DEBUNKING the VIRAL Nick Fuentes Video, Plus Why Vivek Ramaswamy Is WRONG About Harvard Students Supporting Terrorism

Liz Wheeler Show episode 448, take one. Alright, we have a big show today. We are going to talk about Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist whose video went viral even among some conservative influencers on Twitter. I have some very important thoughts to add to this little back and forth. We’re also going to talk about Harvard. A lot of students at Harvard signed a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ gruesome terrorist attack against Jews in Israel, and some CEOs of some prominent companies, including a Wall Street hedge fund manager wants the names of the students who belong to the club that wrote these letters so that he can never hire them ever because they’re terrorist sympathizers. And then we have Vivek Ramaswamy presidential candidate who says that that’s cancel culture and that we shouldn’t be doing that. And Vivek is totally completely wrong on this and I want to talk about why he’s wrong. 

But before we get to that, this happened about two minutes before we started this show, so I don’t have a ton of updates on it. It just happened. I went to post something or I went to make a comment, I should say, on my Instagram account, and I got notified that I’m locked out of my Instagram account. It’s not exactly that my account has been suspended, it’s that I’m not allowed to do anything. My account has been paralyzed. I’m not allowed to make a comment on anyone’s post. I’m not allowed to post myself. I’m not allowed to post a story. I’ll show you the notification that Instagram sent me through my app and the reason why they did this, I will show you as well. So as I try to post a comment on a friend’s picture, a friend whose baby is in the nicu, I was posting that I was praying for this child and for the mother and the father, and I wasn’t allowed to send this message to this woman because apparently, according to Instagram, this notification says you can’t access certain features. 

Right now, a link in your profile goes against our terms of service or community guidelines. This link is stopping you from accessing certain features on Instagram, like posting, tagging, and commenting. They then tell me which link needs to be removed and would you look at that? It is a link to my book. The link is Hide Your Children book.com, hide your children book.com. They say this needs to be removed. So I’m like, okay, well, what term of service does this violate? What community guidelines am I violating here? Just posting a link to where you can buy my book. This is what Instagram says. We remove links with spam support or praise of terrorism, organized crime or hate groups, solicitation of sexual services and or sale of firearms and drugs. And then the only option that they give me, you can see it right there, I took a screenshot of what was showing up on my phone. 

The only option is, okay, and by clicking this button, they say it will remove the link and you will now have access to all your features. So no explanation about how a link to actually the publisher’s website. So this Hide your children book.com is a link to Rey’s website. You can either go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or booka million or Rey’s website to buy my book. It’s like an aggregate website. So you can choose which vendor you want to purchase the book from. They didn’t say whether it’s spam, it’s not spam, it’s just how to buy my book. I don’t support or praise terrorism or organize crime or hate groups. I am not soliciting sexual services and I’m not trying to sell firearms or drugs. So I’d be very interested from Instagram to hear why exactly I’ve been locked out of my account. 

And I’d be very, very interested to know if it has anything to do with the fact that several of my reels went viral over the weekend, these reels talking about Hamas’ attack on Israel, and is that correlated? Do we think when I say Hamas, are terrorists committing egregious acts against Israel? And that’s wrong. And Israel has every right to defend herself and every right to retaliate and the civilians in Gaza who are tragically being killed, and it’s awful because they’re human beings with dignity and worth are being used as human shields by Hamas. So the people to blame for that are Hamas, not Israel. So maybe this is why Instagram decided that my book Hide Your Children, exposing the Marxist Behind the Attack in America’s Kids is too dangerous for any of you to click on. I guess this means you should go and click on it because anything the left tells us we shouldn’t access, you know, sure as heck should access. 

I’m of course going to appeal this before I agree to remove this link to see if I can possibly get to a human person behind Instagram to contest these slanderous accusations against me that I would support app, praise, terrorism, organized crime or a hate group, or solicit sexual service or sell drugs to people. Instagram unblock and unlock my account right now. It’s a book for goodness sake, a book about Marxists infiltrating our institutions and how we as Americans can actually start fighting back against this by retaking our institutions. Guys, of course, I’m going to ask, if you haven’t gotten my book, please go to this link, buy the book, but also tag Instagram. Tell ’em to unlock my account and I’ll keep you updated on what happens from here on out. So the way that I wanted to start the show or the way I had originally planned to start the show was by playing a video of a white supremacist. 

