The American Right vs the State of Israel
The rise of nationalism and the consequences for Jews in the West, and in Israel.
Where the American right goes, eventually, we all go - the rest of the West is merely a set of provinces of the American Empire, and the global left is morally and intellectually bankrupt. It may win elections, but it has nothing to offer except managed - or even accelerating - decline.
The American right’s direction is determined by online discourse, especially on X, Rumble, and YouTube. These platforms have usurped the mainstream media, where debate is dead, and are the new public square, the very real marketplace of ideas. For example, media personality Tucker Carlson was watched by 3 million people when he was on Fox News. Now that he is on X, he gets 1-2 million views on YouTube alone, where he has 5 million subscribers, and another 1 million on X. Fox News ratings, meanwhile, have taken a dive. It’s Carlson, not Fox News, who is actually powerful. Meaning that voters listen to Carlson far more than they do to Fox. And what is discussed on Carlson eventually makes it to the Joe Rogan Experience, and vice versa. Rogan has 20 million YouTube subscribers and speaks to a global audience of 100 million. Indeed, Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan - and Kamala Harris’s refusal to appear - were important in Trump’s 2024 victory. Crucially, those who listen to Rogan and Carlson tend to be highly politically engaged and active, meaning that they have disproportionate influence over political debates at home and in the workplace. Views expressed on these shows are massively amplified.
This is what makes the current fight within the online American right so important.
Nick Fuentes
Let us explain this fight.
Tucker Carlson interviewed Nicholas Fuentes, an American Catholic white nationalist, who is highly critical of the concentration of Jewish wealth and power, and of the influence of Israel over American policy.
Fuentes, 27, represents a generation of young right wingers. As an 18 year old, Jewish media personality Ben Shapiro and others tried to end Fuentes’ promising career as a conservative activist for being critical of Israel, using allegations of antisemitism. Despite being cancelled, de-platformed, and de-banked, Fuentes still managed to build a small media empire through his force of character and grit. He is now a hugely influential voice on the young right, so much so that the mainstream right is now forced to grant him a seat at the table or to at least contend with him. Especially after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Like Kirk, Fuentes is very well-read, extremely articulate, and exceptionally charismatic. With Kirk, an Israel supporter who was beginning to turn against Israel, now gone, Fuentes has no competition among the right-wing youth.
We think of Fuentes as the boy who noticed that the Emperor had no clothes - that Israel plays too prominent a role in American foreign policy. However, instead of the adults agreeing with the boy’s obvious observation, he ended up ostracised and demonised. You can imagine what such a boy would grow up to be.
As a result of his youth and cynicism, Fuentes often acts as a shock-jock, saying things that are extremely provocative, uncouth, or even vile, with an air of irony that leaves it unclear whether or not he means them. This enhances his appeal to the youth, as they view him as an antidote to the stifling tyranny of political correctness, and its inability to address obvious, observable, and measurable national and group differences.
Steel-manning
To steel-man is the opposite of to straw-man.
As part of our work here at Modad Geopolitics, we have steel-manned the views of Hezbollah, the Syrian government, Hamas, Israel, Iran, Russia, Sunni jihadis, China, the far left, and the USA. As analysts, NOT advocates, it is our duty to understand others’ views and articulate them. We build our analysis by understanding the perspective of the actors to elucidate their intent, and by tying their intent to their capabilities.
A steel-man summary of Fuentes’ views - ignoring the most objectionable bits - would read like this:
The world is made up of nations. People naturally have affinity for those who have the same ancestors, inhabit the same land, speak the same language, and share the same faith.
The Jewish people are a separate nation, regardless of whether or not they have a state. As a nation, like all nations, they have unique values and interests.
Liberalism is good for the Jewish people. Tolerance, opposition to nationalism in the West, egalitarianism, and support for diversity lead to a society where the difference between the Jewish nation and European nations are ignored. They prevent the emergence of strong authoritarian leaders who might expropriate Jewish assets or expel Jewish residents, tragedies that have repeatedly occurred in Jewish history.
