The Vindication of Nick Fuentes

It pains me to write the following sentence, nor did I ever think I would: Nick Fuentes was right. And no, this is not an April Fools joke.

Not about the racism and antisemitism of course; nor about women, whom he seems unable, and conspicuously unwilling, to court. Neither on blaming Israel and “the Jews,” as if they all share a cohesive hive mind, for absolutely everything in childish tantrums; nor on J.D. Vance and Tucker Carlson, whom he admonishes as CIA-Palantir spooks — or something to that effect. There are a number of other things, and too many to list. But I shall spare the reader: You probably know all the areas where the white nationalist streamer is clearly wrong, and more importantly, morally repugnant in his anti-universalism. On the Iran War, however, Fuentes has been vindicated. At least more than everyone else on the right.   

Credit where it’s due, I first realized this while listening to an episode of the Dimes Square subculture podcast Red Scare last month. In their usual transgressive style, the ladies were referring to what we’re doing in Iran as a “ZOG war” (Zionist-occupied government war). I will not be performing the expected condemnation ritual of “ZOG,” because it’s Red Scare, which toes the line — oft-questionably, to be sure — between genuine argumentation and irony. 

But here’s how I read that remark: Not so much as virulent antisemitism — in fact, Red Scare is often quite philosemitic — but as a satiric, online-right way of stating that this war primarily serves the interests of Israel (at least as perceived by the Netanyahu government and pro-Israel hawks), and not America. They pointed out that Fuentes was right about how President Trump wouldn’t be truly America First and would lead us into war with Iran. Dasha Nekrasova, the more authentically populist of the co-hosts (and a former Bernie voter), said that with the war, she was done with “plan-trusting.” 

That makes sense. None of this was ever part of “the plan,” at least as commonly understood, and especially for those who were brought over to MAGA from the left, apoliticism, and the like. Trump rose to prominence in 2016 as the only person on the GOP debate stage willing to call out the Iraq War, in strong terms, for what it was: an utter and calamitous mistake. Taking aim at Jeb Bush, who was initially reluctant to expose his brother’s blunder, Trump delivered a forceful rebuke of how we’d needlessly spilled our nation’s blood and treasure: “Obviously, it was a mistake. George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.” 

In 2024, once again, Trump delivered a clearly anti-war message, cozying up not so much to Fox News propagandists like Mark Levin and Sean Hannity (at least not publicly), but to the single most prolific isolationist voice on the right — Carlson — and choosing New Right star J.D. Vance, with a track record of being skeptical of foreign intervention, as his vice president. He also brought anti-war Democrats such as RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard into his new coalition. It was precisely then that Trump appeared at his best, as a Great Man of History, as someone — however fallen — who could take charge of the Washington Swamp and employ his executive authority to re-center the average American, and not permanent pro-war interests. 

There was also the sense, unlike in the first administration, where establishment Republicans remained in large numbers, that this time, it would be different. That with Trump in “full control,” we would get something actually beyond neoconservatism. 

As Christopher Caldwell wrote for the cover story of The Spectator’s U.S. edition, “Trumpism was a movement of democratic restoration. At its center was the idea of the deep state. In recent decades, selective universities created a credentialocracy, civil-rights law endowed it with a system of ideological enforcement, the tax code entrenched a class of would-be philosopher-kings in the nonprofit sector, and civil-service protections armed government bureaucrats to fight back against any effort at democratic reform.” Notice Caldwell’s use of “was” to refer to Trumpism, and not “is.” 

Getting to the point, Caldwell wrote further, “Trump has escaped other predicaments of his own making, but there is something different about this one. The attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of his own base, so diametrically opposed to their reading of the national interest, that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project.” The chasm between Trump and Trumpism, in other words, has grown far too wide. And Trumpism, the New Right, whatever you want to call it, is dead, at least for now, as a governing agenda. 

