The Difference Between a Purity Test and a Sanity Requirement

Being accurate on the choice facing the US Right.

“Ben Shapiro delivered a critical speech at the Turning Point USA America Fest 2025 in Phoenix on December 18, 2025, where he denounced several prominent conservative figures, including Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly, and Steve Bannon, labeling them “frauds and grifters” and accusing them of promoting conspiracism and dishonesty within the conservative movement. He specifically targeted Carlson for hosting Nick Fuentes, a far-right influencer known for Holocaust denial and antisemitic rhetoric, and criticized Owens for spreading conspiracy theories about the murder of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Shapiro also referenced the upcoming release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, calling Bannon a “PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein” and praising Donald Trump’s stance on the issue.

In response, Tucker Carlson dismissed Shapiro’s remarks as “pompous” and “hilarious,” defending his own actions and asserting that the goal of Charlie Kirk’s public life was to foster open discourse, not enforce ideological purity. Megyn Kelly echoed this sentiment, describing Shapiro’s attack as a “betrayal by a friend” and comparing the demand to condemn Owens to progressive “purity tests,” while also criticizing Shapiro’s perceived prioritization of Israel over unity within the conservative movement. Kelly argued that Shapiro’s actions were fueling antisemitism by making criticism of Israel a litmus test for conservatism.

The event highlighted deep divisions within the MAGA movement, with Shapiro’s attempt to enforce ideological conformity clashing with the inclusive ethos promoted by figures like Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, and Vice President JD Vance, who implicitly rebuked Shapiro’s approach by emphasizing that President Trump built his coalition without endless “self-defeating purity tests”. The infighting was further exemplified by the presence of controversial figures such as Jack Posobiec and Myron Gaines, whose rhetoric and symbols drew criticism.”

On my social media I have spoken frequently about my support for both MAGA and for Israel. I’ve also spoken on here and in smaller social media posts about my feelings regarding Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Feuntes. But I haven’t spoken directly about the very clear AMCON division that opened up a couple of weeks ago with Ben Shapiro’s direct condemnation of Tucker and Tucker’s sarcastic responses.

So I’m going to do that here.

I’m sure, given that some time has elapsed and you’re all well informed, you are familiar with the points Shapiro made. I don’t have to quote them at length or go into too much discussion of who has weighed in on which side. But it might be useful just to summarise the two camps.

Shapiro, Levin, Laura Loomer, Catturd and others have all indicated that they think Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and their alleged wing of the Right have either gone nuts, been purchased, or are an embarrassment and a detriment to the Right and to the MAGA movement. Shapiro and Levin are clearly going to have their take influenced by the fact that they support Israel and a large degree of the content now offered by Tucker and particularly Candace is invested in attacking Israel, claiming that Israel is committing genocide, and claiming too that Israel controls US policy or that the US-Israeli alliance is malign.

At AMCON Shapiro stated that a podcaster or an influencer, let alone a journalist, is responsible for the guests they invite on their shows and how they react to them. If such a person invites on an extremist and doesn’t challenge them, they are endorsing the extremist. And for Shapiro Tucker’s record is very clear now-he invites on Jew haters and lunatics and agrees with them. Candace has more directly stated her own Jew hatred and conspiracy theories involving Mossad. Tucker has been less direct, but just as obsessed, and has approvingly platformed Holocaust deniers like Darryl Cooper.

Of course the Tucker wing state a totally different interpretation of their actions. They cast themselves are truth seekers who aren’t afraid of questioning anyone, and rhetorically ask why innocent people should be afraid of them raising questions about Israel’s influence or Jewish influence in America. They point to US aid to Israel and frame their objection to it as part of general America First principles. They laugh at the idea that their concentration on aid to Israel is antisemetic, or that their condemnations of Netanyahu’s government are either. Their formulation is that if you put the interests of any foreign nation above those of the US, you aren’t America First, and they describe Shapiro and Levin as Israel First.

As it has developed, the argument between these two camps has centred on Israel but has also been cast as a free speech issue. This has particularly been the case via the responses of JD Vance to the whole affair. Tucker and co. assert a free speech right to interview whoever they please, question whoever or whatever they please, and frame Shapiro’s criticisms as an attempt to police thought and speech. Tucker did this at AMCON while laughing at the what he expressed as cancel culture appearing at a Charlie Kirk honouring event.

Defending their actions and commentary as just asking questions, just exercising free speech, and just putting America First, while casting their critics as censors, truth avoiders and cancel culture authoritarians, is a smart move by the Candace-Tucker-Feuntes wing. It’s a move that appeals to MAGA voters and MAGA history. Both camps are speaking to people who endured years (and still endure) mainstream and leftist dishonesty from the media and from Democrats. They are talking to people who were lied to and then demonised if they said truthful things, and they are talking to the side of politics that were the victims of unjust social and professional cancellations.

