For years, Jewish Republicans often denied that the right had a serious problem with antisemitism, pointing instead to anti-Jewish bigotry on the left and celebrating President Trump’s support for Israel.
But now that problem is staring them directly in the face.
Tensions over antisemitism in the party, free speech and Israel have burst to the forefront of G.O.P. politics, and show signs of becoming a fierce point of contention in 2026 primary races and beyond.
The furor has reached the highest levels of government, with President Trump this past week defending Tucker Carlson for conducting a friendly interview with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who has expressed admiration for Hitler and Stalin.
Some Republicans are now finding themselves in the extraordinary position of clarifying what long seemed obvious: Nazis are evil.
“It’s something that we all should know, but the fact of the matter is, it had to be said,” said Representative David Kustoff of Tennessee, explaining why he felt the need to denounce Nazis and antisemitism at a recent gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
He was joined there by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who declared, “I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party.”
And even Laura Loomer, the far-right activist, who is Jewish, has argued on social media that “the GOP has a Nazi problem.”
As the fallout from Mr. Carlson’s interview has consumed the right, some Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, have condemned the amplification of antisemitic views. And to Jewish Republicans like Mr. Kustoff, Mr. Trump’s strong military support for Israel has cemented their backing, regardless of how he approaches people like Mr. Fuentes or Mr. Carlson. Mr. Trump has also pushed far-reaching campus crackdowns in the name of combating antisemitism, an approach some conservative Jews have welcomed.
Republicans have aggressively courted Jewish voters alienated by the left, and appeared to make some gains in the 2024 election.
But polling and interviews with Republican activists and strategists show that there are real and growing divides in their party, both over America’s support for Israel and how to address antisemitism on the right.
“You can’t have a political party that hates everyone except white people who like Hitler and think you’re going to win elections,” said Nachama Soloveichik, a Republican strategist who was the communications director on Nikki Haley’s 2024 presidential campaign.
“I don’t think we’re at that point,” she added, but “there is a battle.”
A flare-up of controversies
The Republican Party has grappled with antisemitism within its ranks on and off for decades. William F. Buckley Jr. sought to stamp it out of the conservative movement, and debates raged in the party over the candidacies of David Duke and Pat Buchanan.
Mr. Trump was widely criticized in 2017 after saying there were “very fine people on both sides” of a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. (Mr. Fuentes was there.) The president again drew backlash in 2022 for having dinner with Mr. Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.
But social media is making the current surge of antisemitic messaging more difficult to confront, some Republican activists say, as outlandish statements and conspiracy theories flourish online. People who question the Holocaust and offer revisionist histories of World War II have found platforms on popular podcasts, including Mr. Carlson’s.
The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that wields broad influence