JNS
“Jewish Americans and all those targeted by white nationalist hate are all too often looking over their shoulder, fearing for their safety,” Schumer and all of the other Senate Democrats said.
The most powerful Jewish official in Washington introduced a resolution Monday that condemns white supremacy and antisemitism and specifically calls out far-right provocateurs Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.
The resolution introduced by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), which every other Senate Democrat co-sponsored, is a response to Carlson’s recent friendly interview with Holocaust denier Fuentes.
“Antisemitism and white supremacy and, indeed, neo-Naziism—just saying the words send shudders down one’s spine—are increasingly running rampant in our society,” Schumer said in the U.S. Senate chamber on Monday.
“These deeply pernicious forms of hate, spewed by right-wing radicals like Nick Fuentes and platformed by people like Tucker Carlson—who almost seems proud to platform them—have pushed America closer to a tipping point where Jewish Americans and all those targeted by white nationalist hate are all too often looking over their shoulder, fearing for their safety,” Schumer said.
U.S. President Donald Trump denied knowing who Fuentes was in 2022 after having lunch with him and said that Fuentes wasn’t supposed to be there. He has also declined to denounce Carlson for giving Fuentes a platform. “You can’t tell him who to interview,” Trump told reporters last month.
And JD Vance insisted in an NBC News interview that “when I talk to young conservatives, I don’t see some simmering antisemitism that’s exploding.”
“Do I think that the Republican Party is substantially more antisemitic than it was 10 or 15 years ago? Absolutely not,” Vance said.
Schumer’s resolution “strongly rejects the views of and platforming” of Fuentes, “condemns” Carlson’s effort “to platform and mainstream Fuentes” and affirms that Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
It also “unequivocally condemns antisemitism and white supremacy whenever and wherever they occur, and urges all elected officials, thought leaders and community leaders to reject and condemn white supremacy and antisemitism whenever and wherever they occur.”
The measure spends three pages chronicling Fuentes’s history of antisemitic comments before criticizing Carlson, because he “did not push back on or reject the claims made by Fuentes during the interview and platformed the views of Fuentes, at times even validating his framing.”
“Antisemitism is rising at levels we have not seen in generations and, instead of condemning it, too many Republican leaders are enabling it,” Schumer stated, announcing the resolution. “When extremists like Nick Fuentes are praised, platformed, or excused, that hate doesn’t stay on the fringes. It spreads. It emboldens. It becomes dangerous.”
The resolution also mentioned Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who defended Carlson at the time and said that the think tank “didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now.”
The measure also referred, though not by name, to Paul Ingrassia, whom Trump nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel. Ingrassia was quoted as saying, ‘‘I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time.” Trump withdrew his nomination following a lack of support.
Instead, Ingrassia became deputy general counsel of the General Services Administration, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation.
“Senate Democrats are united in saying: enough,” Schumer stated. “Hate has no place in America. I urge every Republican to join us—not with silence, not with excuses, but with action—by condemning this poisonous neo-Nazi ideology.”
Several Jewish organizations endorsed the resolution.
“The platforming of individuals who promote hateful, antisemitic and white supremacist rhetoric is dangerous and entirely at odds with American values,” stated Meredith Jacobs, CEO of Jewish Women International.
“For the safety of our communities and the soul of our nation, Congress must forcefully reject and condemn any attempt to mainstream antisemitism, white supremacy or other forms of hate, whenever or wherever they occur,” she said.
“The normalization of this antisemitic, white supremacist extremism has fueled a cycle of violence from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh and Poway to El Paso and Buffalo, and beyond,” stated Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick.
