Heritage has jumped the Jew shark

There's no flirting with antisemitism, either you're against it or you're married to it. Heritage and Tucker Carlson have tied the knot with Jew haters.

Tucker Carlson has traded in his brain and his soul in a two-for-one special, in exchange for “just asking questions” about the veracity of the Holocaust with a known anti-historian, and now a softball interview with full-out Jew-hater Nick Fuentes. I’ve long written off Carlson. For the record, I never was a big fan of his brand of intellectual pretense. The best analogy I can summon in my head is the band Yes. If I compare Carlson to someone like Jonah Goldberg, another egghead pundit, I don’t get the pretension from Jonah that I get from Tucker, even when they (in the past) made the same points. The band Yes is pretentious about their music, which is prog rock, deep, and meaningful in many layers, while the band RUSH can do the same thing while not being so smug. Another difference is I like both Yes and RUSH, and I adore Jonah Goldberg, but I never really caught on to Carlson. I’m glad I didn’t.

Logo of The Heritage Foundation in the pavement in front of their building. Image credit: Ser Amantio di Nicolao, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Carlson was defenestrated from Fox News, not because of his views sliding into the far-right and deep into the weeds of Trumpism, but for pecuniary reasons, as part of the massive settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. Now he plies his audience with enough intellectual dishonesty to cover the Kremlin in gold leaf. But the worst part is that the Trumpist choir still claims him as part of their “big tent” even when his views have gone off into benighted, detestable slander. Somehow, it’s always the Jews who end up being blamed for the ills of the world, especially when most of those ills are cultivated by white anglo protestant pretentious intellectuals.

The Heritage Foundation has long been a stalwart advocate of real conservative values. By that, I mean the strength of institutions, the founders intent to create a government with delineated powers and a balance of responsibility, chiefly laying with Congress, and the further responsibility of citizens to adhere to a moral, rational framework versus a reactionary or revolutionary fervor. But no more. The legacy of people who supported National Review’s William F. Buckley’s rejection of the John Birch Society, was framed in 1973 when Heritage was formed.

In 2013, before this current tsunami of stupid began, Heritage founder and former president Edwin J. Feulner wrote “A toast to Buckley.” Though Buckley wasn’t always totally 100 percent in lockstep with Jewish issues, he was widely praised as one who “made the conservative movement a far less forbidding place for Jews,” as Jason Moaz wrote in Commentary, in 2008. Edwin Fuelner died in July of this year, and I am sure, if death were not final, he would return in anger at the current Heritage president, Kevin Roberts, embrace of Tucker Carlson as a “close friend.”

What Heritage has done is to undo much of the work Buckley and Fuelner accomplished in the last five decades. They have jumped the Jew shark and put the organization that penned in frightening detail the Trump second presidency’s lavish disregard for institutions, norms, and practices of our government.

Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks told Jewish Insider:

Watching the statements from Kevin Roberts today, as somebody who has been involved and supportive of the Heritage Foundation since I came to Washington in 1987, I am appalled, offended and disgusted that he and Heritage would stand with Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes as somehow being acceptable spokespeople within the conservative movement,

There is a growing disconnect between the darker corners of Trumpist thought, loaded with conspiracy freaks, Candace Owens and the like, and the openly friendly and supportive actions of the Trump administration. The administration and its outside pillars, like Heritage, need to recognize and reject this antisemitism, like Buckley rejected the John Birch Society. Conservatism, even if in name is wrongly distilled to mean “blind allegiance to Donald Trump,” needs to use its brain and soul to reject evil worldviews, even when those worldviews are cloaked in “just asking questions.”

Friendship and political calculation only go so far. As Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof, “if I bend that far, I’ll break.” Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson are too far to bend, even if they have been “close friends” of Kevin Roberts. I’d love to hear President Trump, or Vice President J.D. Vance add their voices to the condemnation of Carlson and Fuentes and his groypers. They are not “very fine people.” They are liars, slanderers, and proprietors of hate.

This world is harsh enough, with the U.S. seemingly inching closer to actual war, goading governments in South America, not to mention the ongoing conflicts in Gaza, actual genocide in Darfur, soulless Vladimir Putin’s determined effort to destroy Ukraine or take it whole, and Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs, threats, and reconciliations with China, Russia, and … Canada. The world is sliding into war, I am convinced of it. When this happens, history shows that Jews are treated poorly, evicted from many nations, and the world is made unsafe for their passage.

America has been a haven for Jews, notwithstanding some terrible histories, including the Ivy League. People like Tucker Carlson, those entitled WASPs, pretentious in their intellectual towers, riches and fame, find Jews (especially the rich ones) to be convenient targets in their own quest for more power. There is no room for such people in the moral arch secured by the keystone of American society. Heritage would rather remove the keystone and collapse the structure than judge their friend.

Fine, so be it. Heritage has married itself to the evil cause, and for my part, until they turn from that unholy matrimony, they can rot with it. At least National Review gets it: this is a time for choosing. Bill Kristol, seemingly driven to insanity by Trump derangement syndrome and the “big tent” idiocy of people like Kevin Roberts, has turned to endorsing Zohran Mamdani for NYC mayor. Not as if it mattered: Kristol doesn’t live in New York, and Mamdani will not do anything helpful to Bill Kristol when he’s elected. This is what happens when organizations fail and descend into the muck—people go nuts.

Jews are going to vote for Mamdani, against their own interests. But when all the options literally suck, I suppose I can understand their temporary insanity. In the end, whether the Jew hatred comes from the socialist left, or from the groyper right, it still comes for the Jews. Dark humor demands a movie equivalent: “choose the form of the destructor.”

Some choose Mamdani. Some choose Heritage. It’s better to choose neither and reject them both. They can all rot together.

SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS: You can follow us on social media at several different locations. Official Racket News pages include:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NewsRacket
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/NewsRacket

Our personal accounts on the platform formerly known as Twitter:

David: https://x.com/captainkudzu
Steve: https://x.com/stevengberman
Jay: https://x.com/curmudgeon_NH

Tell your friends about us!