It's back. Not the left's usual anti-Israel vitriol — but a creeping, winking strain of anti-Jewish hostility rising inside corners of the American "right." This chill is often dressed up as "anti-globalism" or "just asking questions" -- about Israel. There is nothing new about recycling century-old tropes, flirting with blood libels, or mainstreaming a Holocaust denier because he brings clicks. The American right — at its best — defends the Judeo-Christian foundations of the West, honors facts, allies, and moral clarity. This heritage means standing with Israel and against antisemites, even when they pretend to be on the side of all that is "good."
Start with Candace Owens. Sometime during 2023–2024 she crossed line after line — defending Kanye West ("Ye") after his antisemitic rants, insinuating medieval slanders, and taunting Jews who objected — until the Daily Wire website publicly ended its relationship with her in March 2024. It was not about "free speech," it was about a pattern of tolerating intolerance that would not have been accepted if it had been aimed at any ethnic group other than Jews.
By late 2024, the watchdog group StopAntisemitism, citing a dossier of repeat offenses, dubbed Owens its "Antisemite of the Year." Normalize the slur here, wink at a trope there, then insist critics are "overreacting." That is how the ideological poison spreads.
Now consider the Tucker Carlson moment. On Oct. 27, 2025, on his show, he hosted Nick Fuentes — a open white supremacist and Holocaust denier. Carlson's interview allowed Fuentes' antisemitic bile and even bizarre praise of both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin to waft by without pushback. The immediate reaction on the right was significant: many serious conservatives complained.
Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro called the interview what it was and blasted Carlson's posture as "intellectual cowardice." That critique from most of the mainstream right told young viewers: this is a red line.
Institutional confusion made things worse. The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, initially defended Carlson publicly; the resulting backlash — again, from many on the right — was swift. Even mainstream broadcast outlets framed the episode as a dividing line: are we a movement that tolerates Jew-haters, or one that draws red lines?
If you want a picture of the broader reach, the website Tablet captured it crisply: antisemitism on parts of the right, they wrote has metastasized under an "anti-globalist" mask, where new slurs and code words — "globalist cabal", "Israel first", "Soros" — do the same work older slurs did. Tablet also seem to view on the Carlson-Fuentes moment as a test for Jewish and conservative institutions.
What about Candace Owens's defenders who insist she was "canceled for criticizing Israel"? Not at all. Major outlets chronicled months of explicitly antisemitic provocations, not a good-faith policy dispute. Even the media sympathetic to "anti-establishment" voices noted the obvious: there is a canyon between arguing to cut foreign aid and amplifying blood-libel smears.
To its credit, the American right has no shortage of adults in the room. Many intellectuals, Jewish advocates, and elected Republicans openly condemned the Carlson-Fuentes stunt. You could watch the split in real time: one faction explained that freedom of speech does not require private companies and organization to provide a platform for unreconstructed bigots; the other faction accused "the establishment" of "silencing us."
Here is a test for readers: does your "anti-globalism" end up obsessing over Israel or "the Jews" every time? If yes, it is not policy analysis — it is a tell about you. By contrast, a responsible America-first position can argue about budgets, missions and burdens without smuggling in scapegoats. That is the difference between Marco Rubio's hawkish clarity on Hamas and Fuentes's "Groyper" circus.
The fact is that Republican support for Israel remains high, even though younger cohorts are more skeptical. Pew Research in April 2025 found solid GOP confidence in Israel's leadership and warmer views of Israelis than Democrats expressed. In October, Pew found the same partisan gap, even as overall U.S. favorables toward Israel declined. The point: when far-right influencers target Jews, they are out of step with rank-and-file Republican voters — and not speaking for them.
Contrast the fringe with actual governance. President Donald Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem (2018), recognized Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights (2019), and brokered the Abraham Accords — historic normalization agreements reshaping the strategic map. Those facts remain the gold standard for a pro-ally foreign policy grounded in U.S. interests.
The momentum has continued. Fox New reporting from this year details efforts to expand the Abraham Accords — with new candidates openly discussed — precisely because strength plus moral clarity wins respect in the region. Whatever one's partisan leanings, anti-terror alignment and normalization advanced when Washington projected resolve rather than courting applause in European salons.
If you want the mirror image from the other side of the aisle, consider how leftist media outlets have covered the Carlson-Fuentes interview. The Nation warned that elements of right-wing anti-Zionism are curdling into open antisemitism and explicitly cited the Heritage/Carlson controversy as symptomatic. You do not have to endorse that magazine's broader politics to acknowledge that when both Tablet and The Nation criticize the same sewer, it probably stinks.
One more word about Owens: When someone habitually slanders Jews and then complains of being "silenced," the right needs to respond. Criticism is not censorship, decency does not require "consensus," and the Jewish people are not "clicks."
Meanwhile, serious national security policy continues: confronting jihadist groups, backing Israel's right to self-defense, and leveraging diplomacy (the Abraham Accords) to isolate terrorists. That framework does not require romanticizing any foreign government. It does require rejecting those who would turn "Zionist" into a slur and "globalist" into a dog whistle for "Jew."
Bottom line: Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes represent regress masquerading as rebellion. They do not speak for the right; they speak for themselves and for the algorithms that reward outrage and sounding outrageous. Many, maybe most, prominent people on the right — from Trump to Pastor John Hagee to Thomas Sowell to Rubio — stand with Israel because they stand with the West, with victims of jihad, and with a commitment to preserve the values of individual freedom, equal justice under the law and freedom of speech. The right should say so — clearly, repeatedly and without apology — and should quarantine the grifters who would trade civilization's cause for "clicks."
Pierre Rehov, who holds a law degree from Paris-Assas, is a French reporter, novelist and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of six novels, including "Beyond Red Lines", " The Third Testament" and "Red Eden", translated from French. His latest essay on the aftermath of the October 7 massacre " 7 octobre - La riposte " became a bestseller in France.As a filmmaker, he has produced and directed 17 documentaries, many photographed at high risk in Middle Eastern war zones, and focusing on terrorism, media bias, and the persecution of Christians. His latest documentary, "Pogrom(s)" highlights the context of ancient Jew hatred within Muslim civilization as the main force behind the October 7 massacre.
