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In a letter to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts on Tuesday, Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Board of Governors Member Arie Lipnick announced the suspension of CAM’s membership in the Heritage Foundation’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.
The move follows Roberts’ defense of conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s platforming of antisemite Nick Fuentes and Roberts’ own amplification of antisemitic tropes.
The full text letter can be read HERE and below:
Dear Mr. Roberts,
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) requests an immediate meeting with you to discuss our ongoing relationship with the Heritage Foundation. Until such time, CAM is suspending our participation as a member of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a project of the Heritage Foundation.
CAM fiercely defends the constitutionally protected rights of Americans to free speech. As such, we acknowledge that Tucker Carlson has the right to host antisemites on his show. Indeed, Mr. Carlson has the right to practice antisemitism himself — a right he appears to have greedily exercised in recent years.
We, similarly, have the right to criticize Mr. Carlson for eagerly nodding along with comments that channel the literature of the Third Reich, for challenging the First Amendment rights of Christian Americans to practice their faith and for labeling them “heretics,” and not least for allowing his show to become a welcome home for America’s adversaries.
No, the genesis of this letter is our deep concern with how you, Mr. Roberts, on behalf of the Heritage Foundation, have chosen to exercise your rights. Given the opportunity to apologize and retract your comments criticizing “a venomous coalition of globalists,” “the globalist class” and “their mouthpieces in Washington,” comments that feed into the very antisemitic tropes you claim to “abhor,” your speech at Hillsdale College yesterday fell well short of the mark.
Taken together with your defense of Mr. Carlson’s decision to treat Holocaust denial as legitimate political discourse begs the question of whether Holocaust survivors, their families, and the American Jewish community at large have a home at Heritage. The Holocaust is an immutable historical event. It is worthy of study, not debate, yet somehow your speech implicitly suggested it is conservative to engage in debate with tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists that believe the earth is flat and that Winston Churchill was the actual villain of the Second World War.
As one of the thought leaders of American conservatism, the Heritage Foundation must categorically reject the notion that antisemitism is at all compatible with conservative thought or that Holocaust revisionism is in any way worthy of the conservative movement. This is not about cancellation culture nor is it about Right versus Left. It is about right versus wrong. Frankly, your comments leave us skeptical of whether the Heritage Foundation has the necessary moral leadership to house the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.
Thank you for your attention to this matter and we await your response to our request.
Respectfully yours,
Arie Lipnick
Board of Governors Member
Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM)
