OPINION:
Lots of ink has been spilled about the Nick Fuentes appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast. Some think Mr. Carlson made a mistake by giving Mr. Fuentes a platform, and most were concerned that the interview was less than rigorous. There was some concern (mostly on the right) that those who wanted to censor Mr. Fuentes were channeling First Amendment arsonists.
To be fair, the post facto back-and-forth was a lot more interesting and informative than the actual interview, which was kind of dull and perfunctory. That shouldn’t have surprised. Mr. Carlson has become more erratic and less interesting since leaving Fox. For his part, Mr. Fuentes does not seem particularly bright, nor does he seem to be a particularly deep thinker.
Despite all that, Mr. Fuentes does embody and exude much of the current vibe of young folks on the right (especially men), most of whom have concluded that pluralistic democracy and its institutions are unlikely to be able to address and repel what has been for some time a systemic attack on Western civilization, both internal and external. Have whatever opinion you want about these young people, but they may not be wrong about that.
So, while all the usual suspects were offering up all their usual talking points about the nonsense of the interview and its context, the important part of the story — the ongoing radicalization of young, bright and promising people — continued on without even passing commentary. That seems like a bad thing to miss.
A few days after the interview, there was a death among those who used to be the Republican establishment. It was telling that the funeral of former Vice President Dick Cheney — who was certainly one of the most prominent architects of the Republican Party and its policies in the previous century — was not even televised on Fox. No one from the current Republican leadership — not the president, not the vice president and not anyone in congressional leadership — even made an appearance.
The absences made it clear that the party that Cheney carefully constructed over more than four decades has swung so decisively away from its previous brand that it is essentially unrecognizable. There is a lot of thought in the middle that once President Trump leaves office, everything will return to whatever normal might be. That seems delusional.
The reality is this: The party will sooner than expected belong to those young people who view much of the foreign adventurism of the current administration as a diversion from the legitimately existentialist threats we face. Those threats are not to be found in Ukraine or Venezuela; they exist in darker places on the planet and involve serious ideas, most specifically the idea that some cultures are superior to others and the Enlightenment might have been a bad detour for the West.
In that context, the contretemps over whether Mr. Fuentes should be interviewed on a podcast seems vaguely ridiculous. Let’s make it easy: You shouldn’t hate anyone, nor should you encourage people to hate anyone. At the same time, freedom of speech has survived worse things than a washed-up journalist talking to a small-time race baiter.
The real problem is that the media — legacy and otherwise — seem to be willfully ignoring the realities of the world in which we currently live, the threats therein and the attitudes of the young people who will, one day, need to address those threats.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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