Since October 7, 2023, the antisemitism on the political left has been impossible to ignore. The widespread demonstrations, not in protest of anything, but in celebration of the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust, began immediately. Accusations of genocide against Israel began not in response to anything Israel had done, but in anticipation of Israel’s acting in self-defense, with the goal of facilitating a real genocide by Hamas.
The behavior of the leaders of the Democrat Party in response to genocidal hatred has been, to put it very, very mildly, shameful. From US President Joe Biden declaring that liars and bigots “have a point,” Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee declaring that people motivated by nothing more than hate and anger "are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza,” to the recent statements by her running mate Tim Walz, who said that the genocidal antisemites are “are speaking out for all the right reasons,” those who lead and are seeking to lead the free world have displayed nothing but cowardice in the face of the world’s oldest hatred.
As bad as things are in the Democratic Party, the events of the last week have demonstrated that neither Jews nor people of conscience can afford to be complacent about the state of the Republican Party.
Two former rising stars of the American Conservative movement, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, deliberately waded into the mud of antisemitism and crackpot conspiracy theories. Owens, who has never seen an antisemitic conspiracy theory she did not immediately believe without question, railed against the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in a debate with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on the Piers Morgan show, claimed that the Rebbe “preached Jewish supremacism, the hatred of all non-Jews.”
Owens, who recently converted to Catholicism, went on to suggest that those Chabad followers who consider the Rebbe to be the messiah should just accept her messiah, Jesus. This has become the norm for Owens, who has claimed without evidence that AIPAC assassinated JFK, that Muslims in Jerusalem are restricted to the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, and that Zionists and influential Jews are secretly satanic Frankists, among other loony conspiracy theories.
While Candace Owens is more explicitly and obviously antisemitic, Tucker Carlson is likely the more dangerous of the two. He continues to enjoy enormous influence with the Trump wing of the Republican Party, and is credited with influencing Trump’s decision to pick J.D. Vance as his running mate.
Carlson last week held a two-hour interview with a pseudo “historian” Darryl Cooper, who is nothing more than a crank Holocaust denier. In this interview, Cooper defended Hitler and the Nazis, laid the blame for the Second World War on Winston Churchill, and defended the Holocaust as accidental.
An intellectually honest interviewer would at least challenge such outrageous claims. Piers Morgan had Rabbi Boteach on to do just that with Candance Owens. But challenging Cooper was the farthest thing from Carlson’s mind. He was there solely to promote Cooper, who he claimed “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States."
Tucker Carlson is the anti-William F. Buckley. Where Buckley worked to kick the crazies, the conspiracy theorists, the bigots, and the antisemites out of the Conservative movement and thereby the Republican Party, Carlson has made it his mission to bring the crazies, the conspiracy theorists, and the antisemites back into the movement and the party. His decision to host Candace Owens in another sympathetic interview after her love of antisemitic conspiracy theories began to get her in trouble at the Daily Wire, was just one more example.
This was always the danger that Trump represented, beginning when he began to recreate the Republican Party in his image, that he would ultimately make the party safe for crazies again, and with the crazies would come the bigots, the racists, and the antisemites.
The radical left and the radical right always end up being shockingly similar, at least in their views about Jews. Owens and Carlson are closer in outlook to the most radical members of the Democratic Party on the issues of Israel and the Jews than they are to the mainstream Republican Party or even to the views of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.
Jews Trump likes the most, the Jews who are proud of their religion and their ethnicity and stand up for themselves and their people, are the Jews who Owens and Carlson have the biggest problems with.
If Tucker Carlson’s influence continues, if it grows, the future of the Republican Party could look a lot like the present of the Democratic Party. All of the accomplishments of William Buckley could be undone, leaving Jews facing a party that tolerates Louis Farrakhan and Ilhan Omar’s antisemitism on the one side, and a party that tolerates the antisemitism of Candace Owens and Darryl Cooper.
Since October 7, American antisemites have largely targeted Democratic politicians in their demonstrations, because they know their antisemitism will have a more sympathetic audience and greater influence there than it would if they demonstrated against the Republican Party right now. That could change if the Republican party moved in the direction of Tucker Carlson. If antisemitism became mainstream in the Republican party, the antisemites, the flag burners, the ‘Death to America’ mobs would have new targets ripe for pressuring the way they now pressure the Democrats.
For their own sake, and for the sake of the entire country, American Jews cannot let this happen. Jewish Republicans, especially, must lead the effort to continue the work of William Buckley and exile the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens to the fringes of the party and the conservative moment where they belong. Republicans, from Donald Trump to the youngest congressman, should recognize that Carlson’s path leads to the appeasement of the people who burn American flags, the destruction of history, and the mainstreaming of antisemitism, and reject him and his influence.
One party falling prey to antisemitism is already too much. Two would be catastrophic, both for the Jewish people and for the United States of America.
Gary Willig is a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva news staff