The anti-Semitism debate has intensified on the right following conservative media figure Tucker Carlson’s interview with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
Young Republicans’ chats reveal racist, anti-Semitic messages
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Vice President J.D. Vance said he did not believe that “smoldering anti-Semitism is about to explode” among young conservatives, although some Republicans have expressed concern that such views are gaining traction on the right.
“I think it’s kind of libelous to say that the Republican Party, which is a conservative movement, is extremely anti-Semitic,” Vance said in an interview with NBC.
The anti-Semitism debate has intensified on the right following conservative media figure Tucker Carlson’s interview with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
Fuentes has a history of promoting racist and extremist views. Carlson did not argue during the interview when Fuentes said Jews were not loyal Americans.
Fuentes said that “the main challenge to unifying the country is an organized Jewry in America.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, criticized Carlson after the interview, saying, “If you sit down with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and that their mission was to fight and defeat the Jewish people of the world and you don’t say anything, you’re a coward and you’re complicit in that evil.”
In recent months, there have been a number of incidents in which Republicans have been associated with Nazi symbols and ideology.
In a speech to the Republican Jewish Federation in October, Cruz said there had been more right-wing anti-Semitism in recent months than at any other time in his life, calling it “toxic” and an “existential crisis” for the Republican Party and the nation.
The debate also roiled the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, after President Kevin Roberts released a video in which he said he did not condemn Carlson and lambasted his critics. Members of Heritage’s anti-Semitism committee and two academics resigned in protest.
“I think it’s fundamentally anti-American and anti-Christian to judge people based on the color of their skin or any immutable characteristic,” Vance told NBC. “I think it’s important to speak up when you see something like this.” However, he rejected the idea that anti-Semitism is a major problem on the right.
“Do you think the Republican Party is significantly more anti-Semitic than it was 10, 15 years ago? Absolutely not,” Vance said. “There’s a bad guy in every bunch of apples.”
