Over the past few weeks, the American right has been fiercely debating a drama that begins with Tucker Carlson hosting an antisemitic young influencer on his podcast, and ends with a very public breakdown at the Republican Party’s premier think tank.

Is it a bit inside baseball? Yes. But it’s worth understanding. The details tell us a lot about where the conservative movement is, and where it’s going.

“Not to be too grandiose, but it’s the Spanish Civil War,” Jonah Goldberg, editor of the center-right publication The Dispatch, told Today, Explained co-host Noel King. “It’s previewing the bigger wars to come about what the right is about, who can be tolerated as part of the coalition, and who can’t be.”

Goldberg spoke with King about the crackup at the Heritage Foundation, the characters involved, and how it’s putting the maxim ‘no enemies to my right’ to the test.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Who are the main characters in what has unfolded in the past two weeks or so?

One is an institution, the Heritage Foundation, a storied think tank in Washington that’s over a half-century old. Second is the president of the Heritage Foundation, a guy named Kevin Roberts, who has moved it in a very populist, very Trump-aligned direction over the past few years. And then there’s Tucker Carlson, a guy I’ve known for more than 30 years, used to be a colleague at Fox, who after being fired from Fox, has launched his own independent media thing on the web and is doing strange things. And then lastly, is this really horrible gargoyle of a human being named Nick Fuentes. (Sorry, I try very........

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