There is something profoundly unsettling about watching a movement turn its fire not on bigotry, but on those who dare to confront it. Megyn Kelly’s recent comments, as reported by The Daily Caller, accusing pro-Israel conservatives of “fueling the rise of antisemitism,” represent not merely a lapse in judgment but a dangerous inversion of moral responsibility. At a moment when antisemitic conspiracies are metastasizing across social media, campuses, and political discourse, Kelly has chosen to point her finger at the very people trying to hold the line.

Let us be clear: antisemitism is not created by those who challenge it. It is created by those who indulge it, excuse it, flirt with it, or normalize it in the name of “free speech” or ideological solidarity. To suggest otherwise is to confuse the smoke alarm for the fire.

Kelly’s claim that figures like Ben Shapiro and Bari Weiss are “making antisemites” because of their insistence on calling out bigotry is not only analytically bankrupt—it echoes one of the oldest tropes in the antisemitic playbook: that Jews provoke the hatred directed at them. This rhetorical sleight of hand shifts blame away from the propagators of conspiracy theories and toward their targets. It is as morally grotesque as it is historically ignorant.

The context, as detailed by The Daily Caller, makes the stakes even higher. This controversy did not emerge from a thoughtful policy debate but from Kelly’s refusal to clearly condemn the conspiratorial rhetoric circulated by Candace Owens after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Ben Shapiro criticized that refusal, not because he relishes “denouncing and deplatforming,” but because there is a line between dissent and defamation. When conspiracy theories metastasize—particularly those that traffic in antisemitic insinuations—silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.

Kelly’s response was not to confront the substance of that criticism, but to recast herself as a victim of ideological enforcement. She drew a false equivalence between accountability and cancellation, framing any demand for moral clarity as an attempt to suppress debate. That is a seductive narrative in a movement scarred by years of progressive overreach. But it collapses under scrutiny. Calling out antisemitism is not cancel culture; it is basic decency.

Even more troubling is Kelly’s attempt to exonerate figures such as Tucker Carlson, whom she insists are not “making antisemites.” This willful blindness ignores the cumulative effect of years of rhetoric that casts shadowy elites, globalist cabals, and “foreign interests” as enemies of the people. Whether or not Carlson intends to incite antisemitism is irrelevant; the ecosystems he has helped cultivate are thick with its spores. To deny that is to deny reality.

Kelly’s charge that younger conservatives are “turning on Israel” because of Shapiro and Weiss is similarly incoherent. As The Daily Caller has noted, generational shifts are driven by a constellation of factors: foreign-policy fatigue, algorithmic radicalization, online grievance cultures, and a growing appetite for transgressive narratives. To pin that evolution on pro-Israel advocacy is not just simplistic—it is an abdication of responsibility by those who profit from outrage while pretending to lament its consequences.

Her swipe at Bari Weiss is equally disingenuous. Weiss built her career challenging institutional orthodoxies in progressive spaces; she never claimed that criticism is tantamount to cancellation. To accuse her of hypocrisy for amplifying Shapiro’s argument against tolerating conspiracy theorists is to conflate courage with conformity, and critique with censorship.

But the deepest danger in Kelly’s rhetoric is not its internal inconsistency—it is its resonance. When a high-profile conservative figure labels Jewish advocates “Israel first” and accuses them of manufacturing antisemitism, she does more than wound friendships. She legitimizes suspicion of Jewish loyalty. She repackages an ancient slander in the language of cultural critique.

This is where the conservative movement must decide what it stands for. Is it a coalition bound by principles—individual liberty, personal responsibility, moral clarity—or is it merely a grievance factory where anything goes so long as it draws clicks? If the latter, then antisemitism will not be confronted; it will be rationalized.

Free speech is a cornerstone of conservatism, but it is not a talisman that wards off moral judgment. The right to speak does not absolve us of the duty to respond. When Kelly frames accountability as persecution, she is not defending liberty—she is defending irresponsibility.

There is a bitter irony here. Kelly claims to be fighting cancel culture, yet her rhetoric threatens to cancel the very idea that antisemitism is a red line. By portraying those who confront it as the problem, she flips victim and offender, watchdog and arsonist.

The conservative movement has survived many internal reckonings. It will survive this one too—but only if it rejects the false comfort of equivocation. Antisemitism does not flourish because Jews talk about it too loudly. It flourishes because too many are willing to look the other way.

Megyn Kelly should know better. And if she does not, then it is the responsibility of her colleagues—and of every conservative who still believes that truth matters—to say so, loudly and without apology.