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In late October, Tucker Carlson invited Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old white-nationalist streamer, onto his popular podcast and Youtube show for a friendly interview. Fuentes has amassed a loyal following with hundreds of thousands of viewers who tune into the racist, misogynist, and antisemitic sentiments he voices in lucid monologues on his nightly show, America First. A talented broadcaster with a biting sense of humor and a combative persona, hes tailor-made for the no-holds-barred environment of big-tech platformsso long as he manages to stay on them. In 2021, he was booted from essentially every tech platform for hate speech, forcing him to start his own streaming service to host his show.Where did Fuentes come from? Why are old-guard conservative institutions and media stalwarts alike catering to himor even cowering before him?The answer lies in how Fuentes has mastered the right-wing online swamps of the Trump era, and the increasingly porous boundaries between the extremely online right and the Republican establishment, explains Ben Lorber, an analyst at Political Research Associates, a group that monitors and studies the far right. You cant tell the story of Fuentess rise without telling the story of alternative tech platforms and transformations of large tech platforms, Lorber says.As the Fuentes interview rippled across social media, conservative sites and prominent figures on the right including Senator Ted Cruz and Jewish commentator Ben Shapiro, asked: What, exactly, had Carlson been thinking by platforming a figure like Fuentes? Three days after the Carlson appearance, Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, the storied conservative think tank that produced the Project 2025 roadmap for the Trump administration, weighed in. I disagree with, and even abhor, things Nick Fuentes says. But cancelling him is not the answer, either, Roberts said in a video on X, in which he also defended the right of conservatives to criticize Israel as well as Carlsons decision to host Fuentes. Carlsons critics, Roberts added, were globalists and part of a venomous coalition, language that many decried as trafficking in antisemitic tropes. Within the halls of Heritage, Robertss video provoked an insurrection, forcing him to issue a lengthy apology condemning Fuentes. In a speech, Roberts explained that hed wanted only to reach the disaffected young men that comprise Fuentess audience, many of whom identify as Groypers.But the damage has been done. Heritage staff lambasted him at a town hall-style discussion. Numerous employees and a member of the board of trustees have resigned. The cochairs of their antisemitism task force, the creator of Project Esther, a campaign targeting pro-Palestine protestors, also announced they would be severing ties with Heritage. Last Thursday, Democratic Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer announced he would introduce a resolution condemning Fuentes, and he called on his Republican colleagues to join him. They have to engage Once, figures like Fuentes were relegated to the far-right fringes of the internet. Cassie Miller, an analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center, explains that an older generation of conservative activists learned to speak in dog whistles to code racist appeals to voters. This model was pioneered by people like Lee Atwater, an advisor to Ronald Reagan and George H.W Bush, whose southern strategy infamously deployed euphemisms like states rights in place of explicit appeals to racism. But acolytes of Fuentes grew up in an entirely different media and technology environment, one where the far right saw the rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement as a vehicle to seed their ideas into mainstream politics. There are a lot of younger people, even within the institutionalized right, who are far more comfortable with the kind of overtly racist, transgressive language of someone like Fuentes, Miller says. Fuentes has built his profile through a command of the incentive structures of large tech platforms. He forces people to contend with his views and feel like they have to respond to him. They have to engage in some sort of discourse with him, and it ends up platforming him and legitimizing what hes saying, says Miller. Thats what he did here with Tucker Carlson. Short-form video has also proven to be a powerful weapon for Fuentes. His followers take bite-sized clips from his broadcasts and pump them out on X and other platforms. You might not have context when you come into contact with it, and you might think that, well, he has some legitimate points, Miller adds. Theres also Fuentess ugly blend of fair critiques of Israels wanton slaughter of Palestinians with outright antisemitism, a rhetorical strategy since adopted by figures like Candace Owens and Carlson. Carlson, Owens, and Fuentes, and others are all competing for the same kind of market on the anti-Zionist right, Lorber says. Theyve identified that almost as a growth market. Staying power Fuentess proficiency across online platforms, and the way those platforms have changed in recent years, have allowed him to stage his comeback. After Elon Musk purchased Twitter and renamed it X, he reinstated Fuentess account, where he now has over 1 million followers. His show went on to find a home on Rumblea conservative competitor to Youtube with financial backing from Silicon Valley billionaire and Republican donor Peter Thiel, among otherswhere it is broadcast to thousands nightly. All this has coincided with the slow death of once good faith efforts at hate-speech moderation by large tech platforms, Miller says. A lot of his career, hes been pushed to the margins of online spaces. But what weve seen is that hes had really incredible staying power, she adds. That staying power in the online world may have already spilled over