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The conservative right is full of questionable and unpleasant figures. Canceling them is not the solution.

Since Tucker Carlson hosted far-right persona non grata Nick Fuentes on his show Oct. 27, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, Sen. Mitch McConnell, radio host Mark Levin, and many others have condemned Carlson for giving Fuentes airtime. 

The backlash is grounded in clear rationale: Fuentes is notorious for racist, sexist, and antisemitic rhetoric. During his appearance on Carlson’s show, he continued spouting conspiracies of “Jewry” undermining the America First movement and even described himself as an admirer of Joseph Stalin. 

For many conservatives, Carlson’s decision to platform Fuentes — without many hard, direct questions or concrete follow-ups — is almost akin to espousing the controversial beliefs that Fuentes holds. 

But some of the uproar toward Carlson has crossed the line from criticism to efforts of cancellation.

Levin implied on his radio show that Carlson and Fuentes should be alienated from the mainstream conservative discourse altogether, saying, “You don’t debate them. We patriots have no tolerance for these lowlifes, these Neanderthals.”

Watchdog organization StopAntisemitism said Carlson “must be ostracized from public forums, insider circles, and every place in between.”

Last week, senior and Collegian Editor-in-Chief Thomas McKenna wrote in his opinion, “Tucker Carlson is not your friend,” that Carlson “doesn’t deserve your trust or a place in the conservative movement.”

Since when did conservatives support cancel culture?

Any viewer has the right to criticize Carlson for not challenging certain bad ideas and asking tougher questions, and we should. We should engage with these interviews critically and thoughtfully. But criticism is one thing. Cancellation — the calls to oust Carlson from the conservative sphere — is another matter entirely. 

Public figures calling for Carlson’s alienation from the conservative movement have inadvertently created a form of cancel culture on the right. First of all, this should alarm us to the hypocrisy of conservatives who decry cancel culture yet deploy it against their own. But secondly, the efforts to cancel Carlson are rooted in a fallacious equivocation: that Carlson’s interview with Fuentes amounts to an endorsement of Fuentes’ beliefs. 

Make no mistake: Fuentes’ worldview is at best immature and at worst dangerous. But Carlson’s decision to platform Fuentes is not equivalent to an endorsement.

As Carlson explained in a text exchange with Levin, his stated role as a podcast show host and interviewer is to offer the “marketplace of ideas.”

To assume that he agrees with the ideas and worldviews of whomever he has on his show is not only mistaken — it’s absurd. 

When the president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, appeared on Carlson’s show in July and claimed Iran never sought a nuclear bomb, Carlson did not challenge the claim during the interview. Although some may call it bad journalism, no reasonable viewer labeled Carlson an Iranian nuclear program denier and demanded his removal from conservative politics. 

Likewise, after Carlson interviewed President Vladimir Putin of Russia in February 2024, Carlson’s decision not to interrupt or fight back on Russian justifications for the war in Ukraine did not make him a puppet of Putin.

If we employ the same logic used to smear Carlson after the Fuentes interview, at this point, Carlson would simultaneously be an antisemite, white supremacist, Iranian nuclear program denier, and Putin apologist. But this is not the case.

To provide the marketplace of ideas is to give viewers the entire menu, however distasteful it may be. Carlson doesn’t believe everything Fuentes does. But by inviting controversial figures like Fuentes onto his show, Carlson is attempting to preserve something he knows is far greater than himself: open, political discourse put on full display, regardless of how ugly the conversation gets.

Canceling someone because you disagree with them does not open dialogue. Instead, it shuts down any chance for conversation and unilaterally decides that only those with a certain set of views should be heard at all. That is not conservatism — it’s conformity, and it’s blatantly un-American.

Conservative discourse should include many voices espousing many viewpoints — that’s the beauty of America. No matter who Carlson invites onto his show, that shouldn’t be taken away.

Elijah Guevara is a sophomore studying history.