Embracing Nick Fuentes and the history of right-wing extremism

Earlier this week, Princeton professor Robert George resigned from the conservative Heritage Foundation board, citing being "very disturbed" after the think tank's president, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson for interviewing antisemitic commentator Nick Fuentes.Several million viewers watched Carlson's discussion with Fuentes, a white supremacist who has a long history of anti-Semitic comments. Roberts defended Carlson, saying the former Fox News host "remains . . . and always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation."Fuentes — who, until recently, was anathema to mainstream conservatives for his repellent views — has suddenly gained political currency with a growing number of young right-wing members of Gen Z, referred to by some as zoomers. He is also considered part of the alt-right, and his mainstreaming among some conservatives forces a disturbingly troubling examination of the enthusiastic embrace of white nationalism and antisemitism by the ideological right in America.American right-wing extremism did not emerge overnight. It's lengthy and intense history starts with the genesis of the modern American conservative movement during the New Deal era in the 1930s. Notable figures such as H. L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh, and Henry Ford, known for their rabid and abhorrent anti-Semitic views, led the first cohort of anti-New Deal activists (often labeled the Old Right).Once Europe was plunged into war in late 1939, some of these men became vocal proponents of the pro-isolationist movement, which included people from across the political spectrum who harbored no degree of antisemitism. In contrast, an antipathy toward Jews consumed the anti-interventionist faction that made up the Old Right.A few decades later, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Robert Welch, another avowed racist and anti-Semite and head of the infamous John Birch Society, managed to successfully populate the movement. William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the conservative publication National Review, harbored complex attitudes toward race and publicly challenged Welch's more extremist views. Buckley managed to purge many Birchers from the magazine and the larger conservative movement.After their disastrous and humiliating defeat in November 1964, the right-wing segment of the Republican Party — who by this time had wrestled control of the party away from the more moderate wing during the 1964 Republican Nation Convention that summer — was shell-shocked and even more determined to have its collective voices and ideas represented on the national stage. Additionally, motivated by the passage of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, a mass exodus occurred from the Democratic to the Republican Party of conservative Dixiecrats, such as South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond.Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign brazenly trumpeted the racially unambiguous message of "law and order" as part of his infamous southern strategy.A dozen years later, former California governor and B-list actor Ronald Reagan continued this strategy of appealing to right-wing, segregationist-minded whites by launching his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and pledging support for states' rights. Philadelphia is in Neshoba County, where White supremacists murdered three civil rights workers — two White Jewish men, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and one Black man, James Chaney — in 1964.Racially coded messages — welfare queens, crime, forced busing — were widely disseminated by the Reagan campaign, which was also enormously successful in garnering the religious right's fierce support. This assorted grouping of largely reactionary conservative republicans of varied strands eagerly endorsed the Reagan campaign's far-right platform during the 1980 presidential election. Right-wing resistance toward racial, political, and social equality came as no surprise.Similarly, the racial and religious drama that occurred in Charlottesville in 2017, when hundreds of primarily preppy young white men and a few women with tiki torches marched on the University of Virginia campus chanting, "You will not replace us. Jews will not replace us," did not play out overnight.There has always been a segment of white Americans who have, whether overtly or covertly, harbored rabid levels of hostility and hatred toward individuals they view and perceive as "the other." Up until recently, rheir outpourings were confined to secret conferences – white supremacist communications, underground newsletters, obscure far-right magazines, and radio programs. Technology and the current political climate has emboldened many of these people to publicly and brazenly espouse their rancid opinions.The Old Right's conspiracist and racist fantasies had been beyond the pale for Republicans since the 1960s, but the New Right has adopted the Old Right's platform: restrictive isolationism, reactionary racism, irrational anti-Semitic paranoia, and suspicion of the federal government.As the first quarter of the 21st century draws to a close, traditional conservatives, and the evangelical wing of the Republican Party especially, face a challenge similar to what their counterparts in the 1960s did. Will they shun and shift aside the more decadent and degenerate elements of the right wing or endorse and embrace them?Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicateElwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.