Hatred Of Jews Continues To Spread On The Right

It was the last thing observers ought to have expected to witness at a hearing of the U.S. Religious Liberty Commission in Washington, D.C. The discussion was supposed to highlight the Trump administration’s strong opposition to the surge of antisemitism that has spread around the country and across the globe since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But what took place on Feb. 9 illustrated something else.

The meeting was hijacked by one of the commissioners, former “Miss California” Carrie Prejean Boller, who went on an extended rant of Jew-hatred. In so doing, the C-list, right-wing celebrity managed to highlight a growing problem that has perplexed the Jewish community as well as Republicans. President Donald Trump has been successfully leveraging the power of the federal government to pressure a leftist dominated academic establishment to reject the antisemitism that has been mainstreamed since Oct. 7. But while he’s been doing that, a significant portion of his own electoral coalition is mimicking the same blood libels that pro-Hamas mobs and their enablers among the Democrats have been plugging for the past two years and more.

No longer marginal

Boller’s performance created a brief firestorm that the administration quickly sought to put out. Her behavior, however, was a reminder not just of the virulence of Jew-hatred that is spreading. It also made clear that its adherents are not marginal figures confined to the fever swamps of the far right, but instead, have a firm foothold inside the Trump camp.

This has confounded the Jewish and pro-Israel communities, who were already having a hard enough time trying to focus on the admittedly far greater threat of antisemitism on the left. And it provided yet another example of why the stakes in an increasingly bitter debate about what can be done about it are so high.

During the course of the hearing, Boller, who was wearing a pin with American and Palestinian flags, claimed that “Catholics do not embrace Zionism.” While the hearing was aimed at providing testimony about how Jewish students are being targeted by left-wing Israel-bashers and how anti-Zionism is indistinguishable from antisemitism, Boller seemed determined to speak up for the cause of the Jew-haters.

She declared that notorious antisemites like political commentators and podcasters Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens were merely opponents of Zionism and innocent of the prejudice that they regularly platform. She also demanded that a witness testifying about hatred and bigotry on college campuses “condemn” Israel for its war on Hamas in Gaza.

Her comments generated justified outrage—not only at her, but at the president for having the bad judgment to reward her for her support for his re-election with a post on the commission. Despite calls for her resignation from many on the right, Boller vowed that she would “never bend the knee to the State of Israel. Ever.” She also echoed Carlson’s vicious attacks on evangelicals and Christian Zionists, and showcasing a twisted version of Catholicism in which Jews and Israel are depicted as enemies of American conservatives. That heretofore obscure sector of the right has been getting greater notice since Carlson hosted “groyper” neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes on his program—and then was defended by the otherwise pro-Israel and anti-antisemitic Heritage Foundation, including its president, Kevin Roberts.

Two days later, the commission’s chairman, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who had tried to rein in Boller at the hearing, announced that she had been removed from her post. That, in turn, set off a brushfire of criticism from the far right, including by Owens, claiming that the “Zionists” had exerted their nefarious influence and removed the former beauty queen and Trump supporter because she was a “Christian.”

It doesn’t really matter whether this is the last that we’ll hear from Boller, who is someone who has a talent for generating controversy. She was forced to give up her beauty-queen title for (depending on which version of the story you believe) either expressing her opinion about gay marriage or for having made a sex tape. Since then, she has married a former NFL quarterback and gone on to become a loud opponent of gender ideology and supporter of Trump.

Vance’s neutrality

What does matter is how the virus of Jew-hatred that is spreading on the right can be contained and rolled back. The seriousness of the problem was made even more obvious at the Turning Point USA America Fest in December. When Vice President JD Vance declared himself neutral in the debate about the spread of antisemitism that broke out between conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and Carlson, that not only signaled his sympathy for the latter. It also indicated a clear breach in the movement and among administration supporters over the question of whether there was room in their collective tent for antisemites.

And it’s far from clear whether anyone in the world of pro-Israel and Jewish activism has a handle on what to do about it.