Now, this white supremacist has been lurking on the outside fringe of politics for several years, and we’ve never talked about him on this show because he’s so fringe. His views aren’t influential at all, which means why would we give him a platform? Why should he deserve any attention? His views are so egregious, it’s too obvious to even need to be refuted. However, the reason that we are going to show this video today, or the reason I’m going to show you this video today is because several prominent conservative influencers posted this video agreeing with Nick Fuentes, which is extremely misguided. So we’re going to go through that video and talk about it and refute it in just a second. So Nicholas Fontes has been lurking on the outskirts of politics for the last handful of years. I don’t pay a lot of attention to him because he’s a holocaust denni. 

He’s openly antisemitic. He not he antisemitic. What does that mean? He hates the Jews because they’re Jews. He’s borderline white supremacist, if not outright white supremacist. And his views don’t represent anybody in this country. So why should we give a platform to someone who happens to have a large megaphone or happens to have upload capacity to upload videos to YouTube, but he’s not influencing anyone. No one’s following him. He doesn’t have any clout. So we haven’t talked about him because why give platform to repugnant repulsive views when they’re not even influencing people? So we haven’t talked about him on this show before. The only reason that I am today is because he spilled over on Twitter. He posted a video responding to the Hamas terror attacks on Israel and Israel’s response, their right to self-defense, their response to the Hamas terror attacks. And shocker, the anti-Semite is criticizing Israel’s military response. 

Shocker, the anti-Semite doesn’t seem that upset about the terror attacks in Israel, but several prominent conservative commentators reposted the video from this known antisemite, this known white supremacist, which is completely inadvisable, might be the tamest word that I can possibly think to use. Why on earth anyone in their right mind would repost a white supremacist, even if they agreed with his point is totally bananas, totally bonkers and really destructive of the credibility of anybody who posted that. And I’m sorry to sound harsh, that’s just the way that it is. So first I want to show you this clip and then I want to tell you why Nicholas Fuentes is actually falling for terrorist propaganda and becoming a mouthpiece of Hamas. So this is the video that he posted. Take a look. 

They are about to commit a genocide and it is a repugnant and evil government that is led by the Jewish state that is about to commit perhaps the worst atrocities in this century. And if you’re a Christian, if you’re a Catholic, we have to have some moral clarity here and say that two wrongs don’t make a right. What Hamas did in Israel on Saturday was terrible, but those people should be held accountable. What Israel is doing now and what they’ve done for 16 years is they’ve held all the Palestinians collectively responsible and they are inflicting a collective punishment on innocent people, on children, on civilians. They’re blowing up schools and hospitals. And so although from a strategic and geopolitical point of view, I am ambivalent because this is happening very far. At the same time, any Catholic can recognize that this is wrong, this is wrong, what they’re doing. 

Do they have a right to retaliate against Hamas? It’s an easy question. I think everybody knows the answer. Regardless of what you feel about Israel or any other country, no country should be forced to accept violence within its territory. But with that being said, no state can inflict severe civilian casualties on a population intentionally to collectively punish a people for the actions of one group within one militant faction of the political leadership. It’s just not right. So I’m calling on all Christians and Catholics. I’m calling on all America first supporters to pray for the people of Gaza and also to get the word out hashtag Gaza genocide. It’s what it is. They’re about to commit a genocide, and like I said, I believe that American government should care about the American people. At the same time, we can call a spade a spade and say that what is about to happen and Gaza is unspeakably horrifying and evil and everything that the Jews are saying about what Hamas did. Well, we know that they’re full of shit because at the same time that they cry about Israeli civilians being killed, they’re about to kill 10 times as many people deliberately, and it makes them the same. It makes them exactly the same. How is it any different? On the one hand, they say Hamas is evil and they’re terrorists. They’re not like any other state organization because they target civilians. Well, is that not exactly what the Jews are doing in retaliation? 

It’s almost worse because they’re going to kill more and they’re doing it knowingly and according to their own moral standard. Killing civilians is wrong, but they’re going to do it anyway because they’re sick. That’s evil. 

