Having just listened to Nick Fuentes’s Nov. 14 monologue on Rumble, “Ben Shapiro Hates You And Your Country,” I find some of his assertions to be problematic, but his overall argument is worth hearing.

I say this despite the fact that Fuentes and his supporters have said many offensive things about Jews, many of which have been catalogued by the New York Post, such as in its latest hit piece on Nov. 19, by its Gen Z booster Ricki Schlott. Some of the statements he’s made, as far as I can tell, were made for shock value or comedic effect. Others it’s clear Fuentes is more serious about, such as his demand that Zionists and other groups who aren’t loyal to the U.S. be expelled, in the unlikely situation that he and his supporters take power. I’ve also no doubt that many of his listeners are hardcore anti-Semites, though I doubt this judgment applies to all of them.

Fuentes has tapped into a certain anger, which I fully understand. Many younger people on the right are as disgusted as I am by how its present leaders have mismanaged the conservative movement. And these angry young people have noticed the role that Zionist benefactors and their venal stooges have played in pushing the conservative movement to the social left while exiling anyone standing in their way. Many of Fuentes’s fans have jumped to the conclusion that this has all been a “Jewish thing,” although obviously the majority of those involved in this derailment have not been Jewish. Not at all incidentally, there have been Jewish victims of this ongoing impulse to purge the movement, including me.

What I have taken away from Fuentes’s performances is that the demand for what he’s selling may be greater than his capacity to provide consistently reasoned thought. To his credit, he’s created a vast audience for his invectives but he often fails to develop his arguments properly. He’s also on the wrong track when he goes after his neoconservative bête noire Ben Shapiro for marrying an “Israeli, not an American.” So what! Does Fuentes hold it against President Trump for marrying an Austro-Slovenian, not a native born American? Would Fuentes be happier if Shapiro’s wife had been born here rather than in Israel? Somehow, I doubt it.

Fuentes also makes a big deal about the supposed fact that his adversary wants American “welfare” to go to Israelis, not Americans. The last time I checked, our megacities are awash in government welfare, while the Israelis are mainly receiving military aid from the United States. Fuentes also rages against Shapiro’s advice to Americans unhappy with the political radicalization of their cities or states to move to more congenial regions of the country. In his defense, Fuentes has a strong traditionalist argument on his side, namely that a government that respects its people’s desire to maintain family ties and roots has a responsibility to consider that situation when constructing social and economic policies. Members of families that have lived for generations in the same communities have a strong moral claim to remain rooted. It is a claim that conservatives (among whom I would not include Shapiro) should instinctively rally to support.

The question is whether we should apply this standard to today’s large metropolitan areas, largely populated by immigrants and transitory residents. Should we view the population of metropolitan Atlanta, which teems with recently arrived residents, many of them coming from the Third World, the same way we would the inhabitants of Georgia’s mountain towns in the northwestern part of the state? Although some large cities have intergenerational residents, these places are increasingly made up of people from anywhere. Urging those who reside in New York City to move to more congenial surroundings if they don’t like Mamdani’s politics is a bit different from trying to uproot a Swedish settlement in rural Iowa or Georgia. Although far from being a devotee of Shapiro’s, I find his advice in this case to be sound. 

Fuentes is serving an important role, but he does so too often as a shock jock. Although Shapiro has made statements as shocking as those that I’ve heard coming from Fuentes, particularly when he called for the expulsion of Israeli Palestinians and spoke favorably about the removal of 15 million ethnic Germans from their homes in Eastern Europe after World War II, he usually marshals his facts more carefully. I’m naturally excluding from my judgment Shapiro’s tear against Fuentes and his labeling of Tucker Carlson as a “coward” for interviewing an “anti-Semite.” In his neocon rage, Shapiro sounds every bit as choleric as Mark Levin or John Podhoretz.

 Notwithstanding his off-putting rapid speaking style, Shapiro does improvise coherent arguments. Especially in a recent discussion with a well-prepared Evangelical pastor, he held his own, arguing for a Jewish interpretation of Jesus and his teachings. Clearly, the other discussant was better armed with biblical quotations, but Shapiro did well while venturing into someone else’s wheelhouse.

Please note that I’m not making invidious comparisons as an academic snob. One can’t compete effectively with an ideological enemy unless one musters equal intellectual power. The fact that the other side has wealthy patrons and access to the Murdoch media doesn’t mean Fuentes can forego cultivating intellectual rigor. In fact, given his position as an outcast, he should be particularly careful about throwing out wild charges. And above all, he shouldn’t have given any indication of denying the Holocaust, a no-no that opens cans of worms a wise person would leave closed!

It would be unfair of me not to mention, after having laced into Fuentes, that I find him to be more sympathetic than Shapiro. He has created a podcast empire entirely on his own, without the big money from the Zionist backers Shapiro has at his disposal. Fuentes also comes across in podcasts as more spontaneous and certainly less arrogant than Shapiro. There is a boyish charm that Fuentes exudes even when he is putting his foot in his mouth. And at least, unlike Shapiro, he is not the supposedly infallible voice of Conservative Inc. serving warmed-over party dogma. For me, this is an indisputable plus for Fuentes in any comparison with his adversary.

Significantly, Fuentes could make a carefully documented case that neocons apply to Israel and gentile nations, including the U.S., a glaring double standard. His opponents have not been exactly reticent about this practice, and it should be easy to find quotations that show what Fuentes wants us to see. If asked to pick my favorite example, I would give the nod in a crowded field to the words of Douglas Feith, a Jewish ultranationalist and later foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush, speaking in Jerusalem in 1997. In his memorable oration, “Reflections on Liberalism, Zionism, and Democracy,” Feith tells us that the world is divided into “universal nations” and “ethnic states.” He expresses annoyance that there are “those who contend that Israel like America should not be an ethnic state but rather ‘a state of its citizens.’” Apparently, the Jewish state was meant to be an ethnic one, but the U.S., by its nature and destiny, was to be a universal state, open to everyone irrespective of ethnicity. It seems that, according to Feith, it’s OK to work toward preserving ethnic unity in Israel while pursuing the opposite position in the United States. 

On another related note, although Shapiro concedes that white Christian males in the U.S. have been subject to horrible discrimination at the hands of our managerial state, corporations, universities, etc., he emphatically rejects the idea that this group should organize based on a collective identity. Apparently, such an action would smack of the kind of identitarian politics Shapiro believes Americans should reject. My question: Would Shapiro apply the same standard to AIPAC and other explicitly Zionist organizations in the U.S.? Just asking!