Just as a “country without borders is not a country,” so it is that “the conservative movement also requires borders.” This was the general message delivered by conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro in a December 17 speech at the Heritage Foundation and again the next day in a speech at Turning Point USA’s Amerifest conference.
Shapiro’s other main point was more specific: Conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson is no conservative and must forthwith be expelled from the conservative movement. Shapiro’s message struck hard. Heritage President Kevin Roberts is backpedaling furiously after he defended Carlson’s decision to interview Nick Fuentes back in October, and dozens of key figures have left longtime positions at Heritage.
These recent speeches were only the latest in a series of escalating attacks by Shapiro against Carlson and reflect a growing schism between Shapiro’s definition of conservatism and what Mike Pence—whose organization has absorbed many of the Heritage defectors—has disparaged as “big government populism.”
The attacks by Shapiro and others on Carlson’s allegedly toxic version of populism are overshadowed by their parallel allegations of antisemitism. And dragged into this camp of populist antisemites, altogether and with or without justification, are a host of undesirables starting with Tucker Carlson and including Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate, Alex Jones, Candace Owens, and even Megyn Kelly.
Both of these allegations are serious. “Big government” is anathema to authentic conservatives, and antisemitism, assuming it is defined fairly, is immoral and unjustifiable. But Shapiro and his allies are not effectively coping with what they perceive to be a growing threat of antisemitism on the right. By demonizing Tucker Carlson and others, they may only make it worse.
Instead of offending the millions of people who are fans of Carlson and dismissing the additional millions who appreciate the chance to hear his opinions and the opinions of his guests, even if they don’t agree with what Carlson or his guests have to say, Shapiro and his fellow defenders of “conservatism” could offer reasoned rebuttals. An excellent example of a reasoned rebuttal to antisemitic conspiracy theories was published on 12/22 in Compact Magazine.
In this superb article, with the provocative title “The Return of the Jewish Question” (“JQ”), author David Azerrad systematically evaluates and dismantles every major presumption that underlies modern right-wing antisemitism.
To begin with, he correctly reminds us that extreme antisemitism remains “a 5/95 issue,” afflicting a minute percentage of people on the right. I’d estimate it’s more like a “1/99 issue,” but either way, they’re a small fringe. He goes on to say, “Most young men who pick up elements of the JQ are not antisemitic. They’re just noticing the Jewish footprint in American life, the same way they’ve noticed high black crime rates or the correlation between IQ and life outcomes.” Then he acknowledges there is “some basis in fact” to the overrepresentation of Jews in left-wing movements and historically among left-wing intellectuals.
But then Azerrad begins his rebuttal. He starts by explaining the undeniable appeal of “a luminously clear answer to the question of who bears the blame for our present maladies,” that antisemitism has the “extraordinary virtue of being genuinely transgressive, in a way that mocking other contemporary pieties is not…” and that “any attempt to go there will be met with accusations of antisemitism only enhances its appeal.” But, he points out, antisemitism’s “appeal and its partial basis in fact do not, however, mean that its fundamental premise is true.”
Azerrad then offers ample evidence to refute the fundamental premise that Jews are primarily responsible for the challenges facing struggling Americans. In opposition to left-wing Jews, Azerrad offers an impressive list of influential right-wing politicians and influencers who are Jewish and goes on to survey the nearly countless number of Jews who have made seminal contributions to science and medicine.
An even broader point Azerrad also emphasizes is the natural drift of democracies toward liberal policies, and that, therefore, the leftward trends challenging our society are an inherent consequence of its democratic structure. He writes, “Liberal democracies are subject to the gravitational pull of democracy (leveling egalitarianism) and the centrifugal pull of liberalism (individualism and the resulting centralization of power). There is something in the DNA of Western liberal democracies that inclines them toward egalitarian leveling, licentiousness, bureaucratization, and multiculturalism.”
Finally, Azerrad debunks the suggestion that Jews have manipulated American foreign policy, citing Michael Mazarr’s book Leap of Faith, which chronicles “the messianic conception of American power that had come to dominate the US national security community after the Cold War.” Anyone watching Bush Jr.’s swaggering speeches in the early 2000s can’t possibly think American adventurism had its sole origins in AIPAC lobbying. There were plenty of gentile neocons, and for better or for worse, they turned the American military loose in the Middle East and elsewhere without needing any help from AIPAC.
But what about Big Government Populism?