Just when you think the guy can’t get any stupider, not that I give a lot of credit for brains to someone who is a holocaust denni and an anti-Semite, but what he is doing is he is acting as the mouthpiece of Hamas because this is exactly why Hamas uses civilians as human shields. It’s why they hide their rockets and their bombs and all of their terror planning apparatuses in mosques and in schools and in hospitals so that when Israel goes to take out the rockets and the bombs and the planning materials that allow Hamas to wage terror attacks against Israel, the terrorists can point to Israel and say, how dare you bomb a hospital? Innocent civilians who are just sick. How dare you bomb a school? How dare you bomb a mosque? How dare you bomb these civilian apparatuses instead of a military installment? This is exactly why Hamas does what they do, because Hamas is hoping people as stupid as Nicholas Fuentes will say exactly what Nicholas Fuentes just said. 

What is the difference? What Israel’s doing is worse? No, no, no, no. Hamas is responsible for the civilian deaths, not only in Israel, but the civilian deaths in Gaza too, because Hamas right now is taking away people’s car keys so that they can’t evacuate Gaza because the I D F gave notice to civilians in Gaza saying, guys, get out. Get out right now because we are going to raise this area because this is where Hamas stores the weapons that they used to kill our people. And yet it’s Hamas that’s forcing people to stay in their homes. Hamas, that’s forcing children to be in harm’s way. They’re holding up children in front of bullets and then blaming the person that fired the weapon. And so what Nicholas Fuentes is doing is he’s not only falling for terrorist propaganda, he’s being the mouthpiece of terrorists because maybe he’s just stupid. 

Maybe his hatred, his antisemitism blinds him to the reality of what a terrorist group is doing. But anyone who is so stupid that they would sit there and say what Israel’s doing, defending themselves in their people is worse than Hamas. Beheading babies raping women, kidnapping elderly people, murdering entire families, burning people in a car is simply so unspeakably dumb that it’s Hamas must be sitting over there laughing because this is exactly why they use civilians as shields to trick morons into thinking Israel is the bad guy. Now you can have a good faith discussion. Well, Nicholas Fuentes probably can’t, but people could have a good faith discussion about what Israel’s retaliation ought to look like or what the US involvement in this conflict between Israel and Hamas should be. You can discuss that there are some people in the conservative movement that think that the US should give Israel all the support that they need and that Israel should basically flatten Gaza. 

There are other people in the conservative movement that think the US shouldn’t get involved and that Israel should just do targeted strikes on Hamas leaders. You can have a good faith discussion about what the role of the US is in these foreign conflicts and what Israel should do, but that is not what Nicholas Fuentes is doing. And the reason that I bring this up again, is not to platform this guy. I think that his views, fortunately, thankfully, are very fringe in this country. I don’t think he represents the ideology, the racist ideology of very many people in this country. But for some reason, several conservative influencers on Twitter as the one that we showed before posted and said, Nicholas Fuentes is right, and Ben Spiro was wrong. And a platform, a guy with gross racist holocaust denying antisemitic views is beyond reprehensible. And any conservative that would fall for that needs to take a step back and do some self-analysis and stop platforming racist. 

Because if you think that Israel’s the bad guy in this, then your entire worldview is so completely warped that you should not be adding commentary to the discussion until you can properly discern what is right from what is wrong. So speaking of what’s right and wrong, Harvard is embroiled in a cancel culture scandal, but a little bit of a different cancel culture scandal. So students at Harvard, actually 30 Harvard student groups signed a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ terror attacks, and we can show this letter on the screen. This letter that Hamas or that blames Israel for Hamas’ terrorism is just despicable. I think we read this on the show early last week, but essentially it says joint statement by Harvard Palestine solidarity groups on the situation in Palestine. We the undersigned, student organizations at Reeds hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. 

Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians and Gaza have been forced to live in an open air prison. Israeli officials promise to open the gates of hell and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestinians and Gaza have no shelters for refuge, nowhere to escape. In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel’s violence. The apartheid regime is the only one to blame, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It’s the most despicable statement you can imagine. And yet, look at how many student groups at Harvard signed this statement. 30 different student groups. 30. Now understand that student groups at a college or university are most of the time, the vast majority of the time they receive funding from the university. Harvard is responsible for these statements, not in the sense that they should. 

Yeah, they’re responsible. There’s really no two ways about it. If you give money from Harvard, then yes, Harvard bears some of the culpability. If what they’re funding is this gross antisemitism and some businessmen, some CEOs and some hedge fund managers are now calling on Harvard to release the names of the students who are members of these students organizations so that they can never hire these students once they have graduated from Harvard. I’m going to read you or I’m going to read you some of that and show you the Harvard President’s response in just a second. So these 30 Harvard student groups didn’t actually sign the names of the individual members that belong to these groups. And so there are several prominent businessmen who are calling for the names of these students. Bill Ackman is one. Bill Ackman is one of the most successful hedge fund managers on Wall Street. 