into the real world. Fuentes and others on the far-right like the pseudonymous author Bronze Age Pervert have advised their followers to hide their power level and infiltrate so-called normie conservative institutions. Recently, right-wing writer Rod Dreher wrote of the remarkable prevalence of Groypers among the Republican partys professional ranks in Washington, including, he alleged, in the Trump administration. Reports from Politico have revealed text threads of young Republicans and one Trump appointee sympathizing with Nazism, showing the embrace of Groyper-like ideology. But trying to pinpoint the exact percentage of closeted Groypers might be missing the point. Theres very little difference between whether someone is a dedicated Groyper, or whether they just agree with Fuentess politics independently of being one of his followers, Lorber says. It might be better, Lorber says, to think of Fuentes as a stand in for a worldview and a brand of politicslike an ambassador of the Gen Z radical right. On the rise There is no reason to think that the recent controversy will slow Fuentess ascendancy within the GOP. Trump has long since made common cause with the extreme right. Trump infamously claimed there were very fine people, on both sides of the 2017 United the Right rally in Charlottesville, where men marched with tiki torches chanting Jews will not replace us. (An 18-year-old Fuentes was in attendance). In 2022, Fuentes himself attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and the artist formerly known as Kanye West. Examples, in other words, are not hard to find. Great Replacement ideology is now mainstream. Christian Nationalism is now mainstream, and antisemitism is rapidly becoming mainstream too, Lorber says. So for people like Nick Fuentes, the movement has caught up with him. As for Heritage, the fine print of Project 2025 reveals an extremist vision in its own right, one that seeks to transform the country into a Christian Nationalist autocracy. A softening stance towards Fuentes, in other words, doesnt seem so odd. Drawing the line at outright Nazism is certainly preferable to welcoming it. But the time for condemnation may be long since past. Fuentes, meanwhile, will keep posting and streaming, and likely continuing to bend the party to his will in the process. He has a really clear understanding of the way the media environment works, Miller says. For Fuentes, its a huge victory just to have people say his name.
Category:
E-Commerce
Theres a scene in Office Space where Peter sits across from two consultants during a company downsizing. They ask him, What would you say you do here? He hesitates, smirks, and admits he only works about 15 minutes a week. The rest of the time, hes pretending. It was comedy in 1999. Its confession now. That question has come back to us. For years, we filled our calendars, stayed visible, and kept the machine moving. Our worth was measured in hours, output, and presence. It had to be. Humans were the system, and the system required us to keep it running. We didnt question it because that was how things got done. AI has changed that. It can now do many of the things we once did to keep things moving: the summaries, the reports, the follow-ups, the updates, the spreadsheets. It can organize, calculate, write, and execute at a pace we cant match. That realization feels strange at first, but its also freeing. Now we get to hand that part over. We can give the robotic work to the robots and return to the human work. The work of thinking, deciding, designing, and connecting. So what does that look like? For one, it means our conversations are changing. When the noise quiets, the meetings sound different. Theres more space to ask better questions. We can finally talk about what matters: What is the business really trying to accomplish? Whats next? What do we need to build the product, craft the strategy, organize the team, and align around purpose? Its fantastic, really. Because when people stop being buried in repetitive work, they start showing up differently. They bring curiosity. They tell the truth. They collaborate in new ways. Im hearing it everywherein companies that are deep into their AI transformation and in those that are just starting. The tone is changing. The conversations are more human. Were still in the waiting room of this transition. Some are pacing the floor, some are seated patiently, some are already being called in. Wherever a company sits on that curve, the shift has begun. Deloittes 2024 Global Human Capital Trends report describes this moment as a readiness gap. Most leaders recognize that AI and technology will transform their organizations in the coming years, yet few say they feel prepared to lead their people through that change. The tools are ready. The humans are still catching up. For leaders, this is the moment to adjust the focus. The work still needs watching, but the focus of that attention is different. Its no longer about overseeing tasks; Its about overseeing direction. How we design. How we execute. How we build and with whom. Leadership now is about being intentional and accountable for how work is created, not just how it is completed. Many leaders are rebuilding, or at least redesigning, how they lead. The language is changing. The tone is shifting. Its not a different language, but it has a new accent. And those who thrive in this era will be the ones who can translate it. Theyll know how to take complexity and turn it into clarity. Theyll bring forward a sharper vision, a stronger purpose, and a deeper ability to communicate the why. Theyll be what I call full-stack leaders: people who can support the front, the back, and the middle layer. They understand product, people, and process, and they move fluidly across them all. AI has taken the repetitive pieces off our plates and has given us back the chance to think, create, and build with intention. It gives us room to lead.
