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The bonfire of the New Right’s vanities
The Spectator World ^ | Wednesday, November 12, 2025 | Freddy Gray

Posted on 11/13/2025 2:23:33 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum

The grandstanding over Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes is exhausting

The American right has a problem: it can’t stop talking about itself. Commentators, academics and journalists of what used to be called a “conservative” persuasion all tend to think that their ideas are tremendously interesting. And, in the way a difficult child becomes argumentative when he or she isn’t getting attention, they fight. They fear irrelevance and so they fall out with each other and take sides in order to prove to themselves that they have something worth saying. Things become messy and nasty and everybody gets carried away – usually in the hope of grabbing their own slice of an all-too easily distracted online audience. (Why else am I writing this?)

Today we see the quarrelsome tendency of the so-called “New Right” at work in the squabbles over Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Kevin Roberts, Nick Fuentes and whether it’s OK to praise Hitler.

But we also saw it six years ago, in the so-famous-it’s-now-largely-forgotten debate between David French and Sohrab Ahmari in 2019. This was a curious clash between two highly intelligent men which took place in the months before a global pandemic shook the world. The French vs Ahmari argument was over big ideas: the First Amendment and the culture wars, jurisprudence and liberty, the free market and nationalism, technocracy, Catholicism and family values. The title of the actual debate, hosted at the Catholic University of America and moderated by the New York Times’s Ross Douthat, was “What is Integralism now?” (Put that question in your Chestertonian pipe and smoke it, you beta cuck.)

It was also about manners. Should conservatives keep upholding the importance of civility and lose? Or be as vicious as the left and win? Ahmari, representing the emergent “post-liberal” consensus, was on Team...

(Excerpt) Read more at thespectator.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bloggers; concerntroll; concerntrolling; spammingfr
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1 posted on 11/13/2025 2:23:33 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
"keep your friends close, your enemies closer"

"You Will Know Them by Their Fruits"

2 posted on 11/13/2025 2:30:06 PM PST by RckyRaCoCo (there are demons out there, and they look like people)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I found his opening list of squabblers surprisingly uninteresting. If and when one of them gets off his butt and runs for office somewhere, maybe then I will peruse their position on the issues.


3 posted on 11/13/2025 2:35:27 PM PST by hinckley buzzard ( Resist the narrative. )
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

It is a DISTRACTION. Tucker chased ghosts, wgenthe left should be the 100 percent target
It is tiresome.


4 posted on 11/13/2025 2:45:54 PM PST by cowboyusa ( YESHUA IS KING OF AMERICA AND HE WILL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE HIM!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Tucker’s gone the same way as Glen Beck.


5 posted on 11/13/2025 2:46:37 PM PST by maddog55 (The only thing systemic in America is the left's hatred of it!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
What an amusing post. The "new Right" is a new talking point, as "conservatives" like Bill Kristol endorsed Mandami, as "conservatives" like the Cheneys endorsed Kamala Harris, and more.

All in all, the "Democrat-adjacent" faux conservatives are revealing themselves. To be for Democrats, when actual conservatives oppose them.

Remember, to the American Left, Obama was a "conservative." [ Washington Post, 22 November 2019. ]

6 posted on 11/13/2025 2:47:02 PM PST by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Minor people in the conservative movement caterwalling about, I would not put Ben Shapiro in the group of tucker et all


7 posted on 11/13/2025 2:50:11 PM PST by markman46 (engage brain before using keyboard!!!)
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To: Worldtraveler once upon a time

The Left smells defeat and now doubles down on destroying MAGA. (Like they did the Tea Party) As always it starts by in-house squabbling. No purity tests or virtue hoarding please


8 posted on 11/13/2025 2:54:38 PM PST by griswold3 (Truth, Beauty and Goodness)
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To: Worldtraveler once upon a time
All in all, the "Democrat-adjacent" faux conservatives are revealing themselves.

Tucker Carlson is one of those people. You look at his history and he has always swayed in the breeze.

About the only thing he has been consistent on in the decades he has been dancing for a paycheck is abortion. He is against it.

Which is not a bad thing to be consistent on.

9 posted on 11/13/2025 2:57:11 PM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (It's like somebody just put the Constitution up on a wall …. and shot the First Amendment -Mike Rowe)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Isn’t Freddy Gray a supposed right wing Brit? Who also is incredibly obnoxious.


