Just how serious of an antisemitism problem does the American right have — and what, if anything, should they do about it?
For well over a year, some conservative elites have quietly worried about the trends they were seeing among influencers and young rightists who seem increasingly enamored of conspiracy theories involving Jews — the latest of which involves the death of Charlie Kirk.
Then last week, Politico reported on group chats of Young Republican leaders, in which participants called an internal rival a “fat stinky Jew” and made detailed jokes about how they’d send other internal rivals “to the gas chamber.” In response to a claim that one subgroup was pledging to vote for “the most right wing person,” one participant wrote back: “Great. I love Hitler.”
The group chat comments kick-started an impassioned, days-long public debate among right-wingers. The debate wasn’t really about the comments themselves, but their seeming confirmation of a trend that had long been whispered about — the increasing normalization of blatant bigotry, especially antisemitism — among the young right. “The group chat exposé,” conservative activist James Lindsay posted on X, “is the tip of a very nasty iceberg.”
Critics argued that leading right-wing figures had become too willing to look the other way about antisemitic rhetoric, beliefs, and “joking-or-am-I?” Nazi sympathy.
“If you’re not calling out the bad actors you’re effectively covering for them,” Seth Dillon, founder of the conservative satire site the Babylon Bee posted on X. He added: “Everyone thinks I’m talking about the leaked chat. This conversation is much, much bigger than the leaked chat.”
Others instead reacted by closing ranks and denying any problem. Vice President JD Vance said he refused to “join the pearl clutching” over a “college group chat,” inaccurately calling the participants “kids” and “young boys.” This matches Vance’s successful push to rehire a DOGE staffer briefly fired for posting about things such as “normalize Indian hate.” To Vance, what these people say is irrelevant — what matters is that they’re part of his team.
Commentator Matt Walsh agreed, saying, “The Right doesn’t stick together. That’s our biggest problem by far. Conservatives are quick to denounce each other, jump on dogpiles, disavow, attack their allies.” What was truly important, he said, was to remain united against the left.
But united with whom, exactly? Is anyone who hates the left welcome on the modern right — even if they also hate Jews? Or should a line be drawn against extremists — and, if so, how and where exactly should it be drawn?
“What a lot of people are finally coming around to understanding,” conservative commentator Dave Reaboi wrote, “is most of the Right’s loudest voices have no problem at all with Nazis.”
The “based ritual”
Antisemitism has long been a major presence on the fever swamps of the young right — for instance, in message boards like 4chan. But it burst into public view at the infamous Charlottesville rally of 2017, where young white supremacists chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
Such virulent rhetoric has been considered off-limits for the mainstream GOP and much of the right — for instance, in 2023, the antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes was banned from the Conservative Political Action Conference.
But this year, several prominent figures on the right have offered ominous warnings about the trends they’re seeing among the young right, including the GOP staffer class specifically.
In an early September article titled “The Conservative Movement at a Crossroads,” right-wing activist Christopher Rufo wrote that three once-fringe ideas — “racialism, anti-Semitism, and conspiracism” — now “appear to be entering some corners of mainstream conservatism.” Young GOP staffers, Rufo continued, had told him that all three “have gained a foothold among their Gen Z colleagues in Washington.” Others on the right have made similar remarks.
Part of this is because a culture developed among young right-wingers in which saying extreme and offensive things makes you cool.
Earlier this year, the right-leaning commentator Richard Hanania dubbed this the “Based Ritual,” writing an imagined dialogue in which young MAGA staffers in Washington met at a bar and competed to say the most outrageous things about race, gender, and other topics. The dialogue was fictional, but Hanania — who has his own history of extreme racist comments, but has moderated his rhetoric and persona recently — wrote that, in his experience, “It actually is this bad.”
Hanania’s article seemed to perfectly anticipate the tone of the leaked group chat (except that it was significantly more highbrow). Bigotry, rape, slavery, white supremacist signifiers, Hitler — these were no longer taboos that all decent people should deplore, they were funny things to “joke” about. Or are they jokes?
How do you solve a problem like right-wing influencers pushing conspiracy theories?
There are several explanations for this recent trend. Young right-wingers are reacting against what they view as “woke” censoriousness, and Trump has helped make the GOP a welcoming place for right-wingers who love to flout taboos about race and identity – especially so this year, with Vance making clear he’ll back you if your private bigoted comments become public.
But another explanation singled out by Rufo and others is that rhetoric like this is no longer limited to anonymous message boards or private discussions — it’s been increasingly mainstreamed by a certain crop of right-wing influencers.
Some, like Fuentes and some figures associated with the manosphere, are indisputably antisemitic, in the sense of saying outright that Jews and Jewish influence are bad and that Hitler is maybe not so bad. Fuentes had long been banned from most major social media platforms, but Elon Musk’s X reinstated his account last year.