Very powerful individual. Rebecca, this is Element two E. This is what he posted after these Harvard groups released this joint letter. I want to read this to you guys. If we could bring this up on the screen. This is what Bill Ackman said. He said, I’ve been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel so as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members. If in fact their members support the letter they have released. The names of the signatories should be made public, so their views are publicly known. One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists who we now learn have beheaded babies among other inconceivably despicable acts. That makes sense to me. That makes perfect sense to me. Well, in response to this, and by the way, if you scroll down a little bit, can you bring that back up? If you scroll down a little bit, look at how many people on that element. 24 million people read Bill Ackman’s post on x.com, 24 million people. So to say that this was viral would be the understatement of the year. It went so viral that the president of Harvard issued a video response, and this is what she said. Take a listen. 

This is a moment of intense pain and grief for a great many people in our community and around the world. I feel that pain and grief myself as members of a university community, we have a choice. We can fan the flames of division and hatred that are roiling the world, or we can try to be a force for something different and better. People have asked me where we stand. So let me be clear. Our university rejects terrorism that includes the barbaric atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Our university rejects hate, hate of Jews, hate of Muslims, hate of any group of people based on their faith, their network, or any aspect of their identity. Our university rejects the harassment or intimidation of individuals based on their beliefs, and our university embraces a commitment to free expression. That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views, but that is a far cry for endorsing them. 

Okay, pause right there for a second. 

It’s in the 

Exercise. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views, even views that many of us find objectionable or outrageous. She said, let’s bring up the next element here. This is the time that Harvard revoked 10 admissions. So 10 people that they said, yes, we accept you into Harvard. You may attend our school. They then took that back. They withdrew it because of offensive memes in a private group chat. But I thought, Claudine, that Harvard does not punish people or censor people based on what they say, even if those views are offensive or outrageous. The truth of the matter, of course, is that Harvard, this Harvard precedent is just a liar. She is a complete hypocrite. She’s tolerating terrorist sympathizing words from students at her university who are hiding behind the name of their student organizations, whereas she specifically discriminates against any right-leaning students. 

In fact, America first legal posted the following in response to Claudine Gay’s claim that Harvard supports free expression. This is what America First legal said about D E I. Harvard is full of it. We tried to pay the Crimson, that’s the student newspaper last year to run an ad about how D E I policies in the workplace we’re discriminatory and destructive, are ads stated, simple facts, but they would not run it because they said it was misinformation. True colors exposed. Yes, shocker. Harvard is a liar. Shocker. Harvard is a hypocrite. Of course they are. What’s worse is that presidential candidates, Vivek Ram, he’s in the Republican primary competing against Trump or probably trying to compete for a position in the Trump administration, Vikk Ramaswamy. It’s taking the side of Harvard presidents and actually criticizing these businessmen who don’t want to hire the students and these Harvard student organizations that are sympathizing with the terrorists of Hamas. 

This is what Vivek posted. I want to read this to you. We can pull this up. He said, the Harvard student groups who co-signed the anti-Israel letter are simple fools, but it’s not productive for companies to blacklist kids for being members of student groups that make dumb political statements on campus. Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas, and sometimes kids join clubs that endorse bone headedly. Wrong ideas. I’ve been as vocal as anyone in criticizing left-wing cancel culture. See, my first book Woke Incorporated. But it’s bad no matter who practices it. It wasn’t great when people wearing Trump hats were fired from work. It wasn’t great when college graduates couldn’t get hired unless they signed oppressive d e i pledges, and it’s not great. Now, if companies refuse to hire kids who were part of student groups that once adopted the wrong view on Israel, this isn’t a legal point. 

It’s a cultural point. I say this as someone who vehemently disagrees with those Harvard student groups, those calling for blacklisting students right now are responding from a place of understandable hurt. But I’m confident that in the fullness of time, they will agree with me on the wisdom of avoiding these cancel culture tactics. Let me be both delicate and blunt here. This is the absolute stupidest thing that Vivek Ramaswamy has ever said. The absolute stupidest thing, first of all, to compare Trump supporters, people who were wearing make America great again, who were fired from their jobs for being Trump supporters. To compare those people to students at Harvard who think that it is appropriate and justified for Hamas terrorists to rape women, murder people, and behead infants, are you saying that those two actions are somehow morally equal, Vivek, because that’s not the same at all. 

