by Jacob G. Hornberger

November 6, 2025

As I have stated in the past regarding the noted young, now-deceased, right-wing figure Charlie Kirk, I don’t keep up with occurrences in the conservative movement. For me, when it comes to freedom, Republicans and conservatives are as morally bankrupt as progressives and socialists. I find their disputes and controversies boring and mundane. In fact, it still surprises me how many libertarians hold Republicans and conservative politicians and influencers in such high esteem and even get giddy with excitement and go weak in the knees when they encounter them.

So, I confess that I know virtually nothing about the young right-winger named Nick Fuentes, who has stirred up all sorts of controversy and division within the conservative movement by appearing on the podcast of famous conservative Tucker Carlson. In what appears to be a fit of jealousy and envy over Carlson’s podcast success, a large portion of the conservative movement has gone on the attack against him for daring to host Fuentes on his show.

As an aside, I must admit that I find it somewhat humorous that Fuentes has an Hispanic last name. I asked ChatGPT about that, and it responded that Fuentes is part Mexican. Of course, my first thought was that maybe Fuentes’s fellow conservatives don’t like him because they feel that he and his family have helped to corrupt America’s culture. For that matter, given that he is a conservative it’s entirely possible that Fuentes feels that way about himself and his family.

But from what I can tell — and, again, I don’t have much knowledge about the controversy — is that conservatives are angry over two things about their fellow conservative Fuentes: (1) his criticism of the Israeli government, which is a super no-no among right-wingers; in their eyes, that makes Fuentes an anti-Semite; and (2) Fuentes apparently has made some favorable remarks about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

The notion that someone is anti-Semitic simply because he criticizes or condemns the Israeli government is, to me, so silly that it hardly deserves analysis. It’s like saying that someone who criticizes or condemns the Vatican for its response to the child-abuse scandal within the Church hates Catholics.

So, I’m going to limit my remarks about this latest right-wing controversy to Point (2), which I find much more interesting.

So, why are most right-wingers so opposed to Hitler? I think that’s a fascinating question, given that Hitler’s policies match many, if not most, of the policies of American conservatives. Let’s consider several examples:

1. An enormous national-security establishment — including entities comparable to the Pentagon, a vast, permanent military-industrial complex, a CIA, and a NSA — where “national security” is the most important principle within the government.
2. Strong support of Social Security, government-provided healthcare (i.e., Medicare and Medicaid), public (i.e., government) schooling, and other socialist programs.
3. An Autobahn system — i.e., the Interstate Highway System, the biggest public-works project in U.S. history, inspired, in fact, by Hitler’s Autobahn system.
4. A strong leader who was not only bringing law and order to Germany but also leading the nation back to greatness.
5. The Gestapo, a national police force whose tactics may well have served as a model for ICE agents.
6. A government-regulated/managed economy.
7. Suppression of dissent and opposition to the government.
8. A paper-money system reinforced with a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve.
9. A tightly controlled system of immigration controls and also emigration controls, including passports and visas.
10. State-sponsored assassinations, torture, and indefinite detention.
11. Tribunals rather than jury trials, especially in cases involving terrorism and treason.
12. Denial of due process of law, right to counsel, the presumption of innocence, and habeas corpus.
13. Extraordinary presidential powers to deal with “national emergencies.”
14. A war on communism.
15. A war on terrorism.
16. Wars of aggression.
17. Drug prohibition.

Keep in mind: These are all policies held by Hitler and the Nazis, and they are also positions held by American conservatives. In fact, let’s imagine that today’s right-wingers were German citizens back in the 1930s. They would have fit right in, at the very least in the 1930s before the Holocaust began but most likely even after the war broke out under the patriotic rubric of “Support the troops!” Given their unwavering loyal and patriotic devotion to their own government in time of war, they would never have been part of dissident groups like the White Rose and, in fact, would have undoubtedly supported the tribunals that sentenced them to death for treason.

So, why do American conservatives today bear such a deep antipathy toward Hitler given the similarities of their policies? It has to be due to the Holocaust — that is, Hitler’s decision to exterminate Jews in the midst of World War II.