Category:
E-Commerce
When an X user recently pointed out the eye-popping increase in billionaires wealth since 2015, entrepreneur Mark Cuban, a billionaire himself, responded with his opinion on why, but he urged followers to consider a different question: Why are we not giving incentives to companies to require them to give shares in their companies to all employees, at the same percentage of cash earnings as the CEO? Cuban said. It is the right question to be asking. Because while the debate over wealth inequality continues, the solution has been hiding in plain sight for decades. The top 10% of U.S. households now control 67% of all wealth, while the bottom half holds just 2.5%. The typical American worker approaches retirement with about $4,000 in savings, which is less than the cost of one month in an assisted living facility. That imbalance is not sustainable, economically or socially. The fix does not require new legislation or another corporate responsibility pledge. It lies in a proven model that has been quietly transforming companies and communities for 50 years: employee ownership. From Silicon Valley to Main Street Silicon Valley figured this out long ago. Equity compensation has been the foundation of the tech sectors innovation economy since the 1970s. Stock options allowed startups to attract world-class talent without paying top-tier salaries, align employee incentives with company performance, and build wealth for workers who might otherwise never own an asset. Yet outside of tech, broad-based ownership remains rare. Fewer than 7,000 U.S. companiesmostly in traditional sectors like manufacturing, construction, and distributionoperate under an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The results, however, mirror the Valleys success. Employee-owned firms grow more than 2% faster per year than their peers and are half as likely to go bankrupt. During the 2008 financial crisis, they laid off workers at only one-third the rate of conventional firms. For employees, the impact is just as powerful. ESOP participants hold 92% higher median household wealth, twice the retirement savings, and 33% higher median income than comparable workers. This is not philanthropy. It is a durable, market-tested strategy that drives growth, resilience, and equity at the same time. The Timing Could Not Be Better Today, several powerful trends make this the perfect moment to bring ownership to scale. A massive generational handoff is underway. Ten thousand baby boomers retire each day, many of them owners of successful small and midsize businesses with no succession plan. Transferring ownership to employees keeps those businesses rooted in their communities, preserves good jobs, and rewards founders with fair market value. The retirement crisis demands new solutions. With average savings at historic lows, workers need wealth-building tools that go beyond 401(k) plans. Ownership creates an asset base that compounds over time, restoring what traditional pensions once offered. Labor shortages are reshaping industries. As skilled workers grow scarce, companies that offer ownership will win the competition for talent, not only by paying well but by giving people a reason to stay. Economic volatility favors resilience. Employee-owned companies outperform during downturns because people at every level have a stake in the outcome. Ownership builds both financial and cultural strength. Beyond Good Intentions America has no shortage of programs designed to help workers. What it lacks is awareness and adoption of the ownership mechanisms that allow employees to share in the value they create. As long as labor and ownership remain separated, inequality will continue to deepen. When employees have an equity stake, their focus shifts from completing tasks to building lasting value. They think like owners because they are owners, and that mindset fuels innovation, strengthens loyalty, and creates a powerful cycle of trust and accountability. The impact case is clear, and the business case is even stronger. Broad-based ownership builds companies that last. It keeps wealth circulating within communities instead of extracting it, and it turns employees into long-term investors in the enterprise they help build. The Moment to Act We are standing on the edge of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine capitalism for shared prosperity. Employee ownership will not fix every inequity in our economy, but it addresses one of the most fundamental: who benefits from the value a company creates. Cubans challenge should not disappear into the social media ether. It should become a call to action for policymakers, investors, and business leaders to make employee ownership the standard, not the exception. America does not need another wealth redistribution debate. It needs a wealth participation strategy. Employee ownership represents capitalism at its best: fair, inclusive, and fiercely competitive. It aligns profit with purpose and ensures that the people who build our companies share in their success. If we scale it now, we can turn todays inequality into tomorrows shared prosperity.
Category:
E-Commerce
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