Nick Fuentes

Getting used to being criticised

There’s a general vibe that the Carlson-Fuentes interview was a watershed moment for the normalisation of Groyperism on the American (and thus to a substantial extent global) Right, and that, in the short- to medium-term, things are only going to get worse. I think that’s probably correct, and I also have takes. Not only do I get a much higher ROI on bullet point posts than when I actually try and construct an article, I usually get a higher R full stop. So here goes.

1. I have tried to explain the difference between anti-semitism, an intelligible name for a real thing, and generic dislike or hatred of Jews, a bunch of different stuff in different times and places. The principle reason you should agree with me is that I’m correct, but another reason is that it allows you to identify who is and isn’t an anti-semite. Nick Fuentes is without doubt an anti-semite, and his most important contribution to public discourse is to promote anti-semitism.

2. There are some bad reasons that Jews are wont to equate all negative sentiment to Jews with anti-semitism. The worst of these is that it allows them to indulge their group-narcissism by playing make believe they are the main characters in an eternal cosmic drama between good and evil that acts as a surrogate for the Jewish concept of providence. However, a more pardonable reason is that, to a certain extent, it doesn’t make so much difference for Jews. Obviously, a society in which large numbers of people have negative opinions of Jews is worse for Jews. The most powerful argument against anti-semitism, by contrast, is that it is bad for the host society. It is both an indication of madness and a cause of madness, and those societies that have indulged it have brought disaster on themselves and those around them. However, you can only make this argument if you first make the distinction. Any passably literate person who cares to look can find no shortage of examples of societies that have excluded, or even persecuted, Jews and flourished.

3. Even if anti-semitism itself can be put back in the bag, which seems doubtful, Jews are going to have to get used to arguing about whether they, their culture, and their religion are bad or not. Muslims have to do this already and, while I’m sure that in some ways this is unfair and unpleasant for them, it’s too bad and I don’t really sympathise with them very much. If their culture and religion is good it shouldn’t be too hard for them to demonstrate. Same goes for you. If you want people to think Judaism is a good religion, you have to think seriously about what you are going to do about not insubstantial numbers of Jewish people who argue that Judaism is, in fact, a murderous religion.

4. Advocacy against anti-semitism has traditionally just consisted of pointing at people and opinions and saying they are anti-semitic. Sometimes this was correct, usually it wasn’t. I think it is almost certainly the case that over-use of this tactic, often to achieve very short term or quite negligible advantage for Israel, has accelerated the decline in its effectiveness, but it would have declined eventually anyway. At any rate, among large numbers of young people, we are already at the point where the accusation is considered a recommendation.

5. The way Israel has chosen to propagate the war in Gaza, combined with the outrageous incompetence of the Israeli government in international PR, has accelerated this trend. Committed Zionists often do not understand this because their brains are messed up by their nonsensical and ahistorical concept of anti-semitism. However, it is also the case that others know what is happening and do not care because they do not think diaspora Jewry has any legitimate right to safety or comfort, and because they have lunatic - often mythological - ideas of Israel’s ability to triumph as a global pariah state.

6. As a result of all this, Jews are going to have to get used to actually arguing about the merits of different claims. To refute Holocaust denial, you can’t just call it Holocaust denial, you need to know about the Korherr Report and the Posen speeches. You need to know the stats about Jewish over-representation in Bolshevism, what is true and what isn’t. You need to know why it’s obviously true that it was the janitor who killed Mary Phagan. You need to read Benny Morris. You need to have something coherent to say about anti-gentilism in the talmud. Obviously, it would be nicer if you didn’t have to say anything about those things, so get in a time machine and you won’t have to.

7. And the bitterer pill to swallow is that if you want to actually win the argument on these issues (which you certainly can), you’re gonna have to give a little. 6 million is a defensible figure for the Holocaust, but so is 5, maybe even at a pinch 4. At any rate, it’s something you have to argue over, not simply huff and cry. Leo Frank didn’t kill anyone, but he was an exploitative employer and maybe a lecher. Jews didn’t overthrow the Tsar to commit genocide against Ukrainians, but Jews were disproportionately attracted to left-wing radicalism, and countries that restricted Jewish immigration were perhaps wise to do so. The very zoomed out view of the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict is Arab nationalists and Islamists acting like mentalist turdbuckets and then whining about it, but you need to have what to say about the Irgun throwing grenades at people waiting at a bus stop or the Khan Yunis massacre. The Talmud … it requires nuance.