One Party Is Purging Antisemites. The Other Party Is Electing Them
The GOP continues to shed the people who hate Zionists and think Jews have too much power—while the Democratic Party continues to elect them.
The Democratic Socialists of America had a sweep last night. Three candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, two of whom were expected to lose and two of whom were incumbents, won their primaries in New York City.
All three focused their campaigns on the hatred of Israel and the Jews who support it which they share with New York’s mayor, so much so that revelers chanted “Free, free Palestine” at victory parties.
Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Chevalier all won with the highly-educated white progressives that make up Mamdani’s base, the kind of people for whom Palestine has become the latest virtue signal. Chevalier, who won a district that includes the Bronx, actually lost the Bronx part of the district by 30 points. She also lost predominantly Black and Hispanic areas and the lower income areas in the district, winning higher income and college educated voters, as well as young people.
As the New York Times noted, Mamdani’s endorsements “put him at odds with the Working Families Party, prominent Black and Latino Democrats, major labor unions and members of the City Council, all of whom had supported his campaign for mayor and are now involved in his governing agenda.”
That’s because the beating heart of the campaign wasn’t labor unions. It was a fanatical opposition to Jewish interests, American Jewish campaign contributions, and Israel.
At a campaign rally, Mamdani called AIPAC—an organization that helps American citizens find pro-Israel candidates—a “monster” that “moves dark money”—a dark force “turning us against one another.”
“Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books,” said Congressman Josh Gottheimer. “That’s not criticizing a lobby. That’s laundering antisemitism from your podium as Mayor of a city with more than a million Jews. This bullshit is dangerous.”
But these antisemitic stereotypes no doubt resonated with Mamdani’s chosen candidates. Chevalier attended a Palestine rally the day after October 7 and likes to parade around in a keffiyeh. Brad Lander made opposition to AIPAC the cornerstone of his campaign—despite admitting that it’s antisemitic to talk about AIPAC this way, but Lord help him, he just has to.
“I feel queasy talking about it, given the antisemitic tropes at play here about Jews and money and power,” Lander told the New York Times. “But I have to.”
The message here is clear: Anti-Zionism and antisemitic tropes about Jews and money are the price of entry into the progressive movement, the cost of winning elections on the Left.
How did we get here, to where the Left, the party of most American Jews, has made opposition to their money and attachments a litmus test? My latest book is all about that
Yet the exact opposite is happening on the Right in the Republican Party.
Tucker Carlson, a man who has made his output almost exclusively about his opposition to Jews in recent years, who has hosted multiple Holocaust deniers on his show and is rabidly, obsessively anti-Israel, is no longer part of the Republican Party. After months of being publicly berated and even ousted from MAGA by President Trump, Carlson has announced he is done.
And this after his close friend, Vice President JD Vance, made obsequious comments about how welcome Carlson is last week.
“The coalition that made Donald Trump the president of the United States and JD Vance the Vice President of the United States—people have to remember this—it was Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. It was also Mark Levin. It was also a lot of people like John Podhoretz, who want a more aggressive foreign policy,” VP Vance told Megyn Kelly. “What I think is important, I’m never going to say that John Podhoretz is not welcome in the Republican Party. He is. But just as he’s disappointed right now, sometimes other people are going to be disappointed at other times. You can’t just quit politics because the leader of a country of 330 million people makes a decision you disagree with.”
Some were surprised by these kind words for Carlson, who a few days before had said Israeli politicians are worse than the Nazis ever were. But if they were meant to convince Carlson he still belonged, they fell on deaf ears. This week, Carlson announced he would not remain part of the Republican Party over its friendship with Israel, which Carlson calls “putting a foreign country above those of its own citizens”:
“I would not support the Republican Party, there’s no chance I would support the Republican Party,” he said. “Not gonna support the Democratic Party. I don’t know what I’m going to do. How could I or any American voter support a political party that is not loyal to the United States, that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens? It’s not possible to vote for people like that and I’m not going to.”
Carlson’s accusation, that the Republican Party under President Trump is disloyal to its own citizens because it has Israel as an ally, is a classic antisemitic canard, an extension of the view that Zionists have dual loyalties because they support the existence of the State of Israel and aren’t willfully blind to the benefits it brings us as an ally.
Of course, there are costs, too. Israel isn’t perfect. It’s clear now Israel oversold the situation in Iran, and possibly underdelivered. But that’s not the Carlson view; per Carlson, it was Israel’s war. Israel “forced” Trump’s hand. Israel is responsible for the actions of the most powerful man on the planet (only, of course, when one dislikes those actions, though! Otherwise, credit to Trump!).
Turns out, this kind of stuff only flies on the Left—something Carlson has apparently figured out. He joins others—Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, the Podcastariat writ large—on a now well-trodden journey: from obsession with Israel to declared anti-Zionism to blaming Jews for all of Trump’s flaws to, finally, the Left.
Anti-Zionism is basically a gateway drug to the Left—for the simple reason that the Right continues to police its borders and insist that people who make their Israel Derangement Syndrome into their entire personality have no place in the party.
It’s not the entire Republican Party. Carlson was recently asked if he talks to Vance still.
“I wouldn’t want to wreck his life more than it has been wrecked by even talking about that,” Carlson said.
“That’s a yes,” the interviewer noted.
But Vance seems to be pretty alone in defending his friend.
When it comes to President Trump, Republican Senators, Congressmen, influencers, pundits, journalists, and members of the Cabinet, all I hear is disgust for Carlson’s views and the repeated sentiment that they do not belong in the Republican Party.
Healthy skepticism for foreign intervention—yes.
Blaming the Jews for all your problems—that stuff belongs in Mamdani’s Democratic Party.
Batya, do you have any thoughts on Megyn Kelly? She has really disappointed me. She was an avid supporter of Israel, and now she seems to speak with such disdain. It pains me.
The Republicans are purging antisemites, how?
J.D. Vance is joined at the hip to Tucker Carlson.