The trap the woke right is setting for MAGA

Vice President J.D. Vance starred at a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi, debating with the audience. One of the people he supposedly debated with was a teenager who could barely string a question together and who looked distinctly immature and lacking in information.

Watching him stutter, you could tell he was an easily influenced boy who had been told a lot of nonsense, but who, with a little clarity, could have been brought out of his ignorance. The boy said he was a Christian and didn't understand why the U.S. supported Israel and (after several babbles) threw two easily refuted antisemitic tropes at Vance: one about ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and one about Jews persecuting Christians.

His was the second question of the day reflecting a growing anti-Israeli stance within the MAGA movement, as indicated by polls among young people in the Republican Party. This stance is driven by figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson. The latter has given a voice to avowed antisemites, including, most recently, Nick Fuentes.

Vance responded to both questions elliptically, from an ambiguous perspective, and suggested that his own support for Israel was not unequivocal. He also seemed apologetic about Trump's positioning in the Middle East and emphasized that the president was acting in America's interest, not Israel's. Moreover, he felt compelled to clarify, unprompted, that Israel does not control the president. With a clumsy response, the vice president of the United States echoed one of the most pernicious lies in history: that Jews secretly control some governments.

Several things are highly troubling about Vance's responses.

The first is the ease with which the vice president is made to dither and is set to answer ambiguously and unspecifically. The second is the unpreparedness to debate one of the key foreign policy issues of the Trump administration. The third is the content of the answer itself.

"Conservatism is walking straight into a trap that will divide and destroy it from within."

Vance could have laid out the false premises firmly and astutely, asking the young man to develop his claim, asking for proof of his accusations, providing data, and exposing the trope and its roots. This path would have been key to demonstrating who the adult in the room was.

He could also have ignored the lies about Judaism that the little provocateur mumbled, to show that he was not easily dragged into the mud of cheap bluster. He could have confined himself to answering the question truthfully, correcting the young man's distorted description.

But he chose the worst path: to stoop to the level of a disturbed teenager who stammered while spouting disjointed nonsense, accept a false premise composed of two ridiculous claims, and seek to convince the young man that the White House is on his side but behaves diplomatically.

He didn't disprove the false claims; he just asked the young manipulator to have confidence, wink-wink.

Either it was lack of intelligence, or Vance thinks like the young man who asked him such a stupid question. The thing is, he treated the claims as legitimate. In the end, he gave the impression of being so desperate for his vote that he simply wasn't capable of putting him in his place.

Advances from the woke right

This was not an isolated incident. In recent weeks, there has been a growing clamor on the woke right to get the country's authorities on their side... and they seem to be succeeding.

This normalization of institutional antisemitism has been orchestrated by, among others, Tucker Carlson, who, as previously mentioned, recently interviewed a world-class clown known as Nick Fuentes, an admirer of Stalin and Hitler who makes nastiness his professional brand.

Vance's lack of response to fallacious accusations about Israel was troubling. The claim that Judaism attacks Christianity is a delusion with no historical basis and also comes in the midst of a groundswell of Jew-hatred stemming from a pogrom. Without a single example to wield, sustaining this lie is not ignorance: it is the product of the garbage of the woke right media machine, which makes Antifa seen like child's play.

All this comes in the midst of an advance of political jihadism across the U.S. If it weren't tragic, it would seem like a joke.

Conservatism is walking right into a trap that will divide and destroy it from within. The oldest form of hatred in the world, which in these two years grew on the left, has returned to the right in the form of a holy war.

To add fuel to the fire, and with a remarkable sense of timing, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts released a video in response to speculation that the foundation would be distancing itself from Carlson. In a speech that will go down in the history books of infamy, Roberts not only defended Carlson, but even managed to normalize and relativize Fuentes' position.

Roberts reaffirmed that Carlson is a friend of his and called his critics a "venomous coalition," blaming them—not the antisemites who say the bad guy is Churchill and the good guy is Hitler—for the division on the right. According to Roberts, free and open debate is important and everyone should be accepted, except Carlson's critics, who should shut up.

The controversy over the meeting with Fuentes comes coincidentally at a time when Republicans are looking for ways to neutralize a series of embarrassing leaks. Weeks ago, hundreds of messages came to light from a group chat on Telegram where leaders of different Young Republican groups were saying all sorts of barbarities, joking about the Holocaust and praising Adolf Hitler. Paul Ingrassia, an admirer of Fuentes and Trump's nominee to head the Justice Department's Office of Special Counsel, claimed to have "a Nazi streak."

The woke right's provocations are proving successful and will divide the Republican Party. Ted Cruz recently said the rising antisemitism on the right was like nothing he had never seen before in his life. Some senior GOP officials were quick to condemn the racist messages from the Young Republicans group, but others have followed Vice President J.D. Vance's lead in trying to deflect attention.

The vice president fell into the trap of anticipating their move. In some painful way, this is a good thing: it's always good to know the truth, even when the truth is horrible. Perhaps Vance thought he could postpone the decision to choose between the traditional conservative mainstream and, on the other hand, characters like Carlson, Greene or Owens until much closer to the election in which he plans to run in 2028.

But the woke right, which is rampant, is not willing to wait that long and did not allow him to keep it a mystery: it forced him to make a pronouncement. This public debate has been a victory for them, because it exposed the vice president and the way he acts under pressure... even if it is only the pressure of a poor, ignorant, disturbed teenager.

Incidentally, the woke right scored again with Roberts' statement and his condemnation of what he calls the "venomous coalition," which includes other MAGA Republicans, as well as intellectuals, activists and, most importantly, donors. These donors, from now on, should remember that in Roberts' eyes, Nick Fuentes' rhetoric is worth considering.

The Heritage Foundation's defense of Tucker Carlson, as well as the Turning Point USA event in Mississippi and the Telegram leak seem like a declaration of course. If this current ultimately gains momentum, it will hardly be able to defend Western civilization. Rather, it seems to serve only in its decline. Instead of upholding the values that gave meaning to conservatism, they seem determined to accompany the crusade of resentment.