Properly understood, the political spectrum runs from Liberty on the right to tyranny on the left. If that simple truth is kept in mind, it clarifies much of the political rancor and debate, including what a fascist is and the controversy surrounding Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.

That said, the spectrum is obviously more complex than Liberty and tyranny. But when public schools miseducated people to believe that the defining characteristics of the Right are racism, bigotry, and jingoistic nationalism, it significantly distorts the picture. Those “qualities” are not unique to the Right.

Fuentes is an excellent example of someone who is not an advocate for Liberty as rational conservatives understand it, though he gets labeled “far Right” because of his noxious views on race, women, and culture. Our Thomas Gallatin aptly covered Carlson’s interview with Fuentes last Friday, and I won’t retread that ground.

Where I’ll begin instead is by saying that there is no need for any genuine conservative on the Liberty side of the political spectrum to defend Nick Fuentes or excuse any of the vile things he says or pretend that he is a fellow traveler in the movement to preserve our Constitutional Republic.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts waded into this controversy with a couple of statements about Fuentes and Carlson, and that in turn generated even more debate. Let’s try to sort that out.

First, an unusual full disclosure: The Patriot Post is a supporter of and longtime partner with The Heritage Foundation. The late Edwin J. Feulner, long-serving Heritage president, played an instrumental role with Mark Alexander in launching our humble operation.

Roberts posted a video with his thoughts, including saying that Heritage would not distance itself from Carlson, a “close friend,” and arguing that while he “abhors” some of the things Fuentes says, “canceling him is not the answer.”

There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours.

I want to put that to rest right now—here are my thoughts: pic.twitter.com/F8bcxBIqKI

— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) October 30, 2025

Roberts immediately took a lot of heat for not standing up more forcefully against Fuentes and for not even lightly rebuking Carlson for giving Fuentes an unchallenged platform and agreeing with some of his points. Roberts received criticism from Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and Chuck Schumer. So he took to X with another post, more specifically condemning Fuentes:

The Heritage Foundation and I denounce and stand against his vicious antisemitic ideology, his Holocaust denial, and his relentless conspiracy theories that echo the darkest chapters of history. We are disgusted by his musings about rape, women, child marriage, and abusing his potential wife.

Fuentes made grotesque analogies to try to cast doubt on the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust and has said “I think the Holocaust is exaggerated. I don’t hate Hitler.” Fuentes called for the death penalty for “perfidious Jews” and other non-Christians, stating that “when we take power, they need to be given the death penalty.”

Fuentes praised Hitler and in the Tucker interview said he is a “Stalin admirer.”

Fuentes stated that his goal is “total Aryan victory” and claimed that “black people should be in prison for the most part.” This is but a sampling of his vile daily rhetoric. …

Nick Fuentes’s antisemitism is not complicated, ironic, or misunderstood. It is explicit, dangerous, and demands our unified opposition as conservatives. Fuentes knows exactly what he is doing. He is fomenting Jew hatred, and his incitements are not only immoral and un-Christian, they risk violence.

Roberts had nothing to say about Carlson’s view that “Christian Zionists” like Cruz, George W. Bush, and Mike Huckabee have been “seized by this brain virus.” Carlson added, “I dislike them more than anybody.” If that bothered Roberts, he didn’t let on.

We were once generally Carlson fans, too, but I’m increasingly beginning to suspect that he was fired by Fox News because people there got tired of constantly reining in his “just asking questions” excuses for truly terrible people and ideas.

“Now is a time for choosing,” said Cruz. “Now is a time for courage. … If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and their mission is to combat and defeat ‘global Jewry,’ and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil.”

The Heritage president removed his longtime chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, for social media posts stoking upheaval at the think tank. Roberts also spent time in other venues clarifying his stance.

Essentially, his argument is the same as that made recently by our Caleb Nunes: Marginalizing people can make them extremists. Roberts said it “makes those ideas, lamentably and ironically, almost more cachet,” particularly among “disaffected young men.”

There is definitely truth to that, and it should prompt us to exercise caution and wisdom.

The word “cancel” took on a certain connotation when social media platforms were (and still are) silencing conservative voices. Those are platforms — the digital town square — where free speech ought to prevail. The ideas of a movement are different. Telling Nick Fuentes your hate-filled identity politics have no part with our Liberty movement is not cancel culture. It’s the stewardship of our movement.

Clearly, we and other Liberty-loving Americans want to recruit more, not fewer, people to what George Washington called our “noble” cause. That means holding fast to, well, noble things, like the vision of our Founders to create a Republic of Americans who cherish Liberty, limited government, and traditional values. Our job is to make those precious things more attractive than the vindictive bitterness of so much social media culture.

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Kevin Roberts fully apologized to Heritage staff members on Wednesday, saying, “I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. Period. Full stop.”