Summary

• Thesis: The op-ed warns that a racist, antisemitic faction on the MAGA right threatens to fracture the Republican coalition and discredit conservatism unless leaders draw clear boundaries.
• Framing device: Imagines a triumphant second Trump term (GOP controls Congress, tougher border policy, calmer Middle East, broader minority support) and argues that the main risk to sustaining those gains is the movement’s own extremist fringe.
• Who the author targets: A self-styled “America First”/“woke right” online faction—figures like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, Nicholas Fuentes, and, in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene—accused of reviving conspiracism and antisemitism.
• Post–Oct. 7, 2023 shift: The faction allegedly worked to erode GOP and Christian support for Israel, with influencers seeking to redirect Turning Point USA’s youth base (after the reported murder of Charlie Kirk, per the op-ed) toward racist conspiracies.
• Tucker Carlson’s platforming of Nicholas Fuentes: Presented as a watershed moment that “normalized” an extremist who denies the Holocaust and promotes racist, theocratic policies; the author says Carlson now prioritizes spectacle over debate and has entertained fringe claims about Jews, Churchill, and U.S.–Israel politics.
• Other cited examples:
  • Steve Bannon musing about “regime change in Jerusalem.”
  • Curt Mills expressing hostility to Israel and alleging it “wags the dog.”
  • Candace Owens floating speculation linking Israel to Kirk’s death.
  • Carlson deriding Christian Zionism and praising Vladimir Putin.
• Historical parallel: The author links this faction to pre–civil-rights-era right-wing isolationism and antisemitism, arguing it mirrors the woke left’s identity obsessions and would push some on the right toward defending U.S. adversaries (Russia, China, Iran, Qatar).
• Political warning: The author predicts Americans won’t back white supremacy in 2026/2028; tolerating hatemongers risks alienating independents, moderates, new Trump voters, and many Republicans.
• Critique of conservative institutions: Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts is faulted for defending Carlson while attacking unnamed “globalists,” which the author says excuses the real source of division.
• JD Vance’s response: At a TPUSA event, Vance is criticized for not rebutting claims that Israel commits ethnic cleansing or controls the U.S. president—seen as failing to draw a necessary line.
• Prescriptions: Conservative leaders should defend free speech while denying platforms and influence to racists and antisemites; delay only strengthens extremists and imperils the movement and country.
• Bottom line: Antisemitism signals moral decay and strategic self-destruction; to preserve the post-2024 coalition and conservative credibility, leaders must explicitly repudiate the racist fringe.

---

---

Content

Tucker Carlson speaks at a memorial for Charlie Kirk in Glendale, Ariz., Sept. 21. Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press

Imagine you are . Almost a year has passed since you were returned to the White House—winning more minority votes than any Republican candidate in decades. Republicans control the House and Senate. You have closed the borders to illegal immigration. You have stabilized the Middle East around American priorities and defused another half-dozen conflicts, including nuclear-tipped tensions between Pakistan and India. The Democrats are routed. Nothing can stop you from making America great again. Nothing, that is, except MAGA itself.

The right has a racism problem. This doesn’t mean that the Trump voter coalition is full of racists. Rather, the racism is concentrated in a faction of MAGA’s online leadership. They call themselves “America first.” Their detractors call them the “woke right.” These people mirror the woke left’s self-obsessed identity politics and fantasies of malign Jewish influence.

They are a problem for anyone who wants to sustain the 2024 voter coalition in the 2026 midterms and in 2028. They will be a problem for Vice President , because they want him to be the 2028 Republican nominee. If they succeed in making racism respectable again, they will be the ruin of America.

The woke right has a toehold in Congress, notably in Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia, who has rescinded her speculation about Rothschild conspiracies and Jewish space lasers but now claims that Israel exerts “unique influence and control” over her congressional colleagues. But most of its leaders are online entrepreneurs. They include the wicked uncles Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, who have adapted to online incentives, and the digital natives of the “alt-right” class of 2016, such as Candace Owens and Nicholas Fuentes.

Since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, this faction has tried to break support for the America-Israel alliance among Republicans, and Christians especially. A new domestic front opened after the murder of Charlie Kirk, with influencers trying to hijack Kirk’s Turning Point USA movement to advance racist conspiracy theories into the mainstream via Kirk’s youthful followers and lucrative email list.

