The feud between Ben Shapiro and Nick Fuentes is now mainstream GOP politics

Typically, the long-running MAGA influencer feud between white supremacist streamer Nick Fuentes and Jewish conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro — who despise each other for obvious reasons — would have been contained within the internet. Last week, it ratcheted up when Fuentes, an unrepentant antisemite who has said that “Hitler was really fucking cool”, suddenly achieved a new level of legitimacy within the right: Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host-turned-podcaster, invited Fuentes on his show for an hourlong interview about the US government’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Even then, it could have still been contained online. Carlson, who’s frequently criticized Israel and often dabbles in antisemitic tropes, has a massive audience and significant sway within the GOP. Nevertheless, other conspiracy theories he previously espoused — Ukraine was developing bioweaponry, COVID-19 was bioengineered to leave Ashkenazi Jews immune, male infertility could be reversed by blasting one’s testicles with infrared light — never gained political traction. Platforming a blatant antisemitic conspiracy theorist could have been one of those things. Though the GOP’s support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has waned during his invasion of Gaza, they still officially support Israel’s right to exist. One might think this position would imply that they’d condemn a literal Neo-Nazi, to say nothing of anyone who’d give them the airtime to espouse such views.

For some days, that seemed to be exactly what was happening. Shapiro, an equally popular podcaster, devoted his entire show to blistering condemnation of Fuentes and Carlson. The Heritage Foundation, a powerful right-wing thinktank and Republican institution, began removing mentions of Carlson’s name from its websites. That is, until Heritage’s president Kevin Roberts, threw in his support for Carlson — and defended Fuentes — from a “venomous coalition” trying to “cancel” them.

“I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer, either,” said Roberts, who had spearheaded Project 2025, a playbook to reform the federal government that significantly influenced Trump’s systematic purge of career bureaucrats.

Within hours, the entire American right erupted in outrage — and a significant part of it backed Roberts. Populists like Steve Bannon and The Hill’s Emily Brooks reported that another member of Project 2025 and Heritage grant recipient, the American Accountability Foundation, had begun sending messages to Republican congressional staffers urging them to not hire Heritage staffers who’d subtweeted criticism of Roberts.

Though online influencers generally have a vast amount of cultural sway with their audiences, the MAGA influencer network is uniquely organized — or rather, symbiotic — in a way that deeply influences the modern Grand Old Party. Unlike their counterparts in the modern Democratic Party, which tends to shut out progressive influencers challenging their authority, the power brokers of the Republican establishment are increasingly taking their political cues from popular right-wing internet personalities — even if their beliefs fundamentally contradict theirs. The trend began with President Donald Trump himself, a proto-influencer whose populist, big-government ideas flew against the GOP’s free market libertarianism, who nevertheless seized control of the party and the White House, all while platforming and mainstreaming the fringe views of right-wing influencers. In his wake, those influencers are starting to grasp for power themselves — a harder task, given the fragmentation and divisive nature of internet communities.

Ironically, Fuentes’s momentum within the GOP increased after the death of his other pro-Israel nemesis, Charlie Kirk. Though Fuentes frequently trolled and undermined Kirk, bragging that he’d “impregnated” Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA with his white-nationalist “groyper army”, Fuentes had begun seeding the internet with conspiracies about Jewish donors ordering a hit on Kirk when they believed his support of Israel was waning. His claims gained further traction after Kirk’s text messages were leaked, wherein Kirk had been venting about pro-Israel donors who’d been withdrawing their money for inviting Carlson to an event. “Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes,” Kirk had written. “I cannot and will not be bullied like this[,] Leaving me no choice but to leave the pro Israel cause.”

At the moment, it’s unclear whether Roberts himself will survive the wrath of the Heritage Foundation’s donor base, to say nothing of the half of the party that does not tolerate anyone who has called Hitler “really fucking cool.” On Wednesday, during an all-hands meeting reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Roberts offered an apology and his resignation, while blaming his former chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, for writing the statement. “I didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy,” said Roberts. “I still don’t.”

Over the weekend, Roberts had suggested that Fuentes’s antisemitism was abhorrent, but that rather than “cancel” them, the proper way to deal with them was to allow Fuentes to speak so that the normies could “guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation, and be confident as I am that our best ideas at the heart of western civilization will prevail.” On Wednesday, he reiterated his definition of what and what was not acceptable right-wing “cancel culture”: “You can say you’re not going to participate in canceling someone … while also being clear you’re not endorsing everything they’ve said, you’re not endorsing softball interviews, you’re not endorsing putting people on shows, and I should’ve made that clear.”

Having undermined their ability to “cancel” and exile Fuentes, Heritage presumably will one day be forced to engage in a civilized and legitimizing conversation about Fuentes’s views. Fuentes, meanwhile, has begun testing how far he could push the Republican establishment’s Overton window of tolerance. On Monday, he railed against MAGA’s support of Vice President JD Vance, who’s frequently floated as a potential successor to Trump’s movement, during his Rumble show: “they all support a fat race mixer who is married to a Jeet and has a son named Vivek, who was mentored by a Jewish neocon [David Frum] and a gay fag, Peter Thiel, and the guy is in bed with fucking Israel.”