Is the political right becoming actively, explicitly antisemitic?
1Shankar Sivarajan
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12Daniel Kokotajlo
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3Dana
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Since you mention "race relations," if you mean antisemitism as a kind of racism, no, not really. The Groypers remain a fringe group of internet trolls without any real influence; they're useful to both sides, to either trigger the libs or make the Republicans look bad, so they get hyped up far out of proportion to their actual importance.
What is ascendant on the Right is America First populism, a combination of anti-elitism and anti-globalism, both of which might be mistaken for antisemitism if you engage in reckless noticing, but they hate Fauci and Gates as much as any comparable Jew[1].
There's also a much more recent anti-Israel sentiment due to concerns they might drag the US into war against Iran, but I expect that to be transient, and not worth much discussion here. This might eventually become antisemitism of the kind you're asking about if the war comes to pass, but at the moment "anti-Zionism" seems almost exclusively a cause of the Left (proximately driven by the Gaza Genocide™ in their case).
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With the one exception of George Soros, whom, yes, they have a particular hatred of. But come on, he's personally working towards to the utter ruination of all they hold dear.
The Groypers remain a fringe group of internet trolls without any real influence
I really disagree, I think they're already starting to become very hard to ignore. Candace Owens gave Nick Fuentes a two hour interview literally just last week.
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00In Australia an "antisemitism envoy", who is a prominent advocate for Israel was appointed by the center-left government. This appointment is controversial because her husband donated money to a staunchly right-wing lobby group - she denies any knowledge of this. However this fits a broader pattern of the opposition party, who are more conservative, calling for more action to combat antisemitism, leveling this indiscriminately against both the incumbent government and against independent Teals[1].
If you'll accept my unabashed speculation - it appears in Australia the right wing are staunchly against antisemitism - which is giving me a bit of conceptual whiplash. Of course this could be the ol' "the lady doth protest too much, methinks"
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Not relevant to your question but for context: The Teals (they're not quite "Green" and not quite conservative Blue) are assortment of independent representatives that have done well in traditionally conservative (affluent!) seats with a climate change conscious, anti-misogyny message. This also includes seats with high concentration of Jewish voters.
>it appears in Australia the right wing are staunchly antisemitic - which is giving me a bit of conceptual whiplash.
Did you mean pro-?
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Thank you for pointing that out, there's a negative missing in there. I meant to say they are "staunchly AGAINST antisemitism". I'm rather embarrassed by my oversight.
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The right has always been vaguely anti-semitic. What's new is the left is now also vaguely anti-semitic, leading it to being overall more normalized.
The trend does seem concerning. I'm curious to hear more about what the scenario in which it's important to flee the country looks like. It sounds implausible to me, but then I suppose the Holocaust would have sounded implausible in 1930 too. (But maybe not in 1937?)
Could you define antisemitism as you mean it here?
I wouldn't personally consider
"publicly accusing the former prime minister of Israel of running a Mossad blackmail ring with Jeffrey Epstein"
to be antisemitic, but it seems you do? Or am I misinterpreting you?
I guess in a spherical cow sense you could believe this without being antisemitic. But the evidence that Epstein ever trafficked any of his victims to friends in the first place is very weak. Additionally, if Epstein worked in an intelligence service, the natural party to that would be American intelligence services, who would actually be able to intercede on his behalf with prosecutors legally. And it's unimpeachable that a large proportion of the public interest in this hypothesis has been the result of activism by explicitly antisemitic people like Nick Fuentes and Ian Carroll. So yes, I am inclined to believe that Tucker Carlson's boosting of the theory, while maybe not being antisemitic in isolation, is indicative of a broader trend toward antisemitism on the right. It would not have happened five years ago.
But like, even if this doesn't count, it's obviously not just this one tweet, there's a whole slew of content Tucker's put out in the last six months that is clearly coming from this corner of the internet - even if he's not being strategic about it himself.
To what extent do you differentiate between anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism? It seems to be very common to conflate the two, especially with many in the pro-Israel camp actively pushing this notion that they are one and the same. And it's interesting that your sole concrete example is an attack on the Israeli government. I'm not familiar with Fuentes or Carroll. But anti-Israel sentiment is definitely up dramatically, and there will surely be significant collateral damage due to this. I wonder if we have any metrics which do a good job of disentangling these two.
Also, Ari Ben-Menashe linked both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's father to Mossad, so it's not like this connection just came out of thin air.
Okay but I notice that I still don't have an actual definition for what antisemitism is.
I guess as a starting point for figuring out what exactly we're talking about I would first ask whether in Hume terms antisemitism is an "is", an "ought", or as you say a "spherical cow" which includes both?
So
Antisemitism [...] is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews.
we're talking about either emotions (hostility to) or actions (discrimination against).
If I take this definition, there are no "is" statements which are themselves antisemitic. Antisemitism is either a feeling or an action. Is that in line with your personal definition?
Some data points: ADL reports show a 10x increase in anti-Jewish incidents (in the US) from 2014-2024, even while those with antisemitic attitudes remain ~stable at ~10% over that time. FBI hate crime stats end at EOY 2023, making extrapolating difficult due to the massive spike after 10/7, but it looks like 5-10x increase over the decade. (In certain areas, like NYC, hate crimes against Jews now outnumber all hate crimes against every other religious/ethnic group plus every racial group, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc combined.)
From anecdotal experience, both the far-right and far-left are getting more openly antisemitic, though only the latter has the social pull to be able to push it in mainstream settings.
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