The Heritage Foundation "has a real opportunity to lead" in discussing the problem of antisemitism and what's drawing young men towards people like Nick Fuentes "and some of the really nasty stuff that he's pushing," says Pastor Luke Moon, executive director of the Philos Project.
Until then, a task force dedicated to fighting antisemitism co-founded by Moon will keep its distance, he told Newsmax.
The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism earlier this week said it was leaving the Heritage Foundation after the conservative think tank’s president defended Tucker Carlson’s podcast interview with Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist.
"We don't want to do this forever, but I think it's important that we send the message that there really is a problem of antisemitism on the right that has really manifested itself over the last six months," Moon told Newsmax TV’s "Saturday Agenda."
"And I think it's incumbent upon people who are interested in having a broad coalition of conservatives on the right and the contrast with those who are, in a sense, wanting to focus on trying to get the Groypers and the incel vote, and I think it's a bad trade off," he added.
"I think we can win elections if we include Jews and Christian Zionists and Latinos and African Americans.
"We're not going to win elections if we just focus on Gen Z white men," he added.
Groypers is a term for supporters of Fuentes.
Incel, meanwhile, means a member of an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually, typically associated with views that are hostile toward women and men who are sexually active.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts last week challenged the criticism of an interview Carlson conducted on his streaming show with Fuentes.
Roberts said, "conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington."
He described Carlson as a "close friend" of the Heritage Foundation and said that "the venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division."
The video drew criticism from across the political spectrum.
At least five members of the Heritage Foundation’s antisemitism task force resigned, and some staff members expressed outrage.
Roberts told staffers later he had "made a mistake" in backing Carlson, but refused to step down.
"I didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy. I still don’t, which underscores the mistake," Roberts said.
"I realized in prayer and in conversations with a lot of friends and colleagues that, in fact, if I made the mess, my moral obligation is to clean it," Roberts continued.
Moon told Newsmax the Heritage Foundation "has a real opportunity to lead here.
"And if they choose to do so, then we'll happily come back to the table.
"But as long as they're unclear about how to act towards this, what I consider very rabid antisemitism on the right, I think it's important that we take a step back and give them a chance to clean house," he added.
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