The Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation is warning that the Heritage Foundation and its president Kevin Roberts are normalizing Holocaust denial and eroding the moral foundations of American conservatism by not condemning Tucker Carlson and continuing to sponsor his podcast, which recently featured white nationalist Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes.
In a USA Today opinion piece titled “Holocaust denial cannot hide as ‘debate,’ as it did in Carlson-Fuentes interview,” Jack Simony, director general of the foundation, wrote that Heritage’s defense represents a collapse of the moral clarity the institution once claimed to embody.
Simony opened his piece by recounting Carlson’s Oct. 28 two-hour interview with Fuentes, who “claims ‘the numbers don’t add up,” referring to the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust.
“Carlson did not challenge the denialism,” Simony wrote, “and later said he interviews ‘interesting people’ without endorsing every view.”
Two days later, Roberts defended Carlson in a video posted to X, saying he “abhors” some of what Fuentes says but warning against “canceling” Carlson.
Simony rejected that argument outright.
“That word — canceling — is the wrong word. And Heritage knows the difference,” he wrote.
“No one is calling for Carlson’s arrest or his silence. What is being asked for is accountability from an institution that claims to stand for truth, tradition and moral clarity.”
“Defending the platforming of a Holocaust denier is not free speech,” Simony wrote. “It is free abdication.”
Simony warned that presenting Holocaust denial without challenge fundamentally alters the landscape of public discourse.
“When a platform with tens of millions of followers presents Holocaust denial without challenge, it’s not sunlight — it’s shade. The disinfectant never arrives. The anti-Semitism virus adapts,” he wrote.
The column emphasized that Holocaust denial is “Not an opinion. Not a debate. Not a controversy. Murder.”
“Holocaust denial does not erase an idea. It erases the ash of children. It silences survivors. It mocks the ruins we still walk through, the ledgers we still read, the bones we still find in Polish soil,” he added.
Simony argued that by treating such denial as part of a legitimate dialogue, Heritage is sending a dangerous message.
“When an institution as powerful as Heritage blurs that line, it tells Americans that truth itself is negotiable — that there is a legitimate ‘other side’ to whether the Holocaust happened. There is not.”
He directly blamed Roberts for elevating Carlson’s interview.
“Kevin Roberts chose friendship over memory. Proximity over principle,” Simony wrote.
“He made Holocaust denial a debatable position within American conservatism. And Heritage followed.”
The opinion article also placed Roberts’ position in historical context, noting that “The slide into moral relativism rarely begins with violence; it begins with excuses.”
“In the 1930s, antisemitic propaganda was defended as ‘patriotic dissent.’ … Today the same inversion reappears: Defending the Holocaust’s reality is branded ‘censorship,’ while denying it is treated as mere ‘provocation.'”
Simony contrasted Roberts’ approach with the conservative tradition once exemplified by Edward R. Murrow.
“In 1954 … he didn’t ‘debate’ the lies. He showed the footage — no euphemisms, no both-sides. That was the conservative tradition Heritage claims to inherit. It has abandoned it.”
Heritage’s role, Simony wrote, is especially troubling because antisemitism “is never static. It evolves. It repackages itself in the language of grievance. When we fail to confront it, it metastasizes from the margins to the mainstream.”
His criticism comes amid a widening crisis inside Heritage following the Carlson-Fuentes interview.
More than a dozen members of the Heritage-run National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism resigned, including co-chairs Pastor Mario Bramnick, Dr. Victoria Coates, Ellie Cohanim and Pastor Luke Moon, as well as former Rep. Michele Bachmann. The task force ultimately dissolved.
Other prominent resignations included Distinguished Fellow Chris DeMuth and longtime senior visiting fellow Stephen Moore.
Simony, whose foundation is “an anti-hatred organization using education to create change in a world where hate is on the rise,” warned that Heritage’s direction is contributing to a broader collapse in civic trust.
“Every institution that chooses silence, every leader who mistakes cowardice for ‘open debate,’ accelerates the corrosion of civic trust,” he wrote. “When the next act of hate draws inspiration from these ‘debates,’ Heritage will have helped supply the footnotes.”
Heritage, he argued, must reverse course.
“Heritage must do more than ‘abhor.’ It must publicly retract its defense of the Carlson-Fuentes interview and commit, on record, that Holocaust denial is not a conservative value.”
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