The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts is walking back his defense of Tucker Carlson.
Carlson caused a major stir on the right last week when he decided to interview Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and Hitler fan. The interview was immediately flamed by conservative Jews, who condemned the ex–Fox News host’s decision to elevate Fuentes’s talking points.
Despite the opposition, Roberts released a video on X Thursday in support of Carlson and Fuentes, noting that while he disagreed with Fuentes’s beliefs, he did not believe that the “venomous” coalition “cancelling” the Christian nationalist Holocaust-denier had an appropriate reaction to the interview.
Since then, the Heritage Foundation has been embroiled in internal controversy, with at least one staffer exiting the institution over the mess. Roberts addressed the schism Wednesday.
“I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. Period. Full Stop,” the conservative think tank’s president told employees at an all-staff meeting, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
I feel like people need to think more deeply about cancellation and when it is and is not appropriate. Personally, I think it’s basically never appropriate for random powerless individuals to be canceled, no matter what they did. There’s just other, better ways to handle harmful behavior.
Where cancellation is useful is for powerful, influential people who are actively and unapologetically harming people on an ongoing basis and can’t be stopped through other means. I’m not super familiar with Fuentes but it seems like he fits more in this latter category.
Fuentes has explicitly compared interracial sex to beastiality. Fuentes has the opinions of the worst 4chan poster and would fully support the mass murder of Jewish and black people.