<\/p>\n At the same time, populist Maga views that were once controversial in the Republican party \u2013 on tariffs or immigration, for example \u2013 have become standard positions, meaning that firebrand pundits who like to frame themselves as radical outsiders (Carlson, Steve Bannon) are keen for new ways to differentiate themselves from the establishment.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a constant yearning for something more and more radical,\u201d Field said. \u201cRightwing support for Israel is almost like the last thing standing.\u201d<\/p>\n And cracks are showing in that support. The most radical and influential rightwing intellectuals today tend to be Catholic, not Protestant, without older evangelical Protestants\u2019 historical investment in Israel. At the same time, younger evangelical Protestants increasingly regard Christian Zionism as a bizarre and embarrassingly dated tic of their boomer parents.<\/p>\n Those demographic changes coincide with rising public anger, across<\/a> the political spectrum, at the US\u2019s role in a grinding foreign war that has killed thousands of civilians to no apparent end, and with the rise of a Christian nationalism that has replaced the earnest philosemitism of older Christian conservatives with a religious fervor that views Jews with polite distance or even suspicion.<\/p>\n All of which contributed to the Heritage Foundation \u2013 caught between a historically pro-Israel, hawkish older right and a radical new one \u2013 walking right into disaster. Founded in 1973, the thinktank is a fundraising powerhouse with a staff of 400 and a budget of $100m. Among the major right-of-center thinktanks, it is known as the most political and perhaps least intellectual, and as a wobbly weather vane that has often, in recent years, seemed to be trying to \u201ccatch up\u201d to Maga populism and prove a slavish loyalty to Trump.<\/p>\n In 2023, the Heritage Foundation released Project 2025, a 900-page manifesto<\/a> for the incoming second Trump administration that proposed, among other things, criminalizing pornography and loyalty-testing civil servants. Democrats successfully seized on the document as a talking point. Angry at the fallout, and at Heritage\u2019s presumptuousness, Trump temporarily distanced himself from the organization.<\/p>\n In 2021, Kevin Roberts became the new president of the Heritage Foundation \u2013 taking over from Kay Cole James, a black woman and former George W Bush official whom Carlson had attacked<\/a> on Fox for being too sympathetic to the George Floyd protests.<\/p>\n In contrast, Roberts is an ardent culture warrior<\/a> who wears cowboy boots, drives a diesel Ford F-150 with a \u201cDon\u2019t Tread on Me\u201d license plate, and idolizes Buchanan. He was previously the president of a tiny conservative Catholic college in Wyoming whose students learn Latin and horseback riding and can attend Byzantine mass. The stageplay Heroes of the Fourth Turning, shortlisted for a 2020 Pulitzer, is set at a thinly fictionalized<\/a> version of the college. (Roberts and Heritage did not respond to requests for comment.)<\/p>\n Roberts is part of a circle of radical new right intellectuals who call themselves \u201cpost-liberals\u201d, Catholic integralists or \u201cnational conservatives\u201d. Many are traditionalist Catholics (or Eastern Orthodox), often converts, and, like Roberts, have ties<\/a> to Opus Dei, the ultraconservative Catholic order. They believe that the consensus that Buckley upheld was not true conservatism, but merely a right-leaning liberal capitalism that sacrificed America to globalization, mass immigration, consumerism, foreign misadventure and secular decadence. The group are close to Vance, who has described<\/a> himself as post-liberal. (Vance did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n \u201cI think you\u2019ll never get on the board of Heritage, ISI, or whatever unless you\u2019re part of this true believer circle \u2013 a real post-liberal, and a hardcore traditionalist Catholic or Orthodox,\u201d someone close to those organizations told me.<\/p>\n Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, in Washington DC in October 2022. Photograph: Tom Williams\/CQ-Roll Call, Inc\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Roberts is indulgent of friends and allies. In 2022, the Dispatch exposed<\/a> a young conservative writer who had previously criticized Groyperism, Nate Hochman, for participating in a private online debate with Fuentes in which he had criticized Fuentes\u2019s tactics but told him: \u201cI respect some of what you\u2019re doing.\u201d (\u201cIn an attempt to get him to engage,\u201d Hochman said at the time, \u201cI said some really stupid things, which I don\u2019t actually believe.\u201d) Roberts later had Hochman on his podcast, in what seemed like an effort to rehabilitate someone he considered unfairly treated. Hochman then got a job with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, before being fired<\/a> in 2023 after creating an unauthorized campaign video<\/a> containing Nazi symbolism. (Hochman, who now works for Senator Eric Schmitt, could not be reached for comment.)<\/p>\n Despite Roberts\u2019s bona fides, some observers told me, he has a fatal flaw common to leaders on the new right: he is ideologically insecure, and anxious to be perceived as sufficiently hardcore in a movement where moderation is viewed as cowardice and transgression signals that one is strong enough to battle for civilization.