So there’s an obvious appeal in referencing the history of cancel culture and using that as a defence of your own right to ask questions. Similarly, the history of the things MAGA arose in objection to is of people in power prioritising the interests of foreign institutions, transnational bodies, and global corporations. It’s a history within which Americans have seen US debt built and US money spent on everyone except themselves and on foreign wars that served no positive purpose. All of that can and has been drawn in to support the Tucker-Candace-Feuntes position.

Finally, the history too is of Trump building a coalition of those opposed to censorship, State overreach and intrusion, and the kind of authoritarian dishonesty we saw for instance during the COVID years. Trump drew in Democrats repulsed by a growing Woke purity death spiral, where leftist and Globalist positions grew ever more censorious, dictatorial and extreme. JD Vance has expressed a Big Tent approach referencing this very fact, which combines with his and the Trump administration’s defence of free speech in Europe to give some weight to the idea of allowing Tucker and his ilk the freedom to make their points. This argument asserts that it’s inconsistent to defend free speech in Europe while ‘policing’ what the Right says in the US, and also gives the supposedly pragmatic argument that we must accept disagreements within a broad movement in order to have the width of support needed to win.

What I’m saying then is that all these other factors, attached to the defence of what Candace, Tucker and Feuntes are saying, incline the US Right to be very reluctant to police themselves, having so often been the victims of unjust policing by others. This is to some degree understandable, as is the appeal of these two general principles:

1. Americans should be free to say whatever they want.

2. Americans should concentrate on America First and use American spending at home.

Both of these are understandably attractive general principles, especially AFTER or DURING unjust censorship of truth. On the second, for instance, I personally don’t believe in foreign aid at all (but know that 95% of US foreign aid goes to countries other than Israel, and that the Israeli portion is just about the only one that brings obvious benefits). Both these understandable positions are also absolute positions that, applied as absolutes, ignore reality and context. They can very much incline us to sensible ideas (like opposing unnecessary wars and unjust censorship, or like opposing corruption such as that found in USAID spending). But they can also be exploited to defend other things which are just as foul.

In the case of the first for example neither America nor any other nation has ever possessed absolute free speech. The US has slander and defamation laws, some degree of protection of privacy, and of course more serious laws on incitement to violence, advocacy of terrorism, and espionage and treason. All of these can restrict free speech. The First Amendment does not say that free speech is absolute, it says that Congress shall not make laws (specifically) to abridge free speech. It’s primarily intended to ensure that the government can’t use control of Congress to make criticism of the government illegal.

The effect of the First Amendment has been to make the US a place where prosecuting speech is more difficult and where, theoretically at least, government censorship is more difficult. But in reality in the Biden years we saw just how much activist and partisan judges and prosecutors can get away with ignoring that Constitutional protection under the claim of protecting the US from ‘insurrection’ or by distorting the law in partisan ways.

And in the use of government threats against social media companies we saw an actually fascist work-around where the First Amendment could be ignored by outsourcing censorship and restrictions of free speech to corporations either coerced into doing it or who did it through ideological alignment with the attitudes and policies of the government. ‘Former’ FBI and CIA agents as senior social media executives deciding company ‘community standards’ or Democrat administrations and leaders handing lists of people to ban or silence to those companies all went on and all illustrated the limits of First Amendment protections of free speech when the system wants to silence people…including, famously, the serving President when it happened to be Trump. Similarly, companies firing people for statements on social media is a cancel culture assault on absolute free speech that the First Amendment can do very little about, since contractual employment law is the more relevant area there (and since it must be admitted there are rational grounds for an employer to have a right to fire people saying things that damage his organisation).

But absolute free speech without consequences isn’t a sane thing. One of the great problems in the US and the western world has been the social and cultural impacts of too little accountability when the Left lies. In both Trump Derangement Syndrome and in general extremism on the Left we see that absolute free speech, or uneven free speech whereby one side is heavily restricted and the other can lie with impunity, tends towards societal collapse.

What defending Tucker and co on free speech grounds does then is to shift the argument from the nature of the things they are saying to the general principle of being able to speak.

This conveniently demands that we ignore that they are lying, ignore that some of the things they are saying are evil, and ignore that people like Shapiro aren’t saying they can’t speak, but are saying instead that what they are saying is vile, what they are saying is untrue, and what they are saying does reputational damage to MAGA, to the Trump administration, and to the cause of Right wing politics.

