Antisemites on the right are reading from the same anti-Israel playbook as their left-wing foes. Is this the future of the Republican and Democratic parties?

By: Jonathan S. Tobin

More than a week after former Fox News host and current political commentator Tucker Carlson hosted neo-Nazi “groyper” Nick Fuentes on his podcast, the controversy he set off hasn’t just had legs. It has created what seems like a schism on the right.

The Heritage Foundation think tank—one of the cornerstones of the modern conservative movement—seemed to be engaging in a civil war over first its president’s defense of Carlson and then the way he tried to walk back that stand at a town meeting of its employees—something that spoke volumes about the way hostility to Israel and the Jews seemed to be simmering among some of its younger staff members. In response to this, some Jewish organizations and others that had been part of Heritage’s important efforts to support Israel, as well as to combat antisemitism via its “Project Esther,” decided that they had no alternative but to resign and disassociate themselves from the group.

Argument on the right

Popular conservative podcasters like Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh doubled down on their refusal to condemn Carlson’s latest instance of promoting antisemitism or the even crazier stands of far-right political commentator Candace Owens, continuing to assert a stance of neutrality when it came to a debate among conservatives who are for and against antisemitism. Meanwhile, other leading voices on the right, including members of the Senate and the House, disagreed, saying they saw no problem with not only saying that “Hitler is bad,” but also that Carlson and his far-right fans are doing great damage to the right and President Donald Trump.

Indeed, Kelly hosted Carlson in a live show in White Plains, N.Y., on Nov. 6, during which he doubled down on the interview with Fuentes, saying the neo-Nazi was “the single most influential commentator among young men.” He also said that U.S. and Western civilization had nothing to do with the legacy of the Hebrew Bible, falsely claiming that Israel committed “genocide” in a way that marked it as different from any nation at war. He further claimed that a Republican Jewish congressman—Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who had said that all of the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 massacre should die, was “worse” than the Hitler and Stalin-loving Fuentes.

This is a lot for even those who have followed Carlson’s career arc over the last few years to process. But what many people failed to see was that the far bigger news event of the week confirmed that for all of their differences, Carlson and his pals have a lot more in common with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani than they do with the overwhelming majority of Republicans and conservatives.

That was confirmed when Carlson’s newsletter greeted the election of a Democratic Socialist as the head of America’s largest city by highlighting the fact that a minority of New York Jews voted for Mamdani. From Tucker’s point of view, Mamdani isn’t so bad because the new mayor of Gotham shares his loathing for Israel and a willingness to tolerate Jews, only if they renounce a key part of Jewish identity and Judaism that is bound to the land of Israel. That fits the views of the minority of left-wing Jewish voters in deep-blue New York who cast ballots for an antisemite because they likely see it as in keeping with their universalist values and distaste for sectarian elements of their heritage.

Not ‘America First’

The similarly minded American Conservative magazine published a piece the same day, also excusing Mamdani because they considered his obsession with destroying the Jewish state to be just fine. According to its convoluted reasoning, Israel’s war against Islamists has nothing to do with the threat to America from the same groups because the Jews aren’t really part of the West and ought to be cut loose by Washington. Like Carlson, the magazine is primarily interested in justifying anything and anyone who will break up the U.S.-Israel relationship. For them, America’s alliance with the only democracy in the Middle East is peculiarly obnoxious in a way that ties with, for example, Tucker’s Muslim Brotherhood-sponsoring friends from Qatar are not.

This fits in with a growing chorus of defenders of Carlson on the far right that insist that the only reason why the commentator is being criticized is because of his foreign-policy views, rather than his comfort with or support for Jew-hatred.

The truth is that Carlson and others on the far right aren’t really supporters of Trump’s “America First” vision. Some characterize their views as “America Only,” though that is a misnomer. It isn’t strictly speaking isolationist so much as it is just obsessed with isolating Israel and the Jews. Tucker is perfectly happy to embrace foreign nations like President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Iran or Qatar. It’s just Israel—and its Jewish and evangelical Christian supporters—that get up his nose and cause him to label them “heretics” suffering from a “brain virus.”

