Last week, Ezra Klein invited John Ganz on his podcast to talk about the infighting taking place on the right over Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. Ganz identifies himself as a left-winger who seems to basically agree with Klein about almost everything. Maybe that narrowness of perspective explains why the two of them got some fundamental things wrong about the right and how people on the right feel about Zohran Mamdani.
I want to highlight this exchange in particular which the NY Times has edited together into a standalone video. [Klein's comments are in bold.]
You have a conservative movement that has embraced, as you said before, an extremely provocative tone — a tone of open bigotry in certain cases. The deal that the pro-Israel right thought it could make is: We can engage in a good deal of racist demagogy. We’re OK with it, especially, maybe, directed at Islam. But the line that we draw is when it happens to Jews, when it turns into antisemitism.
That is not a consistent position. That is an extremely self-defeating position...
[here the video jumps about 10 minutes later into the discussion]
And I am also extremely angry and frustrated with the pro-Israel and neoconservative right for looking the other way when it came to the racist takeover of the right.
Zohran Mamdani is a perfect example of this. What has happened in the wake of the giant controversies that exploded about Fuentes going on Tucker? The leaks of the chats. You have major figures on the right who are trying to redirect the conversation about antisemitism back to Zohran Mamdani. They’re trying to make him the hate figure.
Like: Can’t we all come together?
Yes. And so Ben Shapiro says: When has Tucker really criticized Zohran Mamdani?
Archival clip of Ben Shapiro: The number of times that Tucker Carlson has mentioned Zohran Mamdani on his show since Oct. 5 is once, and it was in the context of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson talking about the appeal of Zohran Mamdani.
Then Steve Bannon attacks Mark Levin. He says: These guys aren’t really MAGA.
And he has a point, because they weren’t with Trump from the beginning. And then he attacks Mamdani.
Archival clip of Steve Bannon: Mark Levin, instead of running your mouth, what are you doing in New York City? I tell you what we’re doing: We’re going to denaturalize Mamdani.
So it directs this energy of racial hate that seeks to expel a racial other against the safer target. That strategy is not working anymore. That ability to keep the coalition by saying: Be as racist as you want, be as hateful as you want — but against designated enemies who are OK.
People ask a rational question: Why are those people off the table?
And then the answer comes back: Well, because Christianity, or because Israel represents Western civilization — or some kind of rationalization like that. And the antisemites say: That makes no sense to us.
And in a certain sense: Yes. Why not? If the world is divided into these racial groups, and this is the way you are, and we practice the politics that’s based on that, why make an exception?
As you say, these guys started as opponents of Trump. In 2016, Shapiro wrote: "Trumpism breeds conspiracism; conspiracism breeds antisemitism. Trump is happy to channel support of antisemites to his own ends."
OK, so Ben Shapiro — not a dumb guy at that time.
There are all sorts of problems here, starting with the fact that Islam is not a race, it's a religion. There are plenty of people around the world who have concerns about Islam as a religion which seems to lead to some of the most extreme adherents around the world who've been responsible for terror attacks in every major country going back decades, including the worst terror attack in US history which took place (partly) in New York.
Of course most people who choose to follow Islam are not terrorists, but it is somewhat concerning when the city's mayoral candidate uses language like "globalize the intifada," accepts support from someone who says the US deserved 9/11 (and who openly admires Hamas and the Houthis). Mamdani himself refuses to condemn Hamas or suggest they should be disarmed. If some people find all that concerning, I don't blame them.
In contrast, anti-Semitism is not merely directed at a specific religion or certain adherents of a religion, but at an ethnic group. Religion is something you choose to follow but an ethnicity is something you are born into. And that's usually the line between things we agree are fine for people to criticize and those things we agree should not be criticized. It's fine to criticize beliefs people hold because they are malleable. It's not okay to attack an ethnic group because the people in that group didn't choose it and can't change it.
