No Enemies to the Right? Inside the GOP’s new civil war

A new fault line is quickly dividing American conservatism: A political strategy called “No Enemies to the Right.”

This philosophy, sometimes abbreviated NETR, operates on a simple logic: All political “punching” must be directed toward the Left, which is seen as the primary — if not only — existential threat to the conservative (and even white Christian) way of life.

Under this new doctrine, public criticism of anyone on the “right-wing” spectrum is betrayal and effeminate weakness done in the name of winning approval from the liberal “world.” It is self-sabotage and the act of a traitor.

Since 2016, this strategy allowed for a tacit tolerance of extremism and hate. It began with people like Steve Bannon, who has long tolerated Nazism in his ranks, and Milo Yiannopoulos, who claimed he could not be racist because he “likes f***ing Blacks.”

Now, in 2025, recent events have dragged this originally unspoken fact into the light. The controversy revolves around two of the Right’s biggest figures: Media personality Tucker Carlson and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. Also at the center of it is Nick Fuentes, an avowed white nationalist, antisemite and founder of the self-proclaimed “Groyper” movement.

Who are the ‘Groypers’ and Nick Fuentes?

To understand the current crisis, one must first understand Fuentes. He is the leader of the “Groyper Army,” a loose-knit movement of young, online activists. They are “America First” adherents who openly espouse white nationalist, antisemitic and racist ideologies.

The Groypers’ primary tactic is to disrupt mainstream conservative events (which they mock as “Conservative Inc.”), such as previously confronting speakers like Charlie Kirk or Ben Shapiro with loaded, antisemitic questions.

Their goal is to “unmask” mainstream conservatives, exposing them as frauds or “Republicans in Name Only” who are insufficiently committed to the Groypers’ ethno-Christo-fascist nationalist vision.

Fuentes himself is a Holocaust denier who has praised Hitler and called for a “holy war” on Jewish people.

For years, he was a figure mainstream conservatives could simply ignore. That changed when Trump hosted him and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. It also has changed again now that Tucker Carlson gave him a platform mere days ago.

The mainstreaming moment

On Oct. 27, Carlson hosted Fuentes for a friendly, multi-hour interview. In it, Fuentes promoted classic antisemitic tropes about “organized Jewry” and “Zionist Jews.” Carlson, while offering gentle pushback, largely validated the interview’s premise, railing against “Christian Zionists” as being “seized by this brain virus.”

Carlson previously had attacked Fuentes and his army of “incels” and “Groypers.” But during the new interview, Carlson ripped off this zinger: “I’m sorry I called you gay, by the way.” Carlson also conceded that he at first thought Fuentes was “a fed.”

It seems Carlson has seen the light and accepted the Groyper Gospel.

X, now a haven for right-wing Groyper extremism, along with other portions of the internet, exploded. The backlash from “Con Inc.,” however, was immediate, with many conservatives demanding the movement’s leaders condemn Carlson for platforming a notorious online antisemite, sexist and racist.

The most-watched response came from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the billion-dollar think tank responsible for Project 2025 and a group that has long defined American conservative orthodoxy.

Roberts posted a video statement that stunned many. Instead of condemning Carlson or Fuentes, he defended Carlson on the explicit principle of NETR: “The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.”

He decried attempts to “cancel” Carlson and Fuentes, framing the dispute as a disagreement over foreign policy rather than a bright line against overt antisemitism.

The rupture was instantaneous. The Republican Jewish Coalition’s CEO, Matt Brooks, stated he was “appalled, offended and disgusted.” Internally, Heritage staffers reportedly rebelled, with one posting “NAZIS ARE BAD” and allegedly being asked to resign.

The controversy made one thing clear: The “no enemies” strategy has now been explicitly invoked by a mainstream gatekeeper to defend America’s most prominent white nationalist.

An unholy political and theological alliance

This event is not an outlier; it is the logical conclusion of the NETR philosophy. As columnists in publications from The Free Press to Newsweek have argued, NETR is a form of moral relativism. By refusing to police its own borders, a movement is inevitably overrun by its worst elements.

The political crisis is a battle for the soul of conservatism.

Is it a movement rooted in classical liberal principles of the Judeo-Christian values it claims to champion? Or is it becoming a “blood-and-soil” ethno-nationalist movement that sees “the West” as a racial, rather than an intellectual, inheritance?

For a movement that is overwhelmingly Christian, the theological crisis is even more profound. The core ideologies of the Fuentes-led far-right — racial supremacy, antisemitism and the celebration of ethno-states — are not just politically adjacent to Christianity; they are antithetical to its core gospel message.

The “Groyper” worldview is a blasphemous inversion of the Christian faith. It seeks to rebuild the very “dividing wall of hostility” the Apostle Paul wrote was destroyed in Christ. It replaces the Imago Dei in every person with a pagan hierarchy of race. It flatly rejects the gospel’s radical declaration that there is “no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female,” but all are one in Christ.

This strategy, designed to achieve total victory, has instead left conservatism at war with itself. It has forced a choice that can no longer be avoided: either the conservative movement will cleanse its own house or it will find that the so-called “friends” it refused to condemn have burned the house down.

 

David Bumgardner is a writer, theologian and educator living in Columbus, Ohio. He is a former BNG Clemons Fellow and a graduate of Texas Baptist College at Southwestern Seminary. He is a licensed commissioned pastor and holds an evangelism license through the Anglican Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Diocese of Boga, and Missio Mosaic, an ecumenical missional society and religious order. He is awaiting the conferral of his master of arts in practical theology degree from Winebrenner Theological Seminary. 

 

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