Mr. Carlson’s hosting of Mr. Fuentes on his podcast, which aired Oct. 27, was a watershed in the campaign to make racism cool again. Mr. Carlson has come a long way since the bow-tied folly of his neoconservative youth. After leaving Fox News in 2023, he went over the edge. He donned the plaid shirt of the people, rediscovered Christianity, cashed in on his legacy status as a ringmaster of the right, and reinvented himself as the second coming of Alex Jones. Mr. Carlson has interviewed a podcaster who thinks Winston Churchill was the villain of World War II, raised discredited claims that Ashkenazi Jews are immune to Covid, and claimed that Benjamin Netanyahu openly tells Israelis, “I control the United States. I control Donald Trump.”

There is always a market for the circus, but Mr. Carlson has become one of the freaks. Though the sunshine of free speech remains the best antiseptic against poison, Mr. Carlson is more interested in the spotlight than serious debate. He “normalized” his guest with the gentlest of questioning, nodding along as Mr. Fuentes said the country can’t be held together unless “organized Jewry in America” is defeated. But there is nothing normal about Mr. Fuentes. He denies the facts of the Holocaust, opposes interracial marriage, seeks “total Aryan victory,” and urges the rule of a “Catholic Taliban.” He calls for “the death penalty” for an “occult element at the high levels of society, specifically among the Jews,” that is “suppressing” Christianity.

Anti-Jewish racism is an infallible symptom of civilizational decline. It substitutes fantasies for moral foundations. Mr. Bannon, otherwise opposed to foreign adventures, muses about “regime change in Jerusalem.” His acolyte Curt Mills boasts of being a “ hater ” of Israel and says Israel is “wagging the dog” of American politics. Ms. Owens wonders if Israel was involved in Charlie Kirk’s murder. Mr. Carlson calls Christian support for Israel a “brain virus” and a “heresy” and says is “the most popular leader in the world.”

Conspiracist and racist fantasies of the old right have been beyond the pale for Republicans since the 1960s. The racist right claims to be the heirs of Pat Buchanan, but Mr. Trump owns Mr. Buchanan’s popular patriotism. They inherit the old right’s underbelly: ignorant isolationism, knee-jerk racism, paranoia about Jews, resentment of Washington. They begrudge Mr. Trump, too, for not going full Buchanan—and are so resentful of America’s broken promise that they will defend Russia, China, Iran and Qatar over the U.S. and its allies. In this too they resemble the old right, which in the 1930s preferred Hitler to Franklin D. Roosevelt. This embittered minority is driving a wedge into the Trump coalition and the Republican base. They are trying to split evangelical Christians from Israel, which explains Mr. Carlson’s sudden interest in theology and enthusiasm for Qatar. They believe they will succeed.

Morality aside, it is in the self-interest of Republicans, conservatives and libertarians to make sure they fail. Call me an optimist, but I don’t believe that Americans will vote for white supremacy in 2026 and 2028. Independents, moderates, first-time Trump toe-dippers and plenty of regular Republicans won’t pull the lever for a party remade in the image of racial hatred.

So far, the haters are winning. On Oct. 30, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, backed Mr. Carlson as Heritage’s “close friend.” Mr. Roberts condemned Mr. Fuentes’s opinions and antisemitism, but he also attacked the “globalist class” and “venomous coalition” serving “someone else’s agenda” for “sowing division” and “attacking our friends on the right.” Yet it is Mr. Carlson and Mr. Fuentes who are sowing division. Mr. Roberts called Heritage the “intellectual backbone of the conservative movement,” but there will be no conservative movement if the right’s key institutions surrender to dog-whistling and resentment.

Mr. Vance’s initial response was little better. On Thursday, he debated students a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi. A student asked why the U.S. should support Israel when it has committed “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza and the Jewish religion “openly supports the persecution” of Christianity. Mr. Vance failed to correct either of these calumnies, but his improvised reply seemed to suggest that it was possible for Israel to “control the President of the United States.”

As Mr. Trump’s heir apparent, Mr. Vance will have to draw a line. As a Christian, he knows that Romans 12:21 says, “Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” His principled defense of free speech shouldn’t preclude him from excluding the cranks and carnies. Playing for time will make them more of a problem—for him, his party and, above all, the American people.

Mr. Green is a Journal contributor and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.