In the last couple weeks, two notable figures in what passes for conservative media these days have made a shocking discovery: the MAGA right is overflowing with antisemitism. Wow, good for you, Ben Shapiro and Rod Dreher, for figuring out something the rest of us have known for, oh, at least eight years now.
To his credit, Shapiro rightly called out fellow conservative media gadfly Tucker Carlson for interviewing the truly execrable far-right podcaster Nick Fuentes, accusing Carlson of mainstreaming antisemitism and white nationalism. This wasn’t Carlson’s first Nazi-curious rodeo. He previously hosted Hitler revisionist Darryl Cooper, who claimed the real villain of World War II was not Adolf Hitler but Winston Churchill. There was nary an argument from Carlson.
The backlash against Fuentes and Carlson is well deserved, but here’s the problem: Shapiro is missing the bigger picture. The root of this problem isn’t Tucker Carlson or even Nick Fuentes. The real problem is Donald Trump. And as much as Shapiro and others on the conservative right want to distance themselves from the worst of the far-right extremists, they all have a problem with facing the truth about Trump’s role in empowering this dark, ugly faction of American politics...
