American culture invented the Hollywood western. The Dallas Cowboys are America’s Team. The wisdom of the West is often described as “horse sense.”
But nowadays it’s horseshoes—worn by both Democrats and Republicans—that have been given a political shine. A political theory bandied about in what passes for smoke-filled backrooms these days is that the two parties, at their extremes, are united on one solitary issue: a hatred for Jews. Progressives and Islamists on one end; nationalists, neo-Nazis and anti-globalists on the other—both with a common enemy.
That’s what is meant by the woke, alt-right— “woke” breeds antisemitism, even among political opposites that otherwise agree on nothing else.
The antisemitic fervor and hatred of Israel on the far right is both growing and not all that different from the progressive Democratic left. And the woke right is not influenced by the ahistorical revisionism on campus and the irresponsible journalism of mainstream media. The far right doesn’t need propaganda to feed its addictions.
When it comes to the hatred of Jews, it seems, the extreme margins of the political spectrum bend toward one another and then run on parallel tracks —making the U-shape of a horseshoe, with political centrists upholding the center.
This past week put the horseshoe theory through its paces. The U.S. Religious Liberty Commission met specifically to address the alarming national surge in antisemitism. One commissioner, a former “Miss California,” Carrie Prejean Boller, was displeased with the meeting’s agenda.
Wearing a pin of the Palestinian flag, she unleashed a screed against Jews and Israel, emphatically making it known that she will “never bend the knee to the State of Israel. Ever!” Not unlike Tucker Carlson, she attacked Christian evangelicals for their staunch Zionism. And in a weird contortion of Catholic theology, she claimed to be bound by her faith to reject both Jews and Israel. (Mel Gibson notwithstanding, the Catholic Church, officially, does not condone antisemitism and fully supports Israel’s right to exist.)
She then defended the open antisemitism of podcasters Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, and demanded that the commission condemn Israel for defending itself against Hamas.
Her master class in Jew-hatred resulted in her removal from the commission. That’s when Owens took to her podcast to accuse nefarious Zionists of conspiring to punish the former beauty queen for being a good “Christian.” (Prejean Boller apparently was required to forfeit her crown on account of an undisclosed sex tape and some beyond-the-pale opinions about gay marriage.)
Much of the recent aggressive Jew-hating, anti-Israel rhetoric on the right can be attributed to both Carlson and Owens. They regularly invoke the “Jewish power” canard and its control over the American foreign policy establishment. Carlson floated the crackpot analogy of hummus-eating Israelis conspiring to assassinate Charlie Kirk, a modern-day Passion Play with a new cast of malevolent Christ-killing Jews.
Carlson hosted “groyper” neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes without rebutting any of his fantastical antisemitic claims. The president of the Heritage Foundation, ordinarily a pro-Israel think tank, inexplicably came to Carlson’s defense. Vice President JD Vance, purporting to be neutral on the subject, proved to be otherwise. He dismissed the recent scourge of Republican antisemitism as merely a dispute about America’s support for the Jewish state.
With friends like these, Israel might as well give Bernie Sanders and the Squad another chance, except it appears they have already befriended and made common cause with the alt-right.
With Republican friends like these, Israel might as well give Bernie Sanders and the Squad another chance, except it appears they have already befriended and made common cause with the alt-right.
Conservative comedian Dave Smith, who made his ignorance about the war in Gaza known on The Joe Rogan Experience, took his act on the road, appearing on Krystal Ball’s hard-left podcast. Both traded bizarre and defamatory falsehoods about Israel. Meanwhile, Rolling Stone, the iconic magazine of the cultural left, favorably quoted right-wing podcaster Theo Von, who now also purports to be a legal expert on Israel’s alleged “genocide” in Gaza.
What’s going on here? These are not merely strange bedfellows. Ordinarily, they wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room!
At the Second International Conference on Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem, conservative pundit Yoram Hazony played down the far right’s flirtation with antisemitism. If any problem exists, he casts blame on pro-Israel advocates who haven’t convincingly informed the general public about the national security threats Israel has faced since its modern inception.
This must all be very disillusioning for President Trump—the conflict within his own party over Israel. Many of these same Republicans are among his most ardent supporters. Here he is holding universities accountable for the Jew-hatred allowed to fester on their campuses, while at the very same time, Republicans are falling for the same anti-Israel propaganda embraced by the masked lunatics now banished from campus life.
But is it even the same? The woke left opposes Western civilization and has little love for the United States. No one is shouting “Death to America!” in a Red state. The left, however, is guided by decolonial marching orders to erase all evidence of capitalist white supremacy. To them, Israel is no less guilty than the United States and Canada.
The woke right has a very different view of the world and why they hate Jews. They are not flag-burners but avowed nationalists. The “dual loyalties” of American Jews and their cosmopolitan flair for globalist shenanigans stirs nationalist anxieties about being “replaced” by mixed-race foreigners.
The left side of the horseshoe believes that hating Jews is entirely consistent with social justice, anti-racism and human rights. The woke left’s influence over higher education and mass media has enabled bigotry to be fancied up by cultural elites. Supporting Israel results in permanent banishment from the Venn diagram of intersectional politics.
The woke right sees Jews as sinister threats to the American heartland, a danger to national identity and social cohesion. Israel is merely a stalking horse for the woke right, a misdirection on a map no one can read anyway. Lies about Israeli genocide are just convenient updates to shadowy biblical Christ-killers and medieval plague-carriers—all pretext with no regard for truth.
One side of the horseshoe is undoubtedly more treacherous than the other. Yes, Carlson and Owens have millions of listeners, but it does not compare with a poisonous mainstream media, cynical cultural elites and indoctrinated students from K-Ph.D. There is no Zohran Mamdani and other Islamist mayors, Squad congresswomen and sanctuary cities on the woke right. Marjorie Taylor Greene is gone. There are no alliances akin to irreconcilably allying Sharia law with progressive politics.
Meanwhile, the silence of the centrists within the horseshoe, and the timid Jews who have acceded to the self-hatred demanded of their beloved Democratic Party, grant more power to extremists than they would ever hope to achieve on their own. All throughout history, power is invested in bystanders who always refuse to exercise it.
Antisemitic extremists on both left and right may have coalesced into a misshapen but not harmless horseshoe. But that’s no excuse for Jews wearing a dog collar and resigning themselves to yield.