Probably the most distressing thing about Shapiro’s decision to make the schism in conservatism personal, with perhaps an inordinate focus on antisemitism, is how thoroughly that distracts from the genuine issues that give rise to right-wing populism. One of the more offensive tactics of the left is to claim that the phrases “colorblind” and “meritocracy” are just code words used by racists to foment racism. These tactics are offensive because these phrases have genuine meaning and represent ideals that anyone fighting for equal opportunity should support without having to deflect charges of being racist.
But Shapiro and other practitioners of conservatism are equally guilty of this offense if they claim that “globalist” or “financialization” are code words that antisemites use to foment antisemitism. Using this tactic will only fuel antisemitism, because it equates trends that are problematic and systemic—globalism and financialization—with antisemitism.
The only way to reconcile big government populism with conservatism is to acknowledge the problems with globalism and financialization and explore the solutions. That is the approach that will build coalitions instead of splintering them.
There’s a reason that Carlson, Fuentes, Tate, Jones, and others have earned audiences numbering in the millions, and it isn’t merely because they are rage-farming demagogues. It’s because they are confronting issues that Ben Shapiro and the rest of “conservatism” don’t want to touch.
In Shapiro’s speech at the Heritage Foundation, he mocks Carlson for asking, “Is the goal of our economy to serve the people who live here, or are the people who live here merely economic units in a global economy?” Shapiro calls this a false choice, claiming that to even ask this question puts us “on the road to collectivism.” He goes on to attack Carlson for criticizing self-driving trucks, high credit card fees, and layoffs.
Are there no shades of gray here? No nuance? Shall we blithely applaud the imminent unemployment of 3.5 million truck drivers? Exactly why is it that when savings accounts still deliver less than one percent annual interest, these same banks charge 28 percent interest on credit cards? And while layoffs are often inevitable, in recent decades we’ve seen big layoffs merely so major corporations could move operations into nations with no environmental safeguards or labor standards.
Does Ben Shapiro have no insight or knowledge into the consequences of financialization? Hedge funds consolidating one industry after another, then harvesting obscene profits from captive markets? Or the relentless drift of the American economy toward providing financial services while offshoring vital industries, including mining, steel, shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, and microprocessors—just to name a few of the big ones?
When Shapiro cites free enterprise, private property, and limited government as among the core principles conservatives should be fighting for, is he willing to make the distinction between competitive capitalism and its nefarious cousins—casino capitalism, crony capitalism, and monopoly capitalism? And how, precisely, are these perversions of capitalism to be controlled without some form of big government?
Shapiro claims the regulatory state has gotten out of control, and he’s right. But he’s also smart enough to know that excessive regulations empower financial special interests and monopolistic corporations. Why can’t Shapiro acknowledge that paradox and get into the weeds of sorting good regulations from bad regulations and explore how competition between corporations and between financial institutions can be restored in order to bring back affordability and upward mobility to a lost generation of American youth?
These are the issues that “big government populists” are confronting. When commentators as powerful as Ben Shapiro or as blandly opportunistic as the forgettable Mike Pence personally disparage the avatars of dissent, they accomplish nothing. They only polarize a movement that needs to stay united.
It isn’t enough to spout libertarian truisms about the virtues of capitalism and the necessity for limited government. That was Reagan’s line while he opened the floodgates of exploding federal budget deficits and national debt. That was Bush’s line while he catalyzed the growth of the surveillance state. Apparently, what constitutes “big government” is in the eye of the beholder.
People who listen to Tucker Carlson are looking for answers, and Ben Shapiro is not helping. To restore the movement, he can start by recognizing the problem, respecting the angst of millions of young Americans, and accepting that maybe, just maybe, the system has gotten so stacked against them that they really don’t have much control over their lives or their future.
And then, if he’s up to the challenge, Ben Shapiro can do the hard work of helping to hold together a political coalition that will embrace the good elements of “big government” investments in practical public works infrastructure that will lower the cost of living, alongside desperately needed deregulation that will force corporations to compete, further lowering the cost of living.
This is the choice that Ben Shapiro, the Heritage fellows, and every other right-of-center politician, pundit, and think tank wonk in America must face. They can selectively interpret our founding documents to please donors who have made billions off of financialization and globalization, or they can do the hard work of giving this country back to the people who built it. They can level personal attacks on rival pundits who exploit anxiety, or they can focus on reducing the sources of that anxiety. They can identify and promote policies that offer genuine hope to the hopeless, healing and reunifying the movement, or they can blow it up.
Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is also the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).
