But of course, he didn’t really mean it. It was ‘a mistake made with the best of intention.’
Tucker Carlson interviews anti-Semite Nick Fuentes. Carlson is roundly criticized for giving voice to a Hitler admirer and Jew hater. Kevin Roberts, president of what used to be the creditable Heritage Foundation, stands by Carlson and Carlson’s interview with Fuentes and calls Carlson’s critics a “venomous coalition.”
But of course it was all a mistake, you see, and made with the best of intentions, Roberts assures us — and expects us not to laugh.
Roberts is on the political right. Anti-Zionists like Zohran Mamdani are on the left. Their anti-Semitism comes down to the same:
“I’m not an anti-Semite, I love Jews, but . . .”
But it’s OK to hate Israel — that’s the political left.
But it’s OK to love Tucker Carlson — that’s the political right.
We’ve seen full bore the anti-Semitism on the left since Oct. 7, 2023: Academics who were “exhilitrated” by Hamas’ atrocities; Israel roundly excoriated on Oct. 8, 2023, before its ground invasion of Gaza. The list of post-Oct. 7 anti-Semitism on the left is long, but there is also a new list now: post Oct. 7 anti-Semitism on the right.
Here is Kevin Roberts:
“I want to be clear about one thing: Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic.” This is of course true — not in context. But the current context now is the post-Oct. 7 eruption of anti-Semitism around the world, almost always directed at Israel, or directed at Jews for presumably backing Israel. In this context, for Roberts to proclaim that “Christians can critique the state of Israel” is nothing more than to legitimate and exacerbate anti-Semitism.
Roberts essentially aims to undermine the groundswell of support for Israel in the evangelical Christian community. What Roberts is saying is that one cannot be a good Christian and also be a supporter of Israel. Roberts is aiming for a recrudescence of the old Protestant anti-Semitism that began with Luther and held sway for centuries., right up to the Holocaust. The largest plurality of votes that elected Hitler were Lutheran.
That has changed — and that irks the likes of Kevin Roberts. He wants to turn back the clock — all cloaked, no less, than in a supposed commitment to uproot anti-Semitism. Roberts expects us not to credit the Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther” to combat anti-Semitism. Statements by those who have resigned from Project Esther are found elsewhere in this week’s IJN. We’ll simply cite one:
“[Roberts] elevating him [Tucker Carlson] and then attacking those who object as somehow un-American or disloyal in a video replete with anti-Semitic tropes and dog whistles, no less, is not the protection of free speech. It is a moral collapse disguised as courage.”
Roberts doesn’t see the moral collapse because for him, to be against anti-Semitism is simply to wear a halo of virtue, not to understand anti-Semitism. Roberts has no clue that he is the problem, not the solution; that, yes, to proclaim in the current context that it’s OK for Christians to criticize Israel is about as anti-Semitic as it gets.
That’s Kevin Roberts and his Heritage Foundation. Then, Fuentes admires Hitler, and Carlson hates Christian Zionists, and these are only the better known names.
Sen. Ted Cruz sounds the alarm bells. He says that the church (presumably evangelical) is asleep to “a growing cancer” of anti-Semitism. “I hate to tell you, in the last six months, Ihave seen anti-Semitism rising on the right in a way I have never seen in my entire life,” says Cruz.
To be sure, Israel and Jewry have a multitude of friends in the evangelical community, from Christians United for Israel nationally to Colorado Christian University locally; and have their friends on the political right (exhibit A: the president of the US).
But watch out. Minorities have a way of becoming majorities — that’s a universal political datum, not limited to the burst of leftist political support for Mamdani. Outrageous ideas have a way of entering the mainstream. So it is necessary to pay attention to the likes of Fuentes and especially Kevin Roberts, who has not only ideas but a major foundation, which calls Tucker Carlson “a close friend.”
Roberts objects that Fuentes’ and Carlson’s critics simply want to “cancel” them. The alternative to cancel culture is to stand up and criticize wrongheaded ideas. Roberts, however, does not criticize Fuentes. He “abhors” what Fuentes says, but approves of the Carlson interview with Fuentes in which Carlson did not challenge Fuentes’ ideas and simply let him air his hate.
Politics is thicker than blood, it seems. “Most importantly,” Roberts said in a video released after the flood of criticism of the Carlson interview, “the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attack our friends on the right.”
Sorry, Mr. Roberts, but anti-Semites on either the left or the right should not be anyone’s “friends.”
Elementary, Watson, no?
© IJN 2025
