I appeared on the Ezra Klein Show to talk about Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, antisemitism, and the process of groyperfication in the conservative movement.

In retrospect, there’s a lot more I wish I had said about why the reemergence of right-wing antisemitism is linked with Trump’s entry into the political scene in particular. I wanted to emphasize that, as an ideology, it is different from mere racial prejudice in the way Americans are accustomed to thinking about it. Political antisemitism is always part of a movement that attacks liberal democracy and yearns for a strongman figure. It wants to replace fraudulent, corrupt Jewish “democracy” with an authentic regime that speaks on behalf of the “real” people. Their slogans will always be some variation of “America for Americans” or, as it happens, “America First.” Nationalist populism will always attract antisemites and tend to metamorphose into antisemitism. The antisemites will try to refocus attention from rapacious elites in general to the Jew in particular. It’s easy to see how this tactic becomes useful to powerful interests from time to time.

I also wanted to mention how antisemitism functions as a weapon of political infighting, as we are seeing in the GOP right now. On Tucker Carlson’s show, Fuentes said he liked Stalin. I took this as a troll, but on reflection, it makes more sense. Stalin ably used antisemitism in his factional battle to take over his party. This is exactly what the groypers are attempting to do now: wrest the Republican Party away from the “neocons,” which they associate with alienness and racial impurity.

If you want to read more, check out some of my previous posts:

“The Fatal Embrace”

“The Socialism of Fools”

“Musk and West Incorporated”

Here’s what I wrote in that last piece, from 2022:

The re-appearance of antisemitism, the apparent curiosity and tolerance members of both the public and the elite have for it, must be understood as part of the total political situation. Neither the left nor the right has grasped its actual significance yet. The left either responds hysterically with its usually ineffective scolding and handwringing or downplays it as a secondary issue compared to more pressing social concerns. The right says it’s actually an issue of the Left or points to their own Zionism as an alibi.

Antisemitism is both symptom and cause of broader social decline: it is the most pornographic and salacious part of reactionary propaganda, the sign of the abandonment of democracy in favor of demagogues and the mob, and it reveals the utter cynicism and vulgarity of the ruling class, its willingness to indulge in any irresponsibility that will perpetuate its dominance. Will antisemitism become the central ideological force that organizes the entire society, as in Nazi Germany? That seems to be highly unlikely, but it will do its part, with other forces, to further poison the political atmosphere and degrade public discourse; it will be used to alarm, menace, and, one fears, to organize public sentiment.

I’ll conclude with a quote from the historian Michel Winock, “Antisemitism is not only a moral and intellectual monstrosity; as an instrument of reactionary politics, it lies beyond notions of left and right, bringing together every form of racism. It is the negation of the pluralist society, the morbid exaltation of the national ego, and finally, one of the seeds of totalitarian barbarism.”