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,\u201d Roberts said<\/a> last year. On another occasion, he said: \u201cThe future won\u2019t belong to soft men chasing comfort. It will belong to those who risk safety to defend their homeland, their families, and their faith.\u201d (Roberts has denied that his views are extreme, suggesting<\/a> elsewhere that international elites who \u201cerase borders, criminalize faith, and preach globalism\u201d are the extremists.)<\/p>\n In a scathing essay, Oren Cass, a policy commentator whose economic ideas have been popular in some Maga circles, recently described<\/a> Roberts as someone who has tried to hold a day job as a \u201ccredible conservative leader\u201d while moonlighting as a \u201ccheerleader for fever-swamp extremism\u201d.<\/p>\n Roberts plays with \u201cdivisive, nonsensical gasoline, aimed at impressing a narrow constituency\u201d, Cass argued \u2013 and last month that gasoline finally met \u201ca sufficiently hot and prominent surface that it blew up in his face\u201d.<\/p>\n Since being fired from Fox News in 2023, Carlson has started an independent online talkshow that has quickly become one of the most popular in America. Embracing a longform conversational format similar to Joe Rogan\u2019s, he has interviewed a variety of guests that would have been outre at Fox, including the podcaster Darryl Cooper, who argued that Winston Churchill, not Hitler, was the \u201cchief villain\u201d of the second world war. As a source for his claims, Cooper later cited<\/a> the work of the Holocaust denier David Irving.<\/p>\n Carlson\u2019s show has also devoted an extraordinary amount of coverage to the US\u2019s relationship with Israel \u2013 raising legitimate concerns about US foreign policy and the war in Gaza, but with a fervor and unevenhandedness that made some conservatives uneasy.<\/p>\n When Carlson\u2019s Fuentes interview debuted, on 27 October, it hit the conservative world like a meteor. Speaking on Megyn Kelly\u2019s show, Carlson said<\/a> that he was trying to gently moderate Fuentes\u2019s views. A piece in the Federalist argued<\/a>, similarly, that Carlson was trying to \u201coffer Fuentes some fatherly correction and redirection\u201d. (Carlson declined to comment for this article, saying in a text message that he gave his \u201cfull views\u201d to Kelly.)<\/p>\n Any tent that\u2019s big enough to include Groypers and neo-Nazis shouldn\u2019t be called conservative … It\u2019s something else entirely<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Mark Goldfeder<\/p>\n Many conservatives were less persuaded \u2013 and the Heritage Foundation was in the meteor\u2019s blast radius. Roberts was well-known friends with Carlson, and until earlier this year Heritage sponsored episodes of Carlson\u2019s show. Soon after the Fuentes interview, a blurb from Carlson disappeared<\/a> from the Heritage website. Staff wondered if Roberts would do anything to draw further distance, or simply take the prudent course of saying nothing. Instead, he issued the video defending Carlson.<\/p>\n The situation exploded. Angry staffers began posting the phrase \u201cNAZIS ARE BAD\u201d on social media. Robert George, a Princeton legal scholar on Heritage\u2019s board of trustees, tried to build a board majority to oust Roberts, according<\/a> to the New York Post, and has since resigned. A number of conservatives on a Heritage antisemitism taskforce also quit in protest.<\/p>\n \u201cAny tent that\u2019s big enough to include Groypers and neo-Nazis shouldn\u2019t be called conservative,\u201d Mark Goldfeder, who resigned, told me. \u201cIt\u2019s something else entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n On 5 November, Heritage had a long, emotional, all-hands meeting<\/a>, footage of which leaked online. Roberts apologized for his handling of the controversy. \u201cI made a mistake,\u201d he told staff, adding: \u201cYou can say you\u2019re not going to participate in canceling someone \u2026 while also being clear you\u2019re not endorsing everything they\u2019ve said, you\u2019re not endorsing softball interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n Roberts also said that he had not understood who Fuentes was. Although he is the leader of one of the most important political thinktanks in the US, and paid<\/a> more than $800,000 a year, he said that he mainly watches \u201csports\u201d, and does not \u201cconsume a lot of news\u201d.<\/p>\n After he spoke, staff gave questions and remarks. These exchanges illuminate a fascinating generational divide at the organization; at times the meeting seemed like a rightwing answer to the kinds of confrontations that swept left-leaning institutions around five years ago, when older liberals at newsrooms, nonprofits and educational organizations seemed to speak a different language from their more radical younger colleagues.<\/p>\n Many of the most veteran employees spoke first, some with voices trembling with emotion, to decry antisemitism and white nationalism. Asking why now would be any different, a staffer who had worked at Heritage for 47 years invoked Buckley\u2019s purging of the far right: \u201cDid we \u2018cancel\u2019 David Duke? Yes. Did we \u2018cancel\u2019 the John Birch Society? Yes \u2026 Because they were harmful. Because if they\u2019re in your movement, you look like clowns.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, \u201ca handful of young colleagues and I had no issue with the points you made in the original video,\u201d a young female staffer said. \u201cGen Z has an [increasingly] unfavorable view of Israel, and it\u2019s not because millions of Americans are antisemitic. It\u2019s because we are Catholic and Orthodox and believe that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy.