The Last Straw

The Heritage Foundation is a high-stakes stage for the present battle.

Since the 1980s, the think tank, based in Washington, D.C., has been a go-to oracle for analysts and journalists on a broad range of foreign and domestic policy issues. Its staff is filled with veterans of previous Republican administrations and is reliably called upon to supply new ones. Heritage’s Project 2025 position paper emerged as a telling guide for much of the Trump White House’s policy positions. Typically, where Heritage goes, so goes the right; it is seen as a bellwether for the conservative movement as a whole.

But about a decade ago, the think tank was in a slump, perceived as stuck in bygone eras of conservative thinking, lacking relevance in the movement that would be taken over by Donald Trump.

Kevin Roberts was brought in as president to align Heritage with MAGA thinking. Shifts away from the free-market orthodoxy embraced by the mainstream right since the 1990s and a more jaundiced eye toward foreign intervention opened some fissures among many Heritage staffers and the new faces Roberts brought in.

Heritage has long been known for relatively uniform support for Republican elected officials. Still, especially for its now departed legal experts, what they saw as uncritical defense of the Trump administration crossed too many lines.

“I’d say the Tucker Carlson video was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Josh Blackman, professor at the South Texas College of Law and co-editor of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution.

Professor Blackman was among those who parted ways with Heritage in a resignation letter that accused Dr. Roberts of aligning “the Heritage Foundation with the rising tide of anti-Semitism on the right.” Professor Blackman and his colleagues at Heritage’s legal center were highly dismayed over the Carlson video. But well before that, they felt the organization was becoming an awkward fit for this group of lawyers dedicated to the constitutionalism and originalism.

“They were much more focused on family and nationalism — rule of law didn’t really fit into the dynamic,” says Professor Blackman. “Heritage wasn’t ready to challenge him when Trump crosses a line legally. I think originalism was taking a backseat to politics.”

“Real” MAGA

Many of those departing Heritage harbor discomfort with the populist turn the MAGA movement has taken. Tellingly, the Heritage legal center’s former head, John Malcolm, along with much of his senior staff, migrated to Advancing American Freedom (AAF), a think tank founded by former vice president Mike Pence.

Their move gave the AAF far more gravitas — and their foes a great deal of fodder.

“I think it’s great news for Heritage that a bunch of Trump-hating RINOs are leaving!” wrote presidential son Donald Trump Jr. in a social media post. “Anyone who would want to go work for Mike Pence’s globalist never-Trump organization isn’t MAGA and definitely doesn’t put America First.”

His statement echoed accusations by Steve Bannon and others that this fight is really about defining MAGA’s adherents verses its enemies.

Josh Hammer, a syndicated columnist and research fellow for the Edmund Burke Foundation, which hosts the annual National Conservatism conference, says he “rejects that framing categorically.”

Mr. Hammer acknowledges that there are those among his “fellow travelers” who have fundamental differences with the nationalist camp, while he and many others opposing Team Carlson remain very much in line with the MAGA agenda.

Quoting his late friend Charlie Kirk, Mr. Hammer says he frames the issue as “Are you on team Western civilization or are you not?”

Mr. Hammer also pointed to Carlson and media personality Megyn Kelly’s repeated attacks on the Hebrew Bible and recent defenses of Islamic sharia law as evidence that they are the ones betraying nationalist ideals.

“When you scratch just below the surface with a lot of the folks on the other side of this divide,” he says, “I think it’s pretty easy to see they are not really on Team Western Civilization. Like when Tucker is flying to Moscow to give puffball interviews to Putin or the president of Iran. Now he’s condemning Republicans for being Islamophobic.”

Blurring the Lines

The argument for setting acceptable lines of debate in the conservative moment, however, runs up against a general revulsion on the right for “canceling” people who hold unconventional views.

This revulsion formed in the leadup to the 2020 election, when social media platforms, perceived to be run by progressive-minded tech executives, shut down respectable discussion over a range of topics like the Covid lab leak theory and the Hunter Biden laptop. That pushed many on the right to adopt absolutist free speech positions.

But there is a strong historical precedent in the conservative movement for drawing lines around acceptable debate. And Professor Blackman argues that the need is clear.

