As Nazi sympathizer roils GOP, one MAGA senator's silence grows more telling by the day

For several weeks now, the American right has been embroiled in a bitter internal fight about Nazis and antisemitism.

Specifically, the fight has centered on a Nazi sympathizer who keeps finding his way into the orbit of influential conservatives: Nick Fuentes.

Fuentes, a far-right activist and Holocaust denier, has summed up his political worldview as “hating women, being racist, being antisemitic.” He once proclaimed that Jews “are responsible for every war in the world. It’s not even debatable at this point.”

Yet that repugnant belief system hasn’t blocked his access to a who’s who of the conservative movement — including Donald Trump, who dined with Fuentes and fellow anti-semite Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.

More recently, Fuentes appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show for a two-hour softball interview that featured a call for a “pro-white” movement to oppose the “organized Jewry” Fuentes believes is undermining American cohesion. Carlson’s interview elevated Fuentes’ profile, giving his extremist views an audience far beyond his usual following.

The interview also roiled the American right, setting off an ugly debate about who should be allowed inside the tent of the conservative movement. Among those warning against the mainstreaming of Fuentes was Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.

“Listen, this is America. He can have whatever views he wants,” Hawley told Jewish Insider.

“But the question for us as conservatives is: Are those views going to define who we are? And I think we need to say, ‘No, they’re not. No. Just no, no, no.’”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz went even further, saying: “If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil.”

The public condemnation of Fuentes and his beliefs from Hawley and other high-profile Republicans stands in stark contrast to Missouri’s other U.S. senator, Eric Schmitt.

Schmitt has yet to make any public comments about Fuentes, and his office did not respond to requests for comment.

There’s certainly no obligation for elected officials to speak out on every controversy, but Schmitt’s silence in particular is raising eyebrows.

First, he has never hesitated to attack antisemitism when it emanates from the left. Why the sudden reticence when it comes from the right?

Second, Schmitt is only a few weeks removed from a speech at the National Conservatism Conference where he argued the United States is not a nation built on ideas but on the legacy of “settlers and their descendants.”

Critics heard echoes in Schmitt’s speech of the old “blood and soil” nationalism that underpinned European fascist movements.

And third, over the summer Schmitt hired a staffer who was fired from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign for circulating a video featuring Nazi imagery. That same staffer previously praised Fuentes’ influence on young men, though he later apologized.

Silence doesn’t equal agreement, and Schmitt’s defenders might argue he shouldn’t dignify Fuentes with attention. Why give an extremist more oxygen?

That might be a persuasive if Schmitt had not already brushed shoulders with the ideological world Fuentes inhabits. Once those lines blur, clarity becomes a duty, not an option. Avoiding the issue allows extremists to imagine their views are tolerated within mainstream conservatism.

When the loudest message a leader sends is silence, it can be heard as permission.

Or maybe it’s just cowardice.

• Jason Hancock has spent two decades covering politics and policy for news organizations across the Midwest, with most of that time focused on the Missouri statehouse as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. A three-time National Headliner Award winner, he helped launch The Missouri Independent in October 2020. The Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.