\u201d<\/p>\n Referring to a proposal by some Jewish conservatives to host Shabbat dinners for Heritage staff as an intercultural exercise, Evan Myers, an adviser to Roberts, said: \u201cFor many Christians, Friday is a special day of prayer and abstinence to commemorate the death of Christ \u2026 I assume that no staff will be required to attend the Shabbat dinners.\u201d He was concerned, he said, that the dinners might be a \u201clitmus test\u201d.<\/p>\n During the meeting, Roberts said that his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, had ghostwritten the video defending Carlson, and implied that Neuhaus had misled him into thinking that other staff had approved it. (Neuhaus, who has since resigned, could not be reached for comment.)<\/p>\n Around the time of the video, Neuhaus also began retweeting posts on X defending Carlson and arguing that the right would be better off today if conservatives had never \u201ccancelled\u201d Pat Buchanan, John Derbyshire and Sam Francis. One was a photo of Buchanan holding an antique revolver, captioned: \u201cSlowly but surely he will be vindicated.\u201d<\/p>\n On 7 November, two days after the Heritage Foundation meeting, the board of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) convened for its own tense meeting.<\/p>\n In August, ISI unveiled a new podcast, Project Cosmos, whose first guests were Patrick Deneen, a post-liberal political theorist, and Yarvin, the neo-monarchist. Although there had been two ISI board meetings since Project Cosmos entered production, two members of the board, Christopher Long and Thomas Lynch, have alleged<\/a> that they were never told the podcast existed.<\/p>\n At the meeting, they confronted the other members with things Yarvin has said \u2013 such as, \u201cIf Americans want to change their government, they\u2019re going to have to get over their dictator-phobia\u201d and \u201cAlthough I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff\u201d \u2013 and argued against platforming him.<\/p>\n They were overruled. When they called a vote of no confidence in John Burtka, ISI\u2019s president, they lost 13-2. Lynch and Long then resigned. They were replaced on the spot by Jordan Teti, a Los Angeles attorney, and Susan Hanssen, a professor of history at the University of Dallas. (Hanssen\u2019s father appears to be the FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who pleaded guilty<\/a> in 2001 to spying for the USSR and Russia.)<\/p>\n \u201cThis group \u2026 don\u2019t care about the law, and don\u2019t believe in restraints on power,\u201d a person familiar with ISI said. Some \u201care self-proclaimed \u2018neo-monarchists\u2019. It\u2019s hard to believe, right? But that\u2019s what they say they are.\u201d<\/p>\n If we look at the root, underlying thing, is it really about Tucker? About Fuentes? About the video?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anonymous source<\/p>\n ISI and Burtka did not respond to interview requests, though some activists and intellectuals on the new right have disputed the characterization of recent events. They argue that Reaganite conservatives unhappy at the direction of the right are trying to use the Carlson controversy to smear isolationism and Israel skepticism by associating them with Fuentes\u2019s antisemitism \u2013 thereby hindering Vance, who is considered sympathetic to the new right, from succeeding Trump as the leader of the Republican party.<\/p>\n The old right are \u201cpanicking [about] losing their once total monopoly on conservative institutions\u201d, Chad \u201cCC\u201d Pecknold, a professor of theology at the Catholic University of America, said in an email. They \u201cwant to demonstrate that they still have power, and have chosen the run-up to the midterms as the time to do maximum damage on new right opponents. They are looking for scalps, and will take any opportunity to smear leaders who have usurped what they regard as their rightful place.\u201d<\/p>\n Even conservatives on the other side acknowledge that they do not represent the zeitgeist. People like Fuentes and Yarvin, French said, \u201care extraordinarily popular \u2013 far more popular, in many ways, than the people critiquing them\u201d.<\/p>\n JD Vance boards Air Force Two to travel to a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi, on 29 October 2025. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst\/Reuters<\/p>\n Trump and Vance have mostly remained out of the fray so far, though Trump told a reporter on Sunday that \u201cyou can\u2019t tell [Carlson] who to interview\u201d and on 5 November Vance wrote on X that \u201cinfighting is stupid.\u201d Vance is in a difficult spot: Carlson helped get him selected as Trump\u2019s running mate, and Carlson\u2019s son, Buckley Carlson, works for Vance.<\/p>\n Vance spoke at a Turning Point event in Mississippi, two weeks ago, where a man in the audience had a question<\/a> for him: \u201cI\u2019m a Christian man, and I\u2019m just confused,\u201d the man said. \u201cThere\u2019s this notion that we \u2026 owe Israel something, or that they\u2019re our greatest ally, or that we have to support this [foreign aid package] to Israel to cover \u2026 ethnic cleansing in Gaza. I\u2019m just confused why this idea has come around, considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours, but also openly supports the prosecution of ours.\u201d<\/p>\n