Anti-Semitism’s Insidious Climb Back Through the Overton Window

(Seth Wenig/Rainmaker Photos/AP photos)

The only thing more disconcerting than the proliferation of virulent, overt anti-Semitism on both the left and right in recent years has been the mainstreaming of a less proud, but more insidious kind of Jew hatred in recent months.

Tucker Carlson, the conspiracy theory-addled internet personality still benefitting from the air of legitimacy his stint at Fox News lent him, sat down this week with Nick Fuentes, the country’s most infamous champion of open anti-Semitism. Theirs was a friendly chat.

Carlson did devote a moment to insisting upon the principle that all should be judged as individuals, as well as to tsk-tsking Fuentes over his past criticism of figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), but for the most part, he nodded along as Fuentes inveighed against “organized Jewry in America.” After Fuentes submitted that there was a deep connection between “Jewishness, Jewish identity, the Jewish religion” and the neoconservative foreign policy principles the two commentators share a mutual loathing for, Carlson agreed in principle, chalking it up to “identity politics.”

“But the problem in your response is it does not apply to every individual,” he added.

“No, and I would never say that,” insisted Fuentes in reply.

And just like that, the whitewashing of a previously fringe figure who believes Adolf Hitler was “really f*cking cool” and has called for the execution of “perfidious Jews,” among many, many more such statements, was complete. His problem isn’t with all Jews, you see. Only the perfidious ones.

Fuentes has been laying the groundwork for this transition. In one recent episode of his show, he called out Jake Shields, a rival in the anti-Semitic content creation space, for articulating a worldview in which “all Jews are evil and everything they do is bad,” even going so far as to call the longtime subjects of his hate “a remarkable people.”  In another, he accused Carlson himself of overdoing it with his comments at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service about people “eating hummus” in Jerusalem deciding to execute Jesus Christ.

The aim of this “tack to the center” of the anti-Semitic spectrum is obvious. Fuentes has taken a cue from Carlson and provided his fellow travelers with the dash of plausible deniability that they need to cite and promote him. This somewhat softened public image has already paid dividends, helping him gain a foothold in America’s mainstream political culture and build an even larger audience. For a moment, Fuentes’s show actually topped Spotify’s trending podcast chart earlier this month.

Carlson and Fuentes’s influence on the right today can be measured in much more than charts and views. The former played a key role in getting Vice President JD Vance his job. And when an apparent acolyte of the latter suggested, over the course of a question directed at Vance during Turning Point USA’s Wednesday night event at Ole Miss, that Israel’s “religion… openly supports the prosecution (sic) of ours,” Vance left that incendiary claim uncorrected while pouring the gasoline on the fire.

“When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the President of the United States, they’re not controlling this President of the United States, which is one of the reasons why we’ve been able to have some of the success that we’ve had in the Middle East,” boasted Vance.

See what he did there? He didn’t reject the premise that Israel has been the barrier to American success in the Middle East. Quite the opposite, he accepted it, rewriting history to insist that it is actually the most pro-Israel president in American history’s willingness to buck his most loyal ally in the region that has yielded results. It was a baffling answer; one that can only be explained by a determination that he will need to lean as heavily on Carlson and his audience to secure his next promotion as he did to get his last.

What’s more disturbing still is that this is a bipartisan phenomenon. Democrats’ silence about the widespread anti-Semitic behavior at anti-Israel protests in major cities and on influential college campuses around the country over the last two years was deafening.

And now, the party — and its allies in the media — are lining up without reservation behind Zohran Mamdani, the far-left assemblyman who has inherited an unhealthy obsession with Israel from his parents.

Mamdani’s ability to defend himself from the charge of anti-Semitism hangs on a shred of plausible deniability as tenuous as Carlson’s. He is loath to criticize Hamas, but he’ll tell anyone who will listen about his fantasy of jailing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His statements responding to both the October 7 massacre and commemorating its second anniversary were mostly denunciations of its victims. His remarks about the connections between the IDF and NYPD rival any of the conspiracies outlined by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He “celebrated” Hanukkah by posting a video of non-Jews mocking Jewish holiday traditions. He pals around with the likes of Hasan Piker. His wife mourns Hamas’s accomplices.

But the (D) next to Mamdani’s name is a powerful shield. He is now the “good guys'” nominee to be the next mayor of America’s largest city, so the Occam’s Razor explanation for Mamdani’s record can — and indeed must — be ignored.

The fusion of these mirror-image phenomena is readily observable exemplified by the aforementioned Greene’s newly established status as every Democrat’s favorite Republican. Greene is still the same anti-Semitic nutter who previously speculated that the Rothschilds were using a space laser to start wildfires in California. Indeed, recent days have seen her issue warnings about Israel assassinating her and the Jews taking over TPUSA.

But, none of that has stopped her from earning the strange, new respect of a wide range of Democrats and media personalities delighted by her newfound willingness to criticize President Donald Trump.

The blind eye both major parties have turned to the mainstreaming of Jew hatred within their coalitions is one of the most consequential political developments of the last decade. It happened slowly at first, and then all at once. The minute the lines could be blurred, the bigots blurred them while accepting cover from self-interested partisans unwilling to concede a single vote in the name of preserving their souls.

When things go from bad to worse — and mark these words, they will — the blame will lie not only with those who explicitly fomented this ancient, reborn evil, but those, from the Heritage Foundation to Hakeem Jeffries, who coddled it in its cradle.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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