For years, some of the loudest voices in the conservative-adjacent influencer class have been defiantly declaring that we are on the brink of a civil war. It now turns out that they were right, but instead of the civil war being of a political, cultural, or religious nature between the Right and the Left, we’re currently spiraling into a civil war within MAGA and, therefore, the conservative movement. The catalyst? Jews.
On one side, you have those, such as myself, who are calling out specific figures for specific statements, actions, and positions that are not only antisemitic but anti-conservative and even anti-American. Examples include commentator Tucker Carlson’s credulous interview of career Jew-hater Nick Fuentes; Carlson’s embrace of Russian, Iranian, and Qatari propaganda; and Carlson’s celebration of “historian” Daryll Cooper, who believes the Holocaust was more of a mass mercy killing than a deliberate act of extermination, while pondering whether U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, one of the greatest heroes in Western civilization, might actually have been the bad guy.
On the other side, you have not only a growing contingent of the American Right that, like the woke Left, is becoming obsessed solely with Zionism, but also those who reject such specific criticisms by their supposed allies using denial, deflection, and gaslighting.
Consider Vice President JD Vance’s subtly stunning response to a question at a Turning Point USA event this week on whether Israel is “manipulating or controlling the president of the United States.” Well, said Vance, “they’re not controlling this president of the United States.” You should note that the Yale-educated Vance — who is closely aligned with Carlson, whose son, Buckley, joined Vance’s staff earlier this year — is far too clever to have accidentally accepted the original premise that Israel has manipulated or controlled other presidents.
Then there’s the absurd announcement by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, who said “of course” antisemitism should be condemned, while simultaneously pretending that the Jew hatred we are seeing explode on the Right is actually just an example of Christians critiquing the state of Israel. Further, he called for “debate” and yet decried criticism of figures such as Carlson as an example of cancel culture.
It should also be noted that Roberts’s embarrassing proclamation was simply a slightly more academic version of commentator Matt Walsh’s recent declaration that the Right must unite to defeat the Left, with a continued lack of clarification or ideological boundaries leading us to conclude that this unification must include someone such as Nick Fuentes, a man whose long list of quotes includes “I’m just like Hitler.”
Finally, there’s the broader gaslighting campaign going on in the background. When people like me offer targeted pushback, we’re accused of both creating the antisemitism that is thrown our way and told that such antisemitism is a figment of our imagination. We’re told what we’re really doing is engaging in a BLM-style rejection of everything as systemically antisemitic, which itself creates more antisemitism that both exists and does not exist.
NYC ANTISEMITIC ATTACK MARKS DARK START FOR MAYOR MAMDANI
This is not only laughable on its face, but it ignores the key missing component that would give this comparison any weight: the lack of hordes of masked Jews roaming the streets in bloody and deadly riots across the nation, chanting “no brisket, no peace.”
Fundamentally, this civil war is a war over whether or not the conspiratorial, anti-Jewish rantings of people such as Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Candace Owens are the ideological foundation of the movement to which many of us have dedicated our lives. That’s why it’s a war we have to win.
Ian Haworth is a syndicated columnist. Follow him on X (@ighaworth) or Substack.
