The GOP War Over Which Jews to Hate

Left Jews? Or all of them?

The GOP is currently in the throes of what most outlets are characterizing as a crisis over antisemitism.

The controversy started when wink wink Nazi “journalist” Tucker Carlson invited much, much less wink wink, much more Nazi Nick Fuentes on his podcast so they could discuss how much they hate Jews together. After a good deal of backlash from other conservatives (especially, as you’d imagine, Jewish ones), Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts issued a statement insisting that Fuentes should not be “cancelled” and characterized Fuentes’ critics as a “venomous coalition” bent on undermining the conservative movement. Jewish conservatives accurately noted that this was an antisemitic bullhorn.

The conflict metastasized from there. Heritage has been “‘hemorrhaging evangelical Christian and Jewish contributors” according to a source who spoke to the New York Post. Project Esther—the Heritage initiative organized to use charges of antisemitism to crush US higher education—has been coming apart. David Bernstein, author of Woke Antisemitism, suddenly realized that maybe there are non-woke antisemitisms that are a problem, and resigned; the Jewish Leadership Project, the Coalition for Jewish Values, and a number of other Jewish orgs also left.

There have been various efforts at damage control. Roberts issued a statement saying he abhors a lot of what Nick Fuentes says, even though he doesn’t want to cancel him, after which Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL pretended that this was some sort of admirable denunciation of antisemitism.

But these efforts to staunch the bleeding have been largely useless. Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell condemned Heritage, showing that they are more consistent and serious opponents of antisemitism than Greenblatt’s ADL (a phenomenally low bar.) Ben Shapiro ended his friendship with Tucker Carlson who he called an “intellectual coward”; Shapiro himself was ratioed on twitter, where Nick Fuentes quote tweeted him while referring to Jews as “dual citizens” and sneering at the “Christ-hating Talmud” and “our Jewish oligarchy.” John Podhoretz, the nepotism editor of Commentary, said that pro-Carlson pundit Sean Davis “pleasures himself while reading THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION.”

Meanwhile, progressives have mostly been pointing and laughing, as is right and proper. Some people also point out that Cruz, McConnell, Shapiro, and so forth are all hypocrites; none of them exactly cut Trump loose forever when he had dinner with Fuentes in 2022.

All those assholes are in fact hypocrites, and I’m not going to argue otherwise. But I think it’s clarifying to recognize that the current skirmish in the GOP is not really about whether antisemitism is acceptable in the GOP. Rather, it’s about who you’re allowed to use antisemitism against.

All conservatives—generally including Jewish ones—agree that it’s fine to use antisemitic tropes and slurs against Jews on the left, or against Jews who don’t embrace Zionism and Trumpism. A smaller subset of conservatives (like Fuentes) want to expand the use of antisemitism to include all Jews—not least, and sometimes especially, conservative ones who are competing for clicks and sinecures in the right-wing marketplace.

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The Jews you’re allowed to hate…

In the current battle, Christian Zionists are presenting themselves as opponents of antisemitism. But of course that’s ludicrous. John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, the largest Christian Zionist organization in the US, is wildly antisemitic. He claims that the Holocaust was part of God’s plan to force Jewish people to flee to Israel, and urges Jewish people to relocate to Israel to hurry the end times, at which point all Jews will convert or go directly to hell.

Again, this is not some fringe theory; this is the ideology of the founder of the largest Christian Zionist organization in the US. Antisemitic millenarian gibberish is central to Christian Zionism and animates current Christian Zionist support for Israel—and hatred of Palestinians.

Christian Zionist elevation of Jews in Israel also exists alongside, and justifies, antisemitic animus against diaspora Jews—and especially against diaspora Jews who aren’t sufficiently Zionist. The Christian Zionist leader who has most consistently and publicly attacked left Jews in this way is probably Donald Trump, who over and over has said that Jews who vote for Democrats are, misguided, untrustworthy, nefarious, inauthentic, not really Jews, and disloyal (to Israel and to Trump.) Trump pulled out these tropes again just yesterday, when he said on Truth Social that “Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!”

These smears of left Jews activate tropes about Jews having no real roots, about Jews being disloyal, about Jews lacking authentic identity. Jews on the right rarely condemn Trump for this sort of rhetoric. That’s not because they are afraid of him, nor is it because they are willing to tolerate some antisemitism in return for support for Israel. It’s because they agree with him that Jews on the left are disloyal and deserve to be targeted with antisemitic tropes, stereotypes, and hatred.

