Infighting has broken out on the right following ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewing white supremacist incel Nick Fuentes on his podcast.
Fuentes, who has one million followers on X, is extremely misguided to say the least – he regularly says things that decent people would find appalling including comments where he praises Hitler and Stalin and others where he expressed sexual desires toward minors.
Of Carlson’s choice to platform Fuentes in a softball interview, Texas Senator Ted Cruz said, “Now is a time for choosing. Now is a time for courage … If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and their mission is to combat and defeat ‘global Jewry’, and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil.”
Meanwhile, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, defended Carlson, which has in turn prompted a shakeup at the conservative think tank. Roberts has since apologized to for defending Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. But many others have come to the defense of both Carlson and Fuentes.
This all brings up an interesting question: Should you shun and isolate the extremists, or should you dialogue with them?
Whether the host of a podcast or show should have someone like Nick Fuentes on, I believe, depends more on the host than on the guest and whether the host is willing and able to adequately challenge the guest’s worse views, particularly if the guest has amassed influence, which Fuentes has.
If Fuentes was just some unknown crank with a megaphone shouting his incoherent ideas at a city intersection, perhaps platforming them would serve little purpose. But Fuentes has millions of followers, all of which stand to benefit greatly from hearing reasons why their support of Fuentes’ ideas is misplaced.
If Fuentes and his listeners are left in isolation, they’ll only continue to entrench themselves within their highly annoying echo chamber. None of this is to say that anyone has a duty to platform extremists. Instead, we can look at platforming people like Fuentes similarly to engaging in charitable acts. Instead of being financially impoverished, Fuentes and his devoted “groyper” followers are morally and intellectually impoverished and they need help.
If we think of it in this way, then whether a host should have them on their show depends on whether the host is equipped to help them. Carlson isn’t equipped to help Fuentes because he shares too many of Fuente’s beliefs as evidenced by the interview. People like comedian-turned-pundit Dave Smith, who also had Fuentes on his podcast, can’t help Fuentes because he’s not equipped to scrutinize Fuentes’ beliefs. As such, people like Carlson and Smith do more harm by having them on.
Carlson’s interview exhibited almost none of the pushback that you would expect from someone who does not share in Fuentes’ beliefs. Fuentes was allowed to act as if his views are reasonable and even common sense without Carlson holding him accountable for it – again, Carlson agrees with much of what Fuentes has to say about everything from Jewish influences to a woman’s subservient place in society.
At one point Fuentes was recounting an instance where, according to him, he was disqualified for a job at a conservative organization for stating during an interview process his view that Americans were being replaced by immigrants and that it was ruining society, essentially advocating for a white Christian nation. According to him, the interviewers told him that he was too far-right. Instead of pushing back on his advocacy of a white Christian ethnostate, Carlson responded with, “Worrying about who lives in your country is far-right?”
In this case, Carlson’s platforming of Fuentes served to amplify rather than challenge his extremist views. This is why so many on the right, like Sen. Cruz, were angered by it.
The instinct to refuse platforming people who promote vile beliefs is understandable and it may be appropriate in many cases. But platforming can be reasonable under circumstances in which an interlocutor is actually willing and able to counter the talking points of extremists like Fuentes.
Pundits like Carlson and Smith are clearly not up to this task.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.