That is not the same at all, at all. You’ll notice that Vivek fails to mention what cancel culture actually is. Cancel culture doesn’t mean that you are free of the consequences of your words and the consequences of your action. Cancel culture is, for example, when a high schooler posts a rap lyric that contains the N word, and this high schooler might be stupid to post that given our current woke situation, but isn’t a racist, isn’t demeaning, isn’t using that N word as a pejorative against a black person. And 20 years later, someone who doesn’t like this person digs up this old high school tweet or whatever it was and tries to get the person fired for it. That is cancel culture, that is bad, that is wrong. What’s happening to these students at Harvard? And what should continue to happen is not cancel culture. And we’re going to talk about that in just a second. 

So cancel culture means that you wouldn’t dig up a post that someone made in high school of say a rap lyric and accuse that person 20 years later of being racist and try to get them fired for it. That is cancel culture. Cancel culture is taking a mainstream idea like I voted for Donald Trump, which half of the country did, and saying, we do not want you to be a part of our workplace or society because you do not adhere to our radical leftist Marxist ideology that is cancel culture and that is bad. It’s not cancel culture for a private business to say, well, let’s see here. These, and they’re not kids. By the way, Vivet kept referring to these students at Harvard as kids. Many of these are graduate students at Harvard, meaning they’re 23, 24, 25 years old when in the history of mankind have 23, 24, and 25 year olds not been held accountable for their actions. 

When have they been dismissed? As mere kids who don’t know better? Oh, their conscience isn’t yet developed. Their moral reasoning is still in the experimental stage. If that’s the case, we are in way bigger trouble then than Vivek is even insinuating. But you should not be required as a business owner to hire someone who is supportive of the genocidal death cult against Jews that Hamas is propagating. This should be common sense, which it is. The problem, of course, is that Vivek is looking at politics and conservatism through a lens of libertarianism. And libertarianism will not absolutely refuses to define any any kind of morals. He won’t. He and all Libertarians won’t look at this and say, well, listen, the biggest difference here is objective reality. And objective Reality says, being a Trump supporter is not inherently immoral. There is nothing immoral about being a Trump supporter, but being a supporter of Hamas, a terrorist group that wants to commit genocide against the Jews, there is something objectively immoral about that. 

But libertarianism wants us to look at the world through this eyes of essentially moral relativism like, oh, well, your truth might not be their truth. They might feel one way. And who are you to say that they should be canceled for feeling that way? No, no, no, no, no. Our society will never thrive. We will never flourish unless we are able to say the two things are different and therefore should beget different reactions. Because one thing is not wrong supporting Trump. The other thing supporting Hamas is wrong. And it’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of reality. Again, to be delicate and to be blunt, this might’ve been the stupidest thing that Vivek Ramaswamy has ever said. So let us end this show on a more positive note. And the positive note is, and when I say positive note, this is actually very sad and very chilling, but it shows the depth of goodness that can exist in human nature if we let it. 

The Vatican representative to Israel has offered to exchange himself for the hostages held by Hamas. This is like St. Maximilian Kolby type stuff. St. Maximilian Kolby was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. And when the Nazis came around every day to gather up certain random people to take them to the gas chambers, St. Maximilian Colby offered to spare the father of a family who he was near, who had been selected for death that day. And St. Maximilian Kolby said, take me instead. And the Nazi guards didn’t care. They said, okay, whatever you can come and St. Maximilian Colby sacrificed his life so that the father of that family might live longer with his family. He then ministered to the other people who were being killed in the gas chamber and was the last to be killed by the Nazis in that particular group of people. 

This offer by Cardinal Pala, the patriarch of Jerusalem, gives me St. Maximilian Kolby vibes. He said, and this is his quote, I am ready for an exchange, anything. If this can lead to freedom to bring the children home, the first thing to do is to try to win the release of the hostages. Otherwise, there will be no way of stopping an escalation. And he offered himself, if this does not give you the chills and bring a tear to your eye in a time this last week and a half where there has been so much grief, so much anger, so much fear, so much horror, where the demons from hell have been so evident that sometimes it has felt that they have obscured the good that is from heaven. This man is an example of the good that will always prevail over the evil no matter how many times the evil tries to get us. And on that note, thank you for watching today. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.