Others on the antisemitic right, like comedian/podcaster Dave Smith, are blaming Israel and the Jews for the Republican setbacks on Election Day, improbably theorizing that the GOP would have done better in blue states like California, Virginia and New Jersey if only Trump hadn’t bombed Iran or supported the Jewish state’s fight for survival against genocidal Islamist terrorists. As always, Jews are the perfect scapegoats for whatever upsets those who are obsessed with them.

In many ways, this worldview is a far cry from that of Mamdani, who is a creature of the anti-American mindset of his parents and other ideological mentors who see the world through the prism of toxic left-wing ideas, such as critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism.

Blaming the Jews

It also needs to be restated that the crisis of antisemitism on the left is, at least at this point, far more serious than on the right. Democratic officeholders like Mamdani and congressional progressives, who appear to be the party’s future, are the ones who have turned on Israel and stand ready to defend the open Jew-hatred of the “globalize the intifada” mobs. Among conservatives, there are some podcasters (however huge their audiences) and people working at a think tank who embrace views that are anti-Israel and increasingly antisemitic. But the overwhelming majority of Republican officeholders remain ardent supporters of the Jewish state. As journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon wrote in The Free Press, the argument on the right is largely one between influencers who want clicks on the internet and those who want votes for Republicans and, for that reason, shun antisemites.

In yet another confirmation of the horseshoe theory of politics, the far left and the far right share an antipathy for Israel and the Jews. Both see them as the linchpin of whatever they believe is the world’s greatest problem. For Mamdani, eradicating the Jewish state is the key to achieving the dismantling of worldwide imperialism and capitalism. For Carlson, isolating Israel and anathematizing its Jewish and Christian supporters as being guilty of “dual loyalty” will enable the United States to reach a Christian nationalist nirvana where no “globalist” forces can spread their malign influence. That is irrespective of the fact that it is the actual globalist movement of the left that seeks to undermine American national sovereignty and erase Israel in the name of woke values.

Such views ought to be relegated to the fever swamps of the far left and far right, but in the last two years, since the Hamas-led Palestinian-Arab attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, they have gone mainstream.

We already knew that bastions of the left, like elite universities or the newsroom of The New York Times, had already embraced the falsehood that Israel was an illegitimate “apartheid” state and mimicked blood libels about it committing “genocide” because that was in line with woke ideology. What many of us hadn’t realized until recently was the inroads the right-wing version of these antisemitic myths had made in conservative circles.

Trouble among youth

Carlson’s cozy interview in which he helped spread Fuentes’ toxic Jew-hatred and bizarre support for both Hitler and Stalin was one thing. But as those who listened to the leaked tape of the Heritage town hall or have seen videos of questions asked at Turning Point USA events asked at the University of Mississippi and Auburn University of figures such as Vice President JD Vance, or Eric and Lara Trump, the virus of Jew-hatred is spreading. It’s clear that some young people on the right now believe that there is something deeply sinister about American support for the survival of the one Jewish state on the planet.

What makes it even more worrisome is the talking point being floated in such forums that the U.S.-Israel alliance is somehow at odds with Christian faith. This makes no sense because Jews and Christians, as well as supporters of Israel, have a common cause in defending Judeo-Christian values. It is the woke, often agnostic left that seeks to tear down the edifice built on the wisdom of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome that is the foundation of Western civilization.

This goes beyond the question of whether Vance—the most likely successor to Trump in the GOP—is or isn’t someone who shares these views. Rather, it is one about whether the effort to single out Israel and the Jews as the source of the nation’s problems is gaining traction among a generation that gets their information about the world from TikTok and other social media. They have no real knowledge of the facts about the Jewish state and the false claims rooted in traditional tropes of Jew-hatred that its supporters are manipulating Americans against their own interests.

What conservatives, young or old, need to remember is that the Western values they purport to honor and seek to defend against the left are as incompatible with the obsessions of Carlson and the groypers about the Jews as they are with Mamdani’s democratic socialism and woke opposition to Zionism as a manifestation of “white” oppression.

Instead of defending right-wing Jew-hatred masquerading as a defense of America, they should see it as no different from the toxic myths of the left that also focus on Israel as the font of the world’s troubles. If not, then both major U.S. political parties may be heading toward a future in which they will share unhealthy obsessions with both the Jews and those who hate America and the West.

(JNS.org)

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.