As a result, Jewish organisations like the ADL, the Board of Deputies, and others are staunchly supportive of liberalism and often of immigration. Indeed, Jewish publications and commentators often boast of the disproportionate role played by Jewish individuals in anti-racist activities, civil rights, the liberation of homosexuals, and other liberal cause celebres.
The same liberalism that protects Jewish people protects Muslim or Hindu or non-white migrants to the West, leading to the transformation of Western societies from ethnically cohesive, Christian, nation states into diverse societies with no strong central identity. Civic nationalism, a newfangled notion, and liberal values, replaced ethnonationalism and religious cohesion.
This same liberalism with regards to national identity is not tolerated within Israel itself, however. Israel clearly defines itself as an ethno-religious state, and its laws clarify that it is the national homeland of a single people. This is perceived by Jews as a reflection of their uniqueness, by others, like Fuentes, as hypocrisy.
There is currently in the West an enormous concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the Jewish people, particularly Zionist Jews. This extends from influence over Hollywood, ownership of major technology companies (Oracle, Meta, Alphabet), ownership of major media companies, and influence in the banking sector. These claims are usually dismissed as antisemitic tropes. But, if one compares the Jewish portion of the population to their presence in these positions of power, one finds massive overrepresentation. Like all people everywhere, the Jewish people practice a mix of meritocracy and nepotism to maintain wealth, power, and influence.
This concentration of power and influence, backed by pro-Israel donors, and the manning of critical national security posts by Zionists (Christian, atheist, and Jewish), has driven America into the Iraq War, the intervention in Syria, and the intervention in Libya. These interventions have been catastrophic for America and Europe, as the waves of migrants and the enormous debts demonstrate.
Neoconservatism - the ideological framework that justified these interventions - is not recognisable except as an Israel First hyper-liberal ideology. There are no neoconservatives who are neutral on Israel, let alone ones who support constraining it in some way - they all fully support Israel.
Neoconservatives (Jewish, atheist, and Christian) are still trying to draw America into another war, this time against Iran. Such a war would be much worse than any of its predecessors, given the size of Iran and its importance as the Shi’a hegemon, and its ability to disrupt oil shipping to the world.
Western liberalism failed. Liberalism is incapable of combating Islam or other foreign religions. It has dissolved social bonds and made Western societies weaker and more decadent. Intolerance is needed to force immigrants to integrate, to protect unique national identities, and to maintain the West’s Christian heritage, on which it is built.
Nationalism, including economic nationalism, is necessary to rebuild the West. Religiosity - Christian religiosity - is necessary to end the age of decadence and decline.
This Christian nationalism naturally excludes the Jewish people, given the religious difference between them and the Christian West, and their belonging to a different nation. They are, at best, welcome guests. But they are perennial outsiders, with a different identity, value system, and loyalty. Indeed, this outsider status explains their survival.
We note, again, that we are not stating our own views. We are steel-manning Fuentes’ views in a manner that is most likely to make others understand him and his movement. This enables us to think clearly about his intent and capability, and thereby to identify potential risks. Again, we are analysts, not advocates.
Consequences for Israel
The reaction to Carlson interviewing Fuentes from the pro-Israel right has been, briefly, rage, condemnation, and more rage. A slew of articles, X posts, and videos condemning them both has emerged, mainly coming from Zionists. There is a concerted effort to cancel Carlson, intended to prevent the further rise and normalisation of Fuentes. The interview succeeded in dividing Republicans between a Zionist camp and an Israel-neutral or anti-Israel camp.
If Carlson’s interview with Fuentes goes “unpunished”, then, logically, Fuentes will soon end up on Joe Rogan. From that, he would become absolutely mainstream. All the major podcast hosts would be competing to get him on their shows.
The mainstreaming of Fuentes would mean that support for Israel would become a key foreign policy question in the 2028 Republican presidential primary - it is obviously going to be a critical question in the Democratic primary. Candidates who support Israel would find themselves deeply delegitimised by Fuentes’ wing of the conservative movement. And his wing has activists who are willing to pound the pavement, register voters, and bring out the vote. Their opposition to Middle Eastern wars, big pharma, big banks, and mainstream media would resonate with the left and the right. (Again, this is our analysis - we are not advocating anything here).
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