We should not be giving the alt-right a platform
Why Nick Fuentes on Tucker Carlson scares me
Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
Perhaps it was naive of me, but I experienced genuine shock upon coming across clips from an interview with Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, aired on Tucker Carlson’s YouTube channel on Monday, Oct. 27 2025.
For those of you who are fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with Nick Fuentes, he is a white nationalist, anti-semitic media figure who has been sidelined from mainstream Republican media—until now. He has, according to The Texas Tribune, praised Hitler, questioned whether the Holocaust happened, and “compared the six million killed by the Nazis to cookies being baked in an oven.” He would like our government to be run under a “Catholic Taliban rule,” and has been “vocal about his disdain for women, Muslims, the LGTBQ+ community, and others.”
Up until recently, his viewpoints and viewers—while they were certainly neither invisible nor silent—were largely sidelined and kept out of the mainstream. However, as reported by Chicago Sun Times, since the death of Charlie Kirk, “Fuentes…has gained more than 100,000 followers on X and Rumble, and his podcast reached the No. 1 trending spot on Spotify before it was removed from the platform in mid-October for violating its hate speech policies.” Additionally, “His first ‘America First’ show that aired after Kirk’s death collected more than 2.5 million views on Rumble.” He has been invited to and appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s “Infowars,” Candace Owens’s podcast, and Dave Smith’s “Part of the Problem.”
The ongoing genocide the Israeli government has perpetrated against Palestinians has been exploited by alt-right commentators like Fuentes, who have gained prominence in their criticism of continued U.S. support of Israel; however, instead of simply criticizing the actions of the Israeli government, they simultaneously push forward conspiracy theories that Jewish people run the country, and, according to The Guardian, Fuentes “said on the podcast that ‘organized Jewry’ held outsize influence” in the United States. His blatant anti-semitism and Holocaust denial have become normalized in online spaces. His vitriol has suddenly become welcome in the mainstream, as conservatives seem to become increasingly split between establishment and a growing segment of radicals who openly embrace labels of “Nazi” and “fascist.”
I am highly concerned about this reality. Fuentes has, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), been “repeatedly banned” from various platforms, including “YouTube, Twitter (reinstated in 2024), Reddit, TikTok, RedNote, DLive, Spotify, Venmo, Stripe, Clubhouse as well as numerous others.” Nonetheless, clips from his podcast, which is primarily hosted on Rumble, frequently appear on other social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. The comment sections of these clips are exactly how you might imagine them: filled with conspiracy theorists, hateful language, and “edgy” attempts at humor. Additionally, his appearance on the Tucker Carlson podcast has been circulated online, and has allowed him a presence in online spaces he might not otherwise have; the podcast episode, which is over two hours long, has already obtained 5.3 million views on YouTube.
We cannot normalize Fuentes’ ideology. We cannot platform people who consistently spew hateful and offensive rhetoric—rhetoric which has no basis in reality. In giving him an opportunity to share his ideas as if they are just as valid as any other political opinion, we give him and his followers an opening to creep into the mainstream and recruit more people to their cause.