Ben Shapiro, for example, told an Israeli audience that Jews in the US vote for Democrats because they are “secular atheists who identify as Jewish”—ie, they are not really Jewish and are disloyal. Matt Brooks, the reliably sycophantic CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, insisted that when Trump questions the loyalty of Democratic Jews, he is simply “giving voice to things I get asked about multiple times a day— How can Jews remain Democrats in light of what is going on?” Netanyahu’s son in 2017 posted a vicious antisemitic cartoon targeting billionaire George Soros—whose progressive advocacy has made him a leading target of fascists worldwide and has enraged Israel’s far right government.

The rules here are pretty clear. Antisemitism is acceptable if you support Israel and, especially, if it is directed against Jews on the left. Those left Jews are associated with all the other marginalized people that the right hates—especially Muslims and Palestinians, but also, Black people, LGBT people, women. Certain Jews—right wing Zionist Jews—are righteous ethnonationalists, loyal to their own patch of land and working with Christian Zionists to assure Christian supremacy globally and the extermination/subjugation of Muslims and Palestinians in the Middle East. As long as these right wing Zionist Jews are loyal soldiers in the Christofascist project—as long as their goals are subordinate to, or at least congruent with, Christofascist hegemony—they are considered honorary Christians, and are not targeted for antisemitism. And they can especially ensure their inoculation against antisemitism by joining with Christians in the antisemitic vilification of Jewish people who vote for Democrats or, worse, who advocate for Palestinian rights.

…and the other Jews you’re allowed to hate

Carlson and Fuentes know the rules, and they gleefully torched them. Much of their conversation was spent attacking, not Jews on the left, but Jewish conservatives. When Carlson asked Fuentes who needed to be forced out of the conservative movement, Fuentes responded “these Zionist Jews.” Carlson nodded along, adding that Christian Zionists like Israel Ambassador Mike Huckabee have been “seized by this brain virus.”

Some putatively on the left, like loathsome MAGA apologist and fash-whisperer Glenn Greenwald, may find the anti Zionist noises from Fuentes and Carlson appealing. But of course Carlson and Fuentes also hate Muslims and a range of other marginalized people (Carlson has even attacked the Roma, in a shoutout to old school Nazi hate.) Fuentes also has made it clear he hates all Jews, and thinks they should be subjugated. “We do need to be right-wing. We do need to be Christian. We do, on some level, need to be pro-white,” he said of his future vision of America.

In short, neither the Christian Zionists (with their Jewish allies) nor the Neo-Nazis are the “good guys,” and neither are opposed to antisemitism, much less to other bigotries. They merely have slightly different preferences for who should get hated first and most—preferences that are often tied as much to right wing market share and personal self-promotion as they are to any broader ideological or “moral” vision. For Fuentes and Carlson, antisemitism is a way to target and displace Jewish conservatives with large audiences—just as bigotry has always served as an excuse to sideline competitors and expropriate wealth from marginalized people. For Christian Zionists and right-wing Jews, the fight isn’t a principled stand against antisemitism (since they all are happy to deploy antisemitism in its place) but rather a way to reassert their right to exist in a space that is closed to most other marginalized people (through their collaboration.)

Right-wing Jewish pundit David Frum sneered self-righteously that “The Republicans are having a big, public argument about the antisemitism that has contaminated their party. The Democrats aren’t.” But this is of course a lie. Democrats and progressives have an extended and ongoing discussion of antisemitism, not least because there are a lot of Jewish people on the left.

But, more importantly, Republicans aren’t actually trying to eliminate antisemitism on the right. They’re just negotiating which Jews they’re allowed to target. Both sides agree that antisemitism is fine if directed at the left—and they both agree that bigotry against Muslims, Palestinians, Black people, queer people, trans people, and women is good and awesome. None would suggest solidarity with other marginalized people. None of them think that diverse, multiracial democracy is a boon; none of them would argue that diverse multiracial democracy is the best protection for Jews. They are all vile bigots. As a result, no matter which side “wins” the current argument, marginalized people lose—and so do Jews, because our fate and those of other marginalized people are not separable. The only possible victory for Jewish people is in the complete defeat of the fascist movement, in all its disgusting iterations.