Carlson, Fuentes, and the Jews

For all the fuss about Zohran Mamdani, you wouldn’t know to worry about anything else. Like Republican politicos trashing Jews and Black people. Or rightwing firebrands using Jews as a cudgel to break the backs of elite universities.

Mamdani is the featured anti-Semite of the moment, even though he’s not anything of the sort. A thousand-plus rabbis signed a letter rebuking him. People ask me in a whisper “What do you think?” I tell them I would have voted with the millennials. I tell them how proud I was that our beloved machatenista, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, mother of our daughter-in-law, stood next to Zohran at a mic in NYC and braved the inevitable opprobrium of worried Jews.

What they should be worried about is those other people, the ones who generate truly deadly forms of Jew hatred and increasingly define the American Right. When it comes to the torch-and-pitchfork crowd, there are not good people on both sides of the line. There are only people like us and Jew-hating supremacists. Donald Drumpf can say whatever he wants, but most of what he says is garden variety mucus. The really sticky kind that makes it impossible to sleep comes from the people who whisper in his ear.

At this point that means Carlson and Fuentes. Last week’s interview was a good example: softball “questions” from the unscrupulous Carlson and an audience of millions for the reptilian Fuentes. It’s not the argument per se that so concerns me. Fuentes is incoherent on the subject of Jews. In one breath we are a stateless, cosmopolitan people, without fixed allegiances or a capacity for loyalty. In the next we are hyper-nationalist warmongers intent on unraveling the achievements of the West.

It’s rather the crazy certainty of Fuentes’ assertions and his ability to tap into hoary sterotypes. Fuentes has mastered the language of anti-Semitism and channels the spirits of both Stalin and Hitler. Just when you think it’s safe to go in the water, a slimy new creature breaks the placid surface.

If there is a consolation here, it’s that there is a shred of decency left. Kevin Roberts, the CEO of the Heritage Foundation, used his pulpit to valorize Carlson’s performance and draw a protective circle around Fuente’s hatred of Jews. Almost immediately, senior staff rebelled and broke clean away from his contaminated think tank. Many of them were prominent Jewish conservatives, but perhaps they are a vanguard of good things to come.

Any which way, let’s keep our eyes on the ball. Our problem is not Zohran Mamdani. It’s the likes of Nick and Tuck, co-joined anti-Semites, who should keep us up at night in this wild new America.