“I’m sensitive to the idea of cancellation, but once there’s no line and everyone’s welcome, you have a problem,” he says. “We can argue about exactly where that line is, but Nick Fuentes defending Stalin and Hitler should be a pretty clear line to draw, right?”

The American right has a long history with self-regulation, dating back to William F. Buckley, a leading founder of postwar conservatism. As editor of what was then the right’s flagship publication, the National Review, he was well positioned to play the role of gatekeeper. In the 1960s, Buckley wrote editorials condemning the extremist John Birch Society for branding all ideological opponents as Communist agents.

Then, in the early 1990s, Buckley heeded calls to cut ties with Pat Buchanan and journalist Joe Sobran over their anti-Israel obsession laced with anti-Semitism. Mr. Buchanan’s repeated attacks on US friendliness toward Israel came amid his outspoken opposition to Justice Department efforts to extradite Nazi war criminals, and his revisionist argument that Hitler had been forced into World War II by the Allied powers. Sobran once addressed the Institute for Historical Review, notoriously regarded as denying the Holocaust, and added a dose of eccentricity to his Israel fixation with arguments like William Shakespeare was a fraud and his plays were actually written by an obscure English nobleman.

Many cheered Mr. Buchanan’s exile. But when the anti-Semite label stuck to him, his policy ideas were also relegated to the fringes. Much of the condemnation against him was voiced by “neoconservatives,” who favored more liberal immigration policies, projection of American power abroad, and staunch support of Israel.

Some thirty years later, the tables have turned. Republican neglect of Mr. Buchanan’s warnings on the effects of permissive immigration standards, the impacts of unchecked free trade, and an increased skepticism toward the virtues of Western civilization have helped power the populist rebellion that paved President Trump’s road to the White House.

“I agree with [Buchanan] on a lot of issues, especially domestic issues — I just think he’s a horrible anti-Semite,” said Mr. Hammer. “There’s plenty of other Jews I speak to who make the same distinction between his obvious anti-Semitism and that nonetheless, he was prescient.”

Paul Gottfried, editor of the magazine Chronicles and described as the “godfather of the alt-right,” was among those chased out of the mainstream for his support for “old right” positions, which he termed “paleo-conservatism.” He says that malpractice by some powerful forces made line-drawing difficult.

“The problem is that many of the attempts at gatekeeping were driven by something other than intellectual honesty,” says Dr. Gottfried. “After the neoconservatives took over, it became impossible to even discuss certain political questions.”

Still, Dr. Gottfried stresses that lines should be drawn.

“If you say that six Jewish bankers control the world or that Hitler or Stalin were really nice guys, we shouldn’t have to listen to you,” he says. “You do have to set up guidelines for what is legitimate discussion. I just think, in contrast to the neoconservatives, that my guidelines would be less restrictive.”

Dr. Gottfried welcomes expanding the range of acceptable ideas for debate on the right, but finds the present challengers sorely lacking. He calls Carlson “a sensationalist,” says that Candace Owens “should be institutionalized,” and admits that he finds “the things Fuentes says positively disgusting.”

Dr. Gottfried questions Carlson’s own dedication to the open exchange of ideas. He tells Mishpacha that he had been negotiating an appearance on Carlson’s podcast, but the offer was canceled after Gottfried wrote a piece supporting attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

“It’s good that the conservative establishment is being challenged,” he says. “Unfortunately, the people challenging it are not very good. I wish this were coming from a better place.”

Loss of Faith

Josh Hammer expresses a certain impatience with the question of defining acceptable debate. He thinks the problem of extremist views will be solved by allowing more openness, not less. And he believes comparisons between the present fight and big tech cancellations are “misapplied.”

“I’ve argued for many years on big tech stuff, that we need to rethink certain paradigms and call for a First Amendment standard,” he says. “But all of that has nothing to do with the current debate.”

Mr. Hammer explains that Carlson, and even the most outlandish Internet-based conspiracy peddlers, have ample space to spread their views, and no one on the right is attempting to “deplatform” them.

“This is about what being on the right mean,” he says. “Are we standing for timeless values or against them?”

Another factor feeding popularity of those promoting wild theories is the failure by those in power to be forthcoming with the American people.

