I have a question for you. And I’m not kidding.
Will you hide a Jew in your attic?
Or put it this way: What is Tucker Carlson trying to do?
Tucker Carlson is elevating anti-Semitic ideas on the political right, most recently through his super-friendly interviews with Hitler-admiring so-called influencer Nick Fuentes.
According to a Washington Post essay by conservative columnist Mark Thiessen titled “No Enemies to the Right,” Fuentes is, according to him, a fascist.
On his podcast, Tucker Carlson’s friend Fuentes said, “Hitler was—excuse the language—fucking really cool.” Carlson’s friend often yells “Heil Hitler” and announces “Hitler is awesome,” “Hitler was right.” Carlson’s friend is a Holocaust denier who declares, “The Holocaust did not happen,” according to Thiessen’s article, and who has called for the extermination of what he calls “the perfidious Jews who practice magic rituals and need to be given the death penalty straight up.”
When Tucker Carlson’s friend—the Groypers—take power, I ask again:
Will you hide a Jew in your attic?
When I grew up, the great heroes of World War II were the Christian families who hid Jews like Anne Frank because of their Christian Calvinist faith. Many courageous Christians stood forth and lost their own lives while hiding Jews from the Nazis.
I’m reminded of my family friend Corrie ten Boom, who died in 1983. She was a Dutch Christian writer and public speaker, a friend of my parents Francis and Edith Schaeffer, founders of L’Abri Fellowship. She and her sister Betsy hid Jews during the war at great risk. They were caught; she was arrested and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her most famous book, The Hiding Place, recounts their family’s efforts and her hope in God while imprisoned.
That used to be the story of evangelical Christians—long before Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, Fuentes, and Tucker Carlson.
And what of Roman Catholic Italy and Spain? Was it only Protestants like Corrie ten Boom? No. After the Germans forced race laws on Italy, Mussolini found Roman Catholics and Catholic priests hiding Jews, helping them escape, keeping many from being deported. The same happened in Spain. Even the dictator Franco hesitated to cooperate with Germany in persecuting Jews. Many fled to Spain, protected by the Church.
In France too—despite the Vichy government—many Huguenots and Roman Catholics protected Jews.
This was the Christian tradition that Tucker Carlson is ready to discard. And his friends like J.D. Vance will not speak about it as they support him.
Conversely, to the shame of some bishops in Germany—Lutherans, Catholics, and others who supported the program against Jews—the church’s reputation is blighted. And yet, people like Corrie ten Boom stood forth.
Carlson’s Fuentes also calls women “whores and sluts and stupid dirty bitches,” and says many women “want to be raped.” He defends segregation—“Enough with Jim Crow stuff… big fucking deal”—and asserts white people are justified in being racist.
I have a podcast called In Conversation with Frank Schaeffer. Maybe someone slips through who shouldn’t be on—but no one who says “Heil Hitler” or dismisses Jim Crow as no big deal. I would interrupt immediately. But not Tucker Carlson.
Carlson’s fixation has taken an explicitly religious form, even more extreme than Fuentes. He now targets the Judeo-Christian American consensus. A recent theme of his is that the Old Testament—the Jewish Bible—is dark and tribal and evil, while the New Testament—the “good white Christian part”—is the source of Western values.
He said he was shocked by the violence, revenge, and genocide in the Old Testament. Meanwhile, he claimed, “Western civilization is derived from the New Testament.” He insists Christianity alone rejects “collective punishment” and “blood guilt.”
Will you hide a Jew in your attic?
Carlson is pushing an open Jew-hating door.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts defended Carlson’s Fuentes interview. The author of Project 2025 defended it too, saying the think tank wouldn’t police the conscience of Christians. Tell that to the Christians who hid Anne Frank.
After Republican criticism, Roberts said Carlson’s critics were the “globalist class” and a “venomous coalition.” Staff pushed back, noting these could be coded references to Jews. Roberts apologized—then claimed he “did not know much about Fuentes” because he “doesn’t consume a lot of news.” This from a man who appears constantly in media.
A Princeton University professor resigned from the Heritage board because Roberts refused to take down the video. Robert P. George—co-author of Project 2025—said he could not remain without a full retraction.
George wrote on Facebook that Roberts apologized but could not retract enough, so they reached an impasse.
But here’s the irony: far-right activists like George helped build the extremist movement that made Carlson’s Jew-baiting possible.
Who created the mindset that puts Fuentes on Carlson’s show? Among others, Robert George, who for decades was the intellectual force behind anti-gay and anti-women campaigns.
These same conservative bishops and religious leaders who now claim “things have gone too far” once supported respectable forms of bigotry. Now George wants to draw the line at Jew-hate.
George’s work appeared in major venues like The New York Times—rarely critically examined.
I debated George at Princeton in 2008. He supported pro-life Romney; I supported McCain. George opposed McCain for being insufficiently anti-abortion and anti-gay.
George co-founded the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), authored Romney’s anti-gay pledge, and flooded elections with far-right positions.
Today the GOP endorses his worldview through Project 2025: gay rights, women’s rights, contraception—all under threat—pushing evangelicals further right to back Donald Trump, the adulterer and accused rapist.
His Manhattan Declaration with Chuck Colson attacked women’s and gay rights and was signed by thousands of conservatives, many of whom now either embrace Fuentes-style Jew-hate or back away to appear respectable.
But now Carlson has added Jews to the list George already targeted. Some Republicans want to draw the line at Jew-baiting—but they opened the door.
They say anyone who opposes them—evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics—is “demonically possessed,” fighting a last spiritual battle.
But their prophecy says most Jews will be killed when Jesus returns. Carlson says he wakes with scratches from fighting demons in his bed.
The German high command in the 1940s also believed in spiritual battles—calling on the great fathers of war, Wagnerian myths. We’ve been here before.
Is there a better way? I think there is.
Let me pick up my little dog, Zip. Zip doesn’t hate Jews. Zip doesn’t hate Black people. Zip doesn’t hate women. If he had a creed, it would be the survival of the friendliest—not the fittest.
Zip and I wrote a book: The Gospel of Zip, a canine-human love story. It’s available free on YouTube. Yes, I’m pitching my book. It’s also on Amazon. I read the whole thing—eight hours—professionally filmed.
It has a little over 3,000 views; I hope for many more. Please look at it.
In The Gospel of Zip, I explore how Jews, women, gays, and all of us share the capacity to love and care for each other—like Zip warms my leg damaged by polio in 1952. He’d do that if I were Jewish, Black, a woman, a Muslim, or an atheist. I call myself an atheist who prays.
Given where the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, MAGA, Carlson, and Trump have gone—Trump who dined with Fuentes and claimed not to know him, just like Roberts—given the direction of the Christian nationalist white right, I ask again:
Will You Hide a Jew in Your Attic?