10 posted on 11/13/2025 2:57:12 PM PST by Dartoid
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear

Pointless distractions and loser pundits. Total war on the left must be the 100 percent foccus.


11 posted on 11/13/2025 2:59:05 PM PST by cowboyusa ( YESHUA IS KING OF AMERICA AND HE WILL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE HIM!)
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To: griswold3
--- "The Left smells defeat and now doubles down on destroying MAGA. (Like they did the Tea Party) As always it starts by in-house squabbling. No purity tests or virtue hoarding please."

I think that an accurate assessment, applicable also to Europe as "mere citizens" dare to buck the self-appointed political elite. While it takes time, it surely seems "the Left smells defeat."

12 posted on 11/13/2025 2:59:21 PM PST by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear
--- "...always swayed in the breeze."

One of the things so many of the "talking heads" does is assess the "winds" and try to go with them in order to remain a "talking head."

Being skeptical, that one comes across a "talking head" is enough to warrant being suspicious of one.

13 posted on 11/13/2025 3:02:12 PM PST by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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Neither Carlson (the offspring of a left-wing journalist himself) nor Fuentes are on the right.


14 posted on 11/13/2025 3:06:38 PM PST by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is goings to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: maddog55
I'm just waiting for Tucker and his bowl full of Cheetos.

15 posted on 11/13/2025 3:09:14 PM PST by Governor Dinwiddie ( O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious, and his mercy endures forever. — Psalm 106)
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To: Worldtraveler once upon a time
Yep.

I trust none of them completely. I look though to see where they are consistent. That, I generally find, is where you see the true person. The core value if you will.

But most of the dancing monkeys are just doing it for the paycheck. In fact most people in politics are doing it for the paycheck.

You can tell that once again by watching them before and after they decided to be a member of our parliament of whores.

Jasmine Crockett is a fine example of this. Everything about her is now phony. There have been several on the Republican side who were the same. Oh, sure they talked a good game but they never seemed to quite deliver and that never really seemed to bother them.

16 posted on 11/13/2025 3:12:59 PM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (It's like somebody just put the Constitution up on a wall …. and shot the First Amendment -Mike Rowe)
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To: Olog-hai

^^This^^


17 posted on 11/13/2025 3:18:07 PM PST by griswold3 (Truth, Beauty and Goodness)
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To: Worldtraveler once upon a time

Trump broke P’sOS like Kristol, the Cheneys, Michael Medved, French, Charlie Sykes, Goldberg, & most guys at National Review to be sure. But they were never conservatives to begin with. They were squishy assholes long before Trump came down the escalator.

Now Fuentes and Tucker think the whole party should be revisionist historians and anti-Israel like they are. I call Bullcrap. And Ben acts like he’s a pro-Trump stalwart from the old days (also BS)

Let’s count up a few conservative folks who actually jumped on the Trump wagon early and often - even as he claimed to be the best friend Israel ever could have (and has proved it since):

Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Duncan Hunter, Sheriff Joe, Rudy, Sarah Palin, Jeff Sessions, Huckabee, Tom Coburn, Edwin Meese, Paul Lepage, Michelle Malkin, Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo, Dinesh Dsouza, Michael Savage....

Pretty good list. Missing from the list are Tucker (whose private emails later showed he hated Trump) and Ben Shapiro (who vowed to never vote for him in 2016). The two can go f**k themselves and quit causing a rift.


18 posted on 11/13/2025 3:52:38 PM PST by pissant ((Deport 'em all))
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To: pissant
Now Fuentes and Tucker think the whole party should be revisionist historians and anti-Israel like they are. I call Bullcrap.

Well apparently whether or not Hitler was wonderful and should be admired is something reasonable people can disagree on...been told that more than once here. No more significant as disagreeing on what topping to put on your pizza - we can still be friends and dialog like rationale adults with those who openly and repeatedly praise Hitler.... "Why isn't it okay to talk to people you may disagree with on some things?"

19 posted on 11/13/2025 4:36:19 PM PST by Republican Wildcat
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To: cowboyusa
Pointless distractions and loser pundits. Total war on the left must be the 100 percent foccus.

Can we please talk about Epstein and Trump.

20 posted on 11/13/2025 6:04:51 PM PST by AndyJackson
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