Vivek Ramaswamy Calls Out Online Right’s Obsession With Heritage

Speaking at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy delivered a powerful and pointed message to the conservative base: being an American isn’t about ancestry it’s about ideals.

Ramaswamy, who has become a rising figure on the national stage, took aim at what he called “pockets of the online right” that are increasingly embracing identity politics of their own. And in a moment that stunned parts of the crowd, he said clearly:

“The idea of a ‘heritage American’ is about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put up.”

His point? That American identity is not tribal or genetic it’s based on the principles enshrined in 1776, not the bloodlines that predated it. For Ramaswamy, “either you're an American or you're not.”

He warned that both the radical left and a fringe of the online right are pushing dangerous mirror images of the same ideology one obsessed with racial grievance, the other with ethnic purity. He called for conservatives to reject both:

• “We believe in merit,” Ramaswamy said. “The best person gets the job regardless of skin color.”

• “We believe in free speech and open debate,” even for those who disagree with us, he added, naming Nick Fuentes and Jimmy Kimmel in the same breath.

• He called out white nationalist rhetoric just as forcefully as woke race theories, warning that “victimhood culture from the left to the right will be the ruin of this country.”

Ramaswamy’s speech echoed his recent guest essay, where he made the case that the American Right is at a crossroads. On one side is the traditional conservative movement built on freedom, individual responsibility, and merit-based opportunity. On the other is a growing identity-obsessed faction clinging to ideas like “blood and soil” ideas that, in his words, “are incompatible with the American creed.”

“No matter your ancestry, if you wait your turn and obtain citizenship, you are every bit as American as a Mayflower descendant,” he wrote.

It’s a bold stand one not every corner of the movement wants to hear. The speech came amid escalating feuds between conservative commentators. Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson exchanged indirect blows from the same stage, with Carlson accusing Shapiro of trying to silence voices like his a charge Shapiro would likely deny as he continues to combat what he sees as rising anti-Semitism and conspiracy theory grifters in the movement.

Ramaswamy, however, was focused not on personalities but on principles. He urged Republicans to turn their energy toward real problems like the economy and young Americans being locked out of wealth generation. He called for “broad-based participation” in stock market gains and ownership not grievance politics.

“The solution to identity politics needn’t be one camp defeating the other,” he said, “but instead achieving together a national escape velocity to more promising terrain.”

It’s a clear call to the conservative base: reject victimhood, reject tribalism, and reclaim the American dream through ideas, not ancestry.

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