But there is something important to note about this point: It’s that Hitler’s victims were Jews, notwithstanding the fact that Hitler and his Nazi cohorts deemed Jews to be a grave threat to “national security,” a two-word nebulous concept that conservatives have helped make the most important governmental principle of our lifetime. If Hitler’s victims had been instead, say, illegal immigrants from Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East, I think that the deep right-wing antipathy toward Hitler would be non-existent and that American conservatives would feel as much positivity toward him as Fuentes apparently does.

In other words, American conservatives clearly place a higher value on the lives of Jews than they do on the lives of those other human beings. One can easily see this phenomenon in the drug-war killings that the Trump administration has been committing in the Caribbean. The attitude of American conservatives is one of total indifference or, even worse, enthusiastic support.

Yet, all of these victims are simply people who the government has accused of violating America’s drug laws. Given the sanctity of all life under God’s laws, mere governmental accusations of criminal violations certainly do not merit assassination or execution. Sure, it’s only 60 dead people rather than 6 million, but isn’t that a distinction without a difference? Isn’t all life — 60 people or 6 million people and Jew or non-Jew — supposed to be sacred? What if the Trump administration had targeted and killed 60 Jews in the Caribbean and was vowing to kill many more? Who doubts that American right-wingers would be taking an entirely different position than they take when the victims are Latin Americans?

Consider ICE’s, the Border Patrol’s, and the Pentagon’s brutal actions against Latin American immigrants who are here inside the United States illegally. American conservatives love the brutal treatment, just as many German citizens loved it when Gestapo agents were harshly mistreating German Jews in the 1930s. Consider those Latin American immigrants who the Trump administration forcibly deported to El Salvador against their will, knowing that a brutal dictatorship awaited them, one that jails and tortures people who are accused, but not tried or convicted, of criminal offenses. There was total indifference or, even worse, enthusiastic support among American conservatives to the plight of those Latin American immigrants, notwithstanding the fact that U.S. officials had not prosecuted or convicted them of anything. They could have been jailed and tortured for their rest of their lives or even executed, and conservatives could not have cared less. Their position would have been: It’s their own fault for coming to the United States illegally in the first place.

Or consider the deportation of thousands of Venezuelan refugees, who conservatives call “invaders,” to Venezuela, knowing full well that death by starvation likely awaits them as a result of Venezuelan socialism and brutal U.S. economic sanctions. American conservatives cheer because their government is keeping them “safe.”

Moreover, we should never forget the 2019 deportation of 41-year-old Jimmy Aldaoud to his country of origin, Iraq, which he had left when he was six months old. Iraq, of course, is a country that the U.S. government invaded in one of its illegal wars of aggression, a type of war condemned as a crime at Nuremberg. Aldaoud begged for his life, stating in a video, “Please, I’ve never seen that country. I’ve never been there…. They forced me. I’m here now, and I don’t understand the language. I’ve been sleeping in the streets. I’m diabetic. I take insulin shots. I’ve been throwing up, throwing up, sleeping in the streets. I’ve got nothing to eat.” He died shortly afterward. But he was only a Christian, not a Jew.

Or consider the brutal economic sanctions that the U.S. government was enforcing against the people of Iraq in the 1990s. Every month, tens of thousands of Iraqi people, including children, were dying from illness as a result of the sanctions. There was total indifference to their plight among American conservatives, even when three high UN officials resigned their posts in protest against the genocide. When U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright publicly declared that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the U.S. sanctions were “worth it,” American conservatives remained indifferent or, even worse, silently supportive. But they were Muslims. If the Iraqi victims from those brutal U.S. sanctions had been Jews, wouldn’t American conservatives have had a totally different attitude?

Or consider the Israeli government’s recent ongoing massacres of Palestinians in Gaza. American conservatives were fully supportive under the rubric of Israel’s “right to defend itself.” Does anyone doubt that if Hamas fighters were ensconced with groups of Jews, rather than Palestinians, that the Israeli government, with the full support of American conservatives, would have figured out a way to ferret out the Hamas terrorists without massacring those Jews?

In the latest mundane controversy within the conservative movement, one thing appears crystal clear to me: If right-winger Nick Fuentes does, in fact, bear positive feelings toward Hitler, at least he isn’t suffering from the hypocrisy that afflicts his fellow conservatives.