And lately, at least, Fuentes’s reach has been rising. On the far-right video platform Rumble, Fuentes’s videos and livestreams — with titles like “EXPOSING the Jewish Control Matrix,” “The Definitive Approach to the ‘Jewish Question’,” “When will the scourge of Black MURDERERS end?,” and “It’s time for White People to UNITE” —now regularly get hundreds of thousands of views, far above what they got last year.
But there are also figures, such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, whose commentary is not as far-out as Fuentes’s, but who have increasingly focused on criticism of Israel and promoted theories about the Jewish state’s power over US policymakers — and the world — that their critics consider patently antisemitic.
Carlson and Owens each had a falling out with a more mainstream right institution — Carlson was fired from Fox News in 2023, and Owens parted ways with Ben Shapiro’s publication, the Daily Wire, in 2024 — and both became independent influencers who, out of necessity, became more keenly attuned to what their audiences wanted. What they both realized, it seems, is that there is an audience for this kind of material.
“The Internet rewards scandal, shock, and virality, and conspiracy theories enjoy burgeoning market demand,” Rufo wrote in March. “Candace Owens has never been more popular, turning each outrage and accusation into new views, followers, subscribers, and revenues.”
The Charlie Kirk conspiracy theory mess
The killing last month of the conserative podcaster, organizer, and influencer Charlie Kirk has become a particular flashpoint in this divide on the right.
Though all known evidence suggests Kirk was killed by a lone young man without any known ties to left groups, many leading right-wingers — including Rufo — quickly decided to blame his killing on the “radical left” generally, using this as a pretext to demand the Trump administration crack down on left-wing groups.
Inconveniently for their narrative, however, many leading right-wing influencers arrived at another theory: Maybe the Jews did it because they feared Kirk was on the verge of breaking with Israel.
To be clear: The idea that anyone other than Tyler Robinson was involved in Kirk’s killing lacks any evidence whatsoever, and is a classic conspiracy theory.
But there was, in fact, a complicated backstory about where Kirk was headed on the issue of Israel.
Kirk had long been a staunchly pro-Israel conservative, and had earned the enmity of Fuentes and his “groyper” followers as a result. But more recently, as the Gaza war stretched on, Kirk recognized that the right-wing base was increasingly divided over Israel. He saw his role as trying to keep the right’s coalition together.
Carlson became a particular flashpoint. As Kirk continued to feature Carlson at events for his group Turning Point USA, he faced criticism and pressure from Republicans who believed Carlson had long crossed the line into antisemitism. And he became increasingly annoyed at this.
“Just lost another huge Jewish donor,” Kirk privately texted allies in early September. “$2 million a year because we won’t cancel Tucker.” He added: “Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes. I cannot and will not be bullied like this. Leaving me no choice but to leave the pro Israel cause.”
Just days later, Kirk was shot dead. And among the Israel-critical right, the suspicion soon spread that Kirk was killed by supporters of Israel.
At Kirk’s memorial service, Carlson compared Kirk to Jesus, who he said was killed due to “a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus thinking about, ‘What do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? We must make him stop talking!’”
Owens has devoted her podcast to supposedly trying to suss out the truth about Kirk’s killing, exploring all manner of theories and supposed inconsistencies in authorities’ story. (Kirk’s texts about “Jewish donors” were leaked on her podcast, and Turning Points USA confirmed their authenticity.)
“Should we ever police our own?”
All this was already simmering before the leaked group chat brought this topic to a boil. But those on the right who view these trends as a significant problem have been at a loss concerning what to do about it.
On a Daily Wire streaming show last week, Shapiro’s viewpoint that there is a growing problem on the right was pitted directly against Walsh’s view that the main focus should still be the left.
”I think that there are things that get said on the right that are really, really, really ugly and pretending those away doesn’t make them go away,” Shapiro said. “I think that they’re rising,” he continued. “To pretend that it has not infiltrated a lot of very important spaces, I think, is sort of whistling past the graveyard.”
“Tucker is a fraught topic for a lot of people, myself included,” Shapiro went on. But he proposed one potential litmus test: what if anyone “who won’t just buy into the basic factual idea” that Kirk was murdered by Tyler Robinson — who he called “a gay man who is a trans furry lover” — does not deserve “a leadership position” in the conservative movement?
Walsh wouldn’t bite. He made clear he didn’t believe in conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death, but: “Does that mean that anyone who feels differently should be drummed out of the movement? No, I don’t think so.” He went on: “That’s not up to us to decide anyway.”
“Should we ever police our own?” another participant in the discussion, Michael Knowles, asked. “I think the answer is obviously yes, there have to be guardrails.” But, he said, it should be done “very carefully.”
The problem, for those who believe this, is that many ways such a coalition is typically policed — firing people who say bigoted things, denouncing people with extreme views, “deplatforming” — are now widely viewed on the right as woke and lib-coded.
“This problem has no easy answer—certainly not digital censorship or criminalization of speech,” Rufo wrote in March. “The better approach involves patience: push back on anti-Semitic narratives and build an establishment capable of both garnering attention and enforcing boundaries of decency.” But that, it seems, is much easier said than done.
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