It was not always necessarily destined to be this way. The American Conservative’s executive director Curt Mills recently told Ross Douthat on his New York Times podcast that, for the first few months of Trump 2.0, with the “revolution” of the New Right underway and differently-minded people in the administration, it seemed as if we really were getting something different. Mills has his biases, of course — there’s a way in which you can see whatever you want in Trump — but he’s more right than wrong. Recall that Trump and Vance tag-teamed Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky for his refusal to negotiate with the Russians, depending ungratefully on a stream of U.S. funding, assuming it would be business as usual as during the Biden administration. And speaking in Riyadh a few months later, Trump even delivered an explicit condemnation of the folly of neoconservatism, liberal NGOism, and nation-building. 

Oh, well. 

Because Trump is not ideological and works based on personal relationships, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Benjamin Netanyahu, and others have all had the opportunity to cozy up to him, deal-make, and argue their case. And they’ve won. (In a sense, it’s difficult to blame Netanyahu, who is at least advancing his own view of his nation’s interests, as opposed to Christian Zionists like Graham and Cruz who appear eschatologically devoted to another modern nation-state in a way that forms their very politics, totally at odds with the views of Catholics, and most Americans, for that matter.)

In fact, contrary to the standard progressive-liberal criticism of Trump, his problem may not be that he doesn’t listen enough, but that he listens too much and is able to be easily swayed. 

So, we’re now fighting yet another Middle Eastern war, speaking of deploying ground troops, totally anathema to Trumpism. There is still hope for negotiations and an eventual cessation of hostilities — yes — and Vance may be the one to lead them and Trump may be more willing to exit than his Republican predecessors, but the point is that we should have never started this war, and in any case, should have gotten out much quicker. 

At the beginning of the war, I wrote in RealClear Politics that while it spelled the death of America First, it must at least not be in vain. I maintained that Trump is a man more remarkable than the 43^rd president, and that he had limited time to try and get out with some sort of deal. But it’s hard not to think, with each passing day of this war, that it is ever more in vain. That the president is treating the fate of Tehran in the same callous manner he did his now-shuttered Taj Mahal Casino — or at least, allowing the Israelis to do so, who in early March struck oil refineries in and around the capital city, unleashing acid rain on 10 million people, tantamount to chemical warfare. As for the supposed popular uprising that was to come in Iran, though the regime is vastly unpopular (or at least was prior to a foreign attack on their country), we have yet to see anything. 

Pope Leo reminded us on Sunday, at the beginning of Holy Week:

This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.  He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).

The deep irony is that Trumpism is largely in alignment with that statement, whilst the president is not. It’s the very sentiment echoed by the Holy Father, or some less explicitly religious and more “pragmatic” version thereof, which brought so many into Trump’s movement from all different backgrounds and walks of life. The pope’s statement is one I, as an agnostic atheist of Iranian ancestry, heed and see as the very best the Church has to offer. It’s a shame, then, that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked about the pope’s words, was forced to conjure the following response: “I don’t think there is anything wrong with our military leaders or with the president calling on the American people to pray for our service members and those who are serving our country overseas. In fact, I think it’s a very noble thing to do.” True as it may be that it is noble to pray for soldiers who aren’t crafting foreign policy but rather risking their lives to serve, Leavitt’s tone was one of scorn for the Holy Father, and clearly indicated circumlocution. 

Some, however, disagree that Trumpism would ever be in alignment with a version of the sentiment expressed by the pope. Like Michael Tracey, who maintains that MAGA “was never” anti-war; and Compact’s editor, Matthew Schmitz, who argues that Trump “was always” an Iran hawk. But these analyses, while well-researched, miss the point. Trump’s first term saw no new foreign wars, and it was on that record that he ran in 2024.

Trump, while he might have made some hawkish statements in the past, some as far back as the 1980s (Trump says everything, in case you haven’t noticed), clearly ran as an anti-war candidate, if there ever was one. That is why Glenn Greenwald was on his team; while the Cheneys, the staff of The Bulwark, and other Bush-era Republicans were on Team Harris. And of course, there is another group of people — Old Right, pro-Israel donors and powerbrokers who were not that excited about Trump and would have preferred Ron DeSantis — who realized Trump would win the primary and perhaps the general election. They put their might behind him to shape incentives, helping make Trump 2.0, rather paradoxically, into maybe America’s most pro-Israel presidential administration yet and, in a sense, not all that distant from Republican administrations past not only in the realm of foreign policy but also economics, regulation, etc. 

