I Have Worked With the Heritage Foundation — but Embracing Antisemitism Will Doom America

The Heritage Foundation is the country’s leading conservative think tank. President Donald Trump’s last campaign platform was partly dreamed up in its sleek Capitol Hill headquarters. Thousands of young people, myself included, have gained valuable knowledge and experience via Heritage’s various programs. What it does and says matters.

And what it did and said last week endangers not just the Jewish community — but our country’s social fabric.

That might come as a surprise. After all, Heritage recently launched its laudable Project Esther, a national strategy to “combat the scourge of antisemitism in the United States.” 

Heritage’s detailed blueprint was published following an onslaught of anti-Jewish violence and rhetoric after the October 7th massacre, particularly from the anti-Israel far-left and those who endorse Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups.

Among Project Esther’s aims are to “erode support for antisemitic behavior, expose the individuals and organizations supporting such conduct to discourage it, and laud the individuals and organizations effectively countering it to encourage others to join.”

Last week, though, Heritage incentivized precisely the opposite behavior.

In an on-camera statement shared on X, Heritage President Kevin Roberts told followers: “We will always defend truth, we will always defend America, and we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains, and, as I have said before, always will be, a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

The statement was posted less than 48 hours after Carlson, who began his career at the think tank, took much-deserved criticism for holding a softball interview with far-right podcaster, antisemite, and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

Responding to widespread concerns about the interview, Roberts complained of a “venomous coalition attempting to cancel” Carlson, adding that the right should not “cancel its own people.” Christians, he said, “can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic.”

But it is false to conflate the Carlson-Fuentes interview and its overt anti-Jewish rhetoric with mere “critique” of Israel, and it is equally dishonest to suggest in turn that the speakers are mere “Israel critics.”

Both Carlson and Fuentes crossed that line long ago — and that is precisely why Heritage’s continuing proximity to them is a problem.

This is not new territory for Carlson. My organization, CAMERA, which takes no stances on partisan political issues, has outlined the ex-Fox News host’s grim pattern of appeasing anti-Jewish figures and myths.

In August, Carlson uncritically platformed an Orthodox nun who framed Hamas as a legitimate “resistance” organization, fawned over an antisemitic “poet,” and promoted laughably flimsy historical claims such as the idea that Palestinians, rather than Jews, were the first people to become Christians.

Then there was Carlson’s cozy chat with Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac, who blamed a relative collapse in Bethlehem’s Christian population on Israel rather than the Palestinian Authority’s misrule.

Carlson has also lately alluded to baseless conspiracy theories that Israel was behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination (Carlson has since been working with Kirk’s Turning Point USA.)

Carlson’s decision to play chummy with Fuentes, therefore, is nothing new.

Fuentes, an Internet figure with hundreds of thousands of followers, has called Adolf Hitler “really f***ing cool,” and said that if his movement gained power, it would execute “perfidious Jews.”

In 2019, Fuentes used an analogy of the Cookie Monster baking cookies in an attempt to deny the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. His followers, known as the “Groypers,” routinely expressed their support for Fuentes by using the acronym “RKD4NJF,” which stands for “Rape, kill, and die for Nicholas Joseph Fuentes.” Carlson can hardly claim plausible deniability over Fuentes’s chilling record.

Fuentes used the podcast appearance with Carlson to argue that “organized Jewry in America” was a “big challenge.”

Fuentes did not level any criticism toward a particular Jewish organization or campaign group, just “Jewry” as a whole. Carlson, once known for his abrasive interview style, failed to push back against Fuentes, but instead joined in by charging that Christian Zionists had a “brain virus” and that he “dislike[d] them more than anybody.”

Kevin Roberts’ claim that his movement must “focus on its political opponents” simply does not align with his claim that truth must prevail.

If truth is a central value, Roberts should recognize Tucker and Fuentes — who are enemies of the truth — as “opponents.”

If antisemitism were something worth opposing, Roberts should speak out against it wherever in the media and political ecosystem it arises.

Some may perceive Roberts’ remarks as a fleeting public relations blip. Unfortunately, they reveal something more sinister.

As memories of the Second World War wane and libels regarding Israel are showcased daily by the mainstream media, antisemitism as an organized movement is ripe for a renaissance in the West. Too many major institutions, on both the Left and Right, are now either afraid to call it out — or are increasingly sympathetic to it.

D.C. policy wonks do not necessarily represent the views of ordinary people, but they are important political and cultural arbiters, suggesting to people what is acceptable, with potentially huge consequences. If these influencers are beginning to warm to the “Groypers” and their apologists, they must be called out and confronted, whatever their historically lofty stature.

Furthermore, we cannot simply ignore Carlson and Fuentes as Internet trolls. Both have huge followings, in part because they spread easily digestible lies about Israel and Jews. This needs robust pushback by all of us who genuinely care about “defending truth,” or our media and politics will be doomed to failure.

As Harvard professor Ruth Wisse notes: “Antisemitism is not about the Jews, but about those who organize politics against them. And any society governed by that ideology is doomed.” We must help Washington heed this warning.

​Georgia L. Gilholy is a member of the Communications Team at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.