Does the Right Have an Antisemitism Problem?

The answer to the title question is that it evidently does, although certainly not on the scale of the antisemitism of the Left. Even so, it's not insignificant. The characters discussed below would no doubt insist that they're not antisemitic, just anti-Israel, but this is, for most practical purposes, a distinction without a difference.

In any event, readers can judge for themselves the rhetoric coming from these ladies and gentlemen.

Haley Strack at National Review writes:

Since October 7 some of America’s most popular podcasters have congratulated themselves on their ability to “just ask questions” about Israel’s war aims that the legacy media will not; in the process of doing so, they have given platforms to revisionist historians, Holocaust distorters, and Christian antisemites to, they say, provide counter-narratives to the Israeli lobby that has so desperately tried to engage the U.S. in “forever war.”

Israel attacked Iran last night. As expected, the same people who were “just asking questions” revolted against Israel in support of America’s enemies.

Darryl Cooper, whom Tucker Carlson lauded on his show as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” said on Thursday that America should “commence airstrikes on Tel Aviv immediately.” Dave Smith, Joe Rogan’s favorite comedian-turned-foreign-policy expert, accused Israel of launching “a dangerous, preemptive war of aggression” that “should be condemned by the US government and US citizens alike.” Smith also denied claims that Cooper was an antisemite; Cooper just had “nuanced” views, Smith said.

It may be easy to disregard such online-right opinions as fringe, but their millions of followers and the billions of views they receive suggest otherwise. Nick Fuentes said “this is the final battle in Israel’s 50 year reign of terror to destabilize & destroy every country that resists their rule.”

Candace Owens called Israel’s “bloodlust” demonic. Matt Stoller doesn’t think Israel’s “bloodthirsty insanity” should be “our problem.” Crisis magazine’s Eric Sammons doesn’t think Catholics can support Israel’s attack on Iran.

UFC fighter and podcaster Jake Shields is “sick and tired of paying for and fighting Jewish wars” and demanded the destruction of Israel.

Dan Bilzerian said, “These jews just can’t help themselves, they attack Iran unprovoked, and they’ll be crying about how they don’t feel safe by morning,” adding, “If I was the president, I would round up every politician supporting Israel and have them all tried for treason.” These are just a few.

On Wednesday night, Matt Continetti and Ruth Wisse joined National Review on a Tikvah panel in celebration of Bill Buckley’s 100th birthday. The event was about antisemitism, and, specifically, Buckley’s efforts to purge it from the right. A question that came up was: Does the conservative movement have an antisemitism problem?

Maybe (we hope) not among policymakers or in the Trump administration. But there’s no doubt that antisemites — whom popular pundits have shamelessly platformed as good-faith, question-asking, honest intellectuals — have become online heroes for some alarmingly populated factions on the new right.

The most prominent of these voices on the Right is that of Tucker Carlson. It might be wrong to say that Carlson is antisemitic but he is a libertarian and an extreme isolationist who thinks we should disentangle ourselves from both Israel and Ukraine.

According to Jewish Insider:

Talk show host Tucker Carlson broke with President Donald Trump on Iran on Friday, writing in a scathing commentary in his daily newsletter that the United States should “drop Israel” and “let them fight their own wars.”

“If Israel wants to wage this war, it has every right to do so. It is a sovereign country, and it can do as it pleases,” Carlson wrote of Israel’s preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “But not with America’s backing.”

In recent days, Carlson has argued that fears of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon in the near future are unfounded and said that a war with the Islamic Republic would not only result in “thousands” of American casualties in the Middle East but “amount to a profound betrayal of” Trump’s base and effectively “end his presidency.”

Carlson reiterated that claim in his newsletter, accusing Trump of “being complicit in the act of war” through “years of funding and sending weapons to Israel.”

Direct U.S. involvement in a war with Iran, he said, “would be a middle finger in the faces of the millions of voters who cast their ballots in hopes of creating a government that would finally put the United States first.”

“What happens next will define Donald Trump’s presidency,” he concluded.

Well, the Trump administration has given no indication that we would get directly involved in the Israeli-Iran war, but why we would not provide Israel with material and intelligence assistance, why we should not shoot down Iranian missiles, outside Iranian airspace, targeting Israeli civilians, I don't understand.

Nor do I understand how some on the right could think that Israel (or Ukraine) is the aggressor in this war.

Nor do I think there's any practical difference bewteen those who hate the Jews and want to see Israel exterminated and those who claim to not hate Jews but don't care whether Israel is exterminated or not. The latter are like someone who says, "I don't despise blacks (or whites), but if somebody wants to kill them, that's their problem."

Here is a fact that I think should be beyond dispute, but apparently isn't. Israel was confronted with a choice, either fight a conventional war with Iran now or risk nuclear annihilation later. Iran refused President Trump's attempts to persuade them to choose peace. They were determined to produce a bomb, and may already have done so. They have said repeatedly that they will wipe Israel off the map as soon as they are able.

If they developed a nuclear weapon every country in the region would scramble to buy their own and the weapons would almost certainly be used at some point.

Given those facts and given that choice, I ask the gentlemen and lady referred to above, what should the Israelis have done? And why should we have refused to do exactly what we have done to help them?

Whenever a nation goes to war there's always the risk of calamitous unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences. Even so, what reasonable alternative did the Israelis, or the U.S., have?

Thanks to Powerlineblog for the links.