But putting all that aside, the example that John Ganz offers here is simply wrong. He suggests that Ben Shapiro and other figures on the right were trying to turn Mamdani into "the hate figure" and equates this with Islamophobia. The video even includes a clip of Ben Shapiro pointing out that Tucker Carlson hasn't criticized Mamdani enough.
Again, he's getting this completely wrong and by agreeing with him so is Ezra Klein.
The clip in question comes from Shapiro's interview with Megyn Kelly. I wrote about that here. Shapiro did reveal in that interview that he and Carlson had discussed targeting Mamdani but, not in the way that John Ganz is suggesting. Here's what Shapiro said:
Shapiro: A couple of days after Charlie's murder [Tucker] reached out and he called me and he said listen I know that we're at odds, we've been at odds for a number of reasons, mainly political. Again, on a personal level I'd go fishing with Tucker any time. The real question is, for me, I got into this business because I care about the ideas and I care about the ideals. And so when you are determining what is conservatism, what should the future of America look like and where do you draw the lines, those are the questions that I need to answer in my job.
For me, my business is really not about friendship. I have lots of friends, people who I love, with whom I disagree on politics and don't believe they should be leaders in the conservative movement for example. And that to me is the real question.
In any case, Tucker reached out he said you know we've had a bunch of disagreements, what if we could put those aside and align toward the DSA in particular is what he mentioned. And I said, you know Tucker, you're totally right let's do that, that would be great.
Kelly: The TSA?
Shapiro: The DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America
He then went on to read his actual text message to Carlson from his phone:
Thanks so much for calling. It means the world. It truly does. Should we do a show together talking about the DSA threat and orienting in the same direction? Happy to do whatever it takes to bring everyone back together for the fight that matters.
So Ezra Klein and John Ganz have put forward this idea that the right has been taken over by haters and Islamophobes who had a secret agreement not to be anti-Semitic. And they are using Shapiro and Carlson talking about joining up to attack Mamdani as if this is proof that he was a safe target for their racial animus because of his faith.
Only there wasn't any Islamophobia or racial animus in their exchange. None at all. What Tucker proposed was joining forces to take on the DSA, i.e. the socialist party of which Mamdani was a member. In fact, Mamdani's name wasn't even mentioned. The whole focus was on the "DSA threat." The issue wasn't Mamdani's religion it was his politics. Hatred of socialism is something that unties the right.
Now it is true that Shapiro did go on to criticize Tucker for not attacking Mamdani, but the point of that was also completely missed in Klein's conversation. The issue was that some on the right were arguing it was necessary to unify with everyone on the right in order to defeat the left. This became an excuse not to have any enemies on the right, including open racists like Nick Fuentes. In response to that, Shapiro was pointing out that, at least lately, Carlson seemed far more focused on attacking people on the right than people on the left. In fact he'd barely commented on Mamdani at all even after suggesting they focus on the DSA. He was basically calling Carlson a hypocrite. But Ganz and Klein seem to have completely missed all of this context in their rush to suggest the whole right has gone in for racism and Islamophobia.
One final point on this. Anyone who has been reading my posts on this site probably realizes that I'm firmly in Shapiro's camp on all of this and disagree with how Carlson has been conducting softball interviews for the past two years with people like Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes. And yet, if you listen closely to Carlson's interview he did make an argument against identity politics when talking to Fuentes. I said as much here:
Carlson said yesterday in his interview with Kelly that he had tried to present a case to Fuentes for treating people as individuals and not giving into racist categorization, which he equated with leftist identity politics. I rewatched the interview with Fuentes yesterday and Carlson did do that. He pushed those points at Fuentes around the midpoint of their discussion.
Again, I'm not a fan of Carlson's approach but if Klein and Ganz really cared about the details here they'd note that even Carlson wasn't adopting Fuentes hateful identity politics. He was, in his own limited way, arguing that all people are individuals and that any assigning of collective responsibility was both identity politics and racist.
Klein and Ganz really got this badly wrong and that matters, especially now that the NY Times is pushing their conversation out as a standalone video making this point. If either of them cared about accuracy, they would correct the record.
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