“I think the number one reason why anti-Semitism is ascendent on the right is that a stream of events caused a lot of people to lose their ability to discern truth from lies,” said Mr. Hammer. “That trail of tears starts with Russia-gate and the Mueller probe and Covid lockdowns and runs through four years of Democrats covering for a diminished president who was not really running things.

“All that caused a lot of people to lose their ability to take anything at face value.”

That has opened the door for Carlson and a supporting cast of Internet personalities to promote an ever-widening set of eccentric ideas, running the gamut from invasions by extraterrestrials to attacks by demons. An uncomfortable percentage of these theories involve Jews.

Carlson has given friendly interviews not only to Mr. Fuentes, a self-admitted and outspoken anti-Semite, but also to writers who have minimized or denied the Holocaust and blamed Winston Churchill for starting World War II. On her podcast, Candace Owens presented her case that Israel had a hand in Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, Carlson and many in his camp became increasingly fixated on Israel. Laced into these discussions was the frequent theme that powerful Jewish-backed elements manipulate Washington into maintaining its level of Israel support against America’s national interests.

These voices often parroted the left’s accusations against Israel, arguing the US was aiding “genocide” against Palestinians. This line was endorsed by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and was given ample space in the pages of American Conservative magazine. Carlson gives generous airtime to those accusing Israel of purposely targeting Palestinian civilians and Christians living in Gaza.

During his interview with Mr. Fuentes, Carlson said Christian Israel supporters were “seized by this brain virus” and that he dislikes them “more than anybody.”

Such rhetoric not only stokes negativity toward Jews. It also undermines hopes that the right can soberly assess whether the present level of financial and diplomatic resources America invests in Israel are justified, without drifting into anti-Semitism.

Carlson’s camp alleges that fair discussion about Israel is shut down by accusations that questioning US policy on Israel is driven by anti-Semitism. In fact, there is a growing cadre of pro-Israel voices in the nationalist-conservative tent who argue that gradually phasing out aid is in both countries’ interests, yet those voices get limited attention.

Samuel Abrams, professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is in favor of such discussions, but moderators should keep a careful eye on the guest list.

“You have to make sure to bring the right people,” he said. “My view is that there’s nothing contradictory about being pro-Israel and America First. But there should be space to argue with that. If it’s done in a systematic way, looking at the overall portfolio of US aid, no one should call that anti-Semitic. If you’re going to have it by picking out Israel for scrutiny, that might be anti-Semitic.”

Not Enough Sheriffs

Many pixels have been posted about the growing influence of Carlson’s way of thinking, particularly among younger people on the right. While it does not give a clear view of general feelings about Jews, a recent Pew study showed that over the last three years, conservatives under 50 holding negative views about Israel increased from 35% to 50%. But there is evidence for the countering view as well, like a poll at the recent AmericaFest showing overwhelmingly positive attitudes toward US support for Israel.

Still, the ascendance of pernicious voices finding safe harbor within the conservative tent raises serious concern.

“What’s particularly troubling on the right is that for quite a while, conservatives could credibly make a claim that they were the side that had not turned a conspiratorial eye toward the Jewish People and Israel,” says Mr. Hammer. “That credibility remains, certainly while Donald Trump remains president, but it’s tarnished.”

In an environment that empowers an amorphous class of online influencers, policing rhetoric is increasingly challenging. While an institution like Heritage could once have served as a responsible gatekeeper, its weight on the political map is held hostage by public opinions formed by individuals looking to rack up “followers.”

“At the end of the day, what motivates a lot of people in the think-tank world, myself included, is that we want to have influence, we want our ideas to matter,” says Professor Abrams. “In the case of Heritage, when Roberts makes a statement that sounds too extreme, that might come from trying to read the temperature in the room.”

While in the 1960s and ’80s, Buckley could stigmatize figures by eliminating them from the pages of National Review, nobody today wields such power.

“Sorting these things out is messy,” says Professor Abrams. “In the older days, even a few decades ago, these debates could be held at a meeting of a few powerful political and think tank people in D.C. Social media has amplified a lot of voices that shouldn’t necessarily be amplified. Not all voices deserve a seat at the table, especially ones based on ignorance, fear, and hate, which is what we’re seeing now.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1093)