Nevertheless, it was Trump who started the war with Iran. He is ultimately responsible. There’s no way that’s anything other than the abandonment of Trumpism, a military operation whose immediate primary beneficiary so clearly appears to be another country, and a signal that things, in a grand sense, may continue as they are — for the time being. And so today, we find that some of the most enthusiastic supporters of this war are precisely those who were against Trump from the beginning (Jeb Bush) or didn’t ever want to see him back in office, and are actively leading a think tank against more Trumpist nerve centers like Heritage (Mike Pence). 

In a larger sense, Trump, in all his unorthodoxy, has indeed opened the possibility for change, for something new. That is a good thing. But the tragedy is that we may find he alone will not deliver it, or that what he will deliver is new in some sense (aesthetics, style, whatever) but not substantively new enough for a nation whose economy, foreign policy, and societal order are in deep crisis. 

Now we come to Tucker Carlson. While he speaks for the anti-war wing of MAGA (the Trumpism Caldwell writes about) and essentially acts in many respects as a popular philosopher of that movement, he was wrong in that he believed Trump would prevent America’s endless cycle of foreign entanglements. Carlson’s own beliefs and perspectives, especially around the tragedy of war and the necessity of peace, are largely commendable. Not that Harris would have been a better option per se — we’ll never know, and the former Veep will likely never be president — but campaigning for Trump clearly hasn’t produced the results Carlson, and the New Right properly understood, would have wanted to see. 

When the Iran War broke out, Carlson, though an Episcopalian in upbringing, tweeted the following prayer from the Anglican-turned-Catholic theologian John Henry Newman: 

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one God; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

While Carlson has since opined on the war, quite prominently so, the fact that before he’d said much else or released a podcast episode, he chose to tweet this prayer is indicative of the tragedy of Trumpism. What else could Carlson, who spent years defending Trump, campaigned for Trump, and emerged as one of his key on-and-off allies, do now but pray for the “strength of love” and unity of all peoples, under God? A dignified, solemn response, indeed. But not one of a victorious man. 

That leaves Fuentes’ perspective to consider. Before the 2024 election, Fuentes — a figure neither dignified nor solemn — refused to support Trump. He argued that nothing would change with Trump, that it would be the same old order, essentially save the “based” and “red-pilled” populist messaging.  

I’ve been vociferously opposed to what Fuentes stands for, and unless he drastically changes and does a full 180 on many issues, I intend to continue viewing him negatively. Reality is reality, however. An apparently 2019 clip of Fuentes’ shows him saying, “I hope we don’t go down that path [war with Iran], for the country’s sake. For the show’s sake, if that happened, we would have so much good content” and that he would be “Charlie Kirk level, the voice of a generation speaking out against a war with Iran.” That has undoubtedly happened. 

During the 2024 election, Fuentes also stated that for a year, he’d been arguing Israel was going to go into Lebanon, try to annex Gaza, and get into a war with Iran. Back then, he was already saying that he was vindicated. That was premature. Today, with the exception of Gaza (if all goes according to plan), it’s not.  

As of now, Fuentes is taking aim at MAGA altogether, from Mark Levin (though that makes a great deal of sense, and whom the president bizarrely said nobody “MAGA” could go against), but also Megyn Kelly, who encouraged people to still vote Republican. “No matter how much you complain about Israel or Trump, as long as you are telling people to continue voting Republican every time then you are part of the problem,” Fuentes fired back. 

I hope “the plan” works out. I hope, sincerely, that I am wrong. That, in the end, Trump truly is a genius, a master dealmaker, a holder of secrets we are not privy to, and that Fuentes is not vindicated. It’s a profound indictment not of the Old Right or neocons or Netanyahu — they all wanted this — but of the New Right and its bet on Trump, should I be correct. It’s also an indictment of myself, who’d been preaching to my friends on the Democrat-voting left that they were misguided not to see Trump as a force against war, needless bloodshed, and global instability at the hands of an overly adventurist America. 

But there is only so much hoping can achieve.

Either way, Fuentes’ currently pinned tweet is “I told you so.”