Nick Fuentes and Jeff Merkley - Birds of a Feather?

On the liberty spectrum—where the defining axis is individual liberty and unique human dignity versus collectivism in any form - economic differences fade into irrelevance compared to the core question of human relations: Do we judge and treat people as sovereign individuals, or as interchangeable members of groups to be praised, blamed, privileged, or punished collectively?

Nick Fuentes and Senator Jeff Merkley occupy different ends of the traditional economic divide - Fuentes has expressed support for elements of free-market capitalism (while criticizing neoliberal globalism), and Merkley is a progressive Democrat aligning with Democratic Socialists for regulated markets, social safety nets, and progressive taxation.

Yet, when it comes to demonizing Israel and, by extension, Jews as a collective, they share a striking commonality rooted in regressive collectivist thinking. Both reduce complex geopolitical and human realities to monolithic group narratives, subordinating individual rights and uniqueness to group-based scapegoating or grievance.

This places both firmly on the left of the liberty spectrum: the side of government control, top-down domination, and dehumanization.

The Collectivist Commonality: Demonizing a Group

Nick Fuentes is overtly antisemitic, promoting classic tropes of Jewish collective control, dual loyalty, and subversion. In 2025 statements (including his interview with Tucker Carlson), he labeled "Zionist Jews" as enemies of conservatism, invoked "organized Jewry" as a transnational threat, and argued that Jewish loyalty to Israel undermines American unity.

He conflates criticism of Israeli policy with blanket attacks on Jews as a people, recycling conspiracies about Jewish influence in media, finance, and politics. This is pure collectivism: treating "Jews" (or "Zionists" as a proxy) as a unified, malevolent group whose individual members bear collective guilt.

Jeff Merkley, while condemning overt antisemitism and supporting Israel's right to exist, has repeatedly framed Israel's actions in Gaza as "indiscriminate bombing," "weaponization of hunger," and part of a "systematic plan to destroy and ethnically cleanse Palestinians" (per his 2025 report with Sen. Van Hollen).

Stating that Israel is engaged in "ethnic cleansing" instead of the reality of a existential war of survival against the large terrorist army that had just committed the October 7th massacre of Jews in Israel is an accusation of genocide. There is no evidence for this accusation since Israel does not target civilians, only terrorists. This genocide-type claim dehumanizes all Jews who make up the IDF to be as morally bad as the Nazis of Germany. 

His 2024 Easter post linking Israel's conduct to civilian deaths drew accusations of evoking blood libels from Jewish leaders and Israel's antisemitism envoy. Merkley calls for cutting U.S. aid, often portraying "Netanyahu's government" or Israel collectively in these dehumanizing terms degrades into tropes about Jewish power or intransigence as "oppressors."

Both engage in group demonization: Fuentes explicitly targets Jews as a collective enemy; Merkley harshly collectivizes Israel's actions in ways criticized as feeding antisemitic narratives (e.g., disproportionate blame or historical tropes). Neither consistently affirms the uniqueness of every individual—Jewish civilians, the IDF, or diaspora Jews—nor prioritizes individual human dignity over group labels.

Why Human Relations Trump Economics on the Liberty Spectrum

Collectivists—whether through racial/ethnonationalist lenses (Fuentes) or progressive identity/grievance frameworks (Merkley via DEI support and group-outcome policies)—view people primarily as group representatives. DEI initiatives, which Merkley aligns with as a progressive Democrat, explicitly prioritize group equity over individual merit, assigning advantages or disadvantages based on collective identity.

This mirrors Fuentes' racial collectivism: both systems justify controlling individuals (via policy, coercion, or exclusion) for the "greater good" of a preferred group.

On the left of the liberty spectrum: More government control.

Top-down mandates—whether enforcing ethnic purity (Fuentes' ethnostate vision) or equity quotas (DEI-style policies)—deny people the right to be judged solely by their unique character and actions. This path historically leads to totalitarianism: state power trampling dissenters deemed part of the "wrong" group, eroding personal freedom.

On the right: More liberty and individual rights.

Less government intervention, voluntary associations, and respect for each person's irreplaceable individuality. No group privilege or punishment—only sovereign uniques in symbiotic relations.Fuentes and Merkley may clash economically, but their shared collectivist approach to human relations—demonizing a group (Jews/Israel) while elevating collective narratives - reveals them as birds of a feather on the control side of the spectrum.

True freedom demands rejecting all such groupism, embracing Ethical Individualism: zero tolerance for any ideology that dehumanizes uniques in service of a collective. Only then can we safeguard individual liberty against the slide into domination by top-down government power.