This was brought into focus last month at the Second International Conference on Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem, when prominent author Yoram Hazony gave a speech that was interpreted by some as blaming the problem on the failures of Jews and pro-Israel activists to sufficiently explain the issue to a broad cross-section of people on the right. It generated blowback not just toward Hazony for what seemed like a tone-deaf response to the situation, but to the entire idea of an alliance between Jews and the national conservative movement.

Hazony heads the Herzl Institute and the Edmund Burke Foundation, the latter of which has hosted a series of NatCon conferences where prominent conservatives like Vance have spoken. His ideas about the failure of liberalism and the reasons why nationalism is important to the defense of Western civilization and Jewish security, rather than an inherent threat to it, have rightly gained a wide audience in recent years. But the movement that he has helped found is now under fire for its alliance with a sector of the right, a significant portion of which is now showing itself hostile to Jews and the Jewish state.

Hazony condemned Carlson’s antisemitism. Still, he argues that the Jewish world has failed to reach people like Vance, as well as a rising generation of conservative activists who seem to be listening to Carlson and even Fuentes. That is undoubtedly true. But by focusing on the failures of what he called the “antisemitism-industrial complex”—a reference to Jewish establishment groups like the Anti-Defamation League—he seemed to be blaming the Jews, as opposed to those who target the Jews. That may not have been what he meant; regardless, the damage was done, and it has given an opening for those who opposed his ideas all along to claim that recent events have discredited them.

A noxious brand of Jew-hatred

I don’t agree. I think the focus of the Natcons on a more common-good version of conservatism—stressing the importance of faith, tradition, nationalism and opposing globalist economics—is entirely correct. But while I’ve been a vocal critic of the ADL, what has happened with Carlson and his supporters isn’t the organization’s fault. It’s a function of a revival of a particularly noxious brand of Jew-hatred that has a long history on the right, dating back to Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s to Pat Buchanan in the 1990s. And, as is the case with left-wing antisemites like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, there is no way to compromise with them or sweet-talk them into giving up their ideological obsessions with scapegoating Jews.

It may be that Vance will realize that his presidential ambitions—right now, he is the clear GOP frontrunner in the 2028 presidential race—are incompatible with a stance of neutrality or a lack of concern about right-wing antisemitism. If so, that will cause him to cut his ties with Carlson. Nor is there any reason why he or other prominent Republicans should turn on Israel the way Carlson has. Indeed, Vance has at times shown himself to be an advocate for the U.S.-Israel alliance.

But if he won’t disown Carlson, then it is incumbent on all decent people, including those who rightly see great merit in national conservatism and its defense of the West, to cut ties with him. The same must apply to anyone on the right who, like Carlson, opposes the idea of a Judeo-Christian heritage (something that is antithetical to national conservatism), and who makes common cause with leftist antisemites and anti-Zionists.

The focus on right-wing conservatism isn’t a plot against Vance, the Trump coalition or national conservatism. Antisemitism is never caused by anything the Jews do. It is always a manifestation of the neuroses and the willingness of political factions to use hatred against this particular minority to gain power.

The hate-mongers must be condemned

Opponents of antisemitism and supporters of Israel must seek to persuade a generation of young people to disdain the voices of the woke right. Those who haven’t been on trips to Israel—or who may have been influenced by far-right ideas and the pervasive woke leftism in the education system—must realize that they are making a mistake by going down the rabbit hole of antisemitism. They need to reach those being misled into believing that their Catholic faith is antithetical to support for Israel and Zionism—something that was made clear at the Religious Liberty Commission hearing. But just like the effort to roll back the woke tide on the left that Trump has championed, that won’t be accomplished by going easy on the haters.

Doing so may come at a political cost. Yet it shouldn’t break up the burgeoning national conservative coalition. That movement includes both American and European right-wingers who also reject the erasure of borders and the war on Western civilization that the woke left has been waging. Many of these people are natural allies of Israel and the Jewish people. But if it does, then so be it.

The hate speech of Carlson, Owens and Boller and the failure of some prominent figures on the right to condemn them must never be condoned, rationalized or excused. Those who would pull their punches in combating right-wing Jew-haters out of a concern for maintaining partisan alliances are just as profoundly wrong as liberals who do the same thing with erstwhile allies on the left.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.