In other words it’s untrue to say that Shapiro or Levin are acting as cancel culture censors, and Tucker is being characteristically sly in presenting the argument between them in those terms. Tucker knows what will appeal to a right wing audience that takes free speech seriously. But while claiming to be within the MAGA tent he is doing exactly what leftists do within the ‘America’ tent-demand that we give them an absolute right to say anything including things which are designed to burn the tent down. Tucker’s invocation of free speech is no more honest as a general principle than Jimmy Kimmel’s was. It’s a similar one-sided deal. Both the mainstream media Democrat Kimmel and the alternative media (but former CNN and Fox) figure Carlson assert that free speech means them being able to say anything no matter how untrue or vile without ever facing any consequence, while at the same time neither would apply that absolute right to their critics.

What made and makes leftist and Globalist assaults on free speech different to what Shapiro and Levin are doing can be summarised as follows:

1. Cancel culture demanded that true statements be censored and silenced. Levin and Shapiro are criticising statements that are untrue.

2. Cancel culture (and Globalist censorship in Europe) apply cancellation to the whole of society, genuinely making the free expression of ideas impossible. Critics of Tucker for instance haven’t said that these views should be banned everywhere. They have said that it’s cowardice not to challenge these views, and that a movement which wants to be moral and sane must challenge such views.

3. A political party or movement is not the whole of society. That movement will innately have to exclude and limit itself in some ways to make any sense at all. It would render MAGA meaningless, for example, if it felt that it must include within its Big Tent people who openly hate America, people who despise all the things MAGA exists to defend, or people who are Communists. Asking your movement to have some sane standards on what it agrees with is not the same as banning everything you disagree with, and pretending it is has been another lie added by Carlson and his supporters.

4. A purity death spiral occurs when you internally demand ever more fanaticism, not when you reject portions of your support who become ever more fanatical on topics and obsessions you don’t share. The Trump Big Tent was formed not by agreeing with the most insane Democrats, but by drawing in those repulsed by increasing Democrat extremism. It’s disingenuous to pretend that allowing people to become more crazy in your movement is the same as drawing in people who moved towards saner positions and thereby agreed with you. There is a difference between a Big Tent and an Open Sewer, and the nature of some views (Candace and Feuntes most obviously, Tucker more slyly but with growing obviousness) is such that the only moral repose is their exclusion.

5. The grounds on which cancel culture silences people or calls them Nazis are unjust, the grounds on which the Right rejects real Nazi attitudes such as those of Feuntes are just. There is a difference between falsely calling people Nazis or antisemites and accurately doing so.

Both the Free Speech and Big Tent arguments in support of what has been accurately described as the Woke Reich are therefore false. These people aren’t just asking questions. They aren’t even just opposing US aid to Israel. They are obsessively attacking Israel and likewise attacking Jews. They aren’t just interviewing extremists and foreign enemies-they are agreeing with and praising them (Tucker) or themselves saying insane and evil things including open support for Hitler and Stalin (Candace and Feuntes). By any rational standard these people have now themselves become extremists, not for who they talk to, but for who they agree with. It’s not some false guilt by association based on standing next to somebody saying something insane-it’s guilt by direct affiliation, based on agreeing with lunatics. People like Konstantin Kisin for example will interview the same individuals Tucker interviews. Kisin however won’t sit there nodding and saying ‘so true’ if a guest expresses something completely mad.

It’s understandable how recent history complicates awareness of the right thing to do, and leans the Right towards free speech absolutism. But it isn’t understandable, or excusable, not to recognise how insane the things Tucker is saying have become. Your own moral understanding should be sufficient for that, let alone recognising what a vile piece of work Feuntes is. The Left have long been morally obscene in terms of who and what they are prepared to support. For modern Democrats advocacy of extreme sexual perversion and fetish, advocacy of child genital mutilation for profit, and advocacy of terrorist organisations, political assasination and domestic tyranny, and of foreign rapists and drug cartels, has all apparently become normal and moral.

The way to combat that is through being more sane and being more normal, not through embracing other extremisms ourselves. We can reject false claims of racism used to enforce leftist views without becoming actual racists. We can remove people who are dangerous from our nations without being deterred by screeches that such sensible moves are racist. But it’s easier to do that if we aren’t listening to people who hate Jews and people who increasingly say the exact same things as many leftists. Tucker, for instance, now openly advocates for and defends radical Islam. There’s nothing America First or rightwing in that sort of position. If he is within the Tent still, it is as a hideous embarassment, like a family member who has become a dangerous drug addict threatening the rest of us. Crass as the comparison may be, he’s in the MAGA family the same way Nick Reiner was in his family, and both pragmatic self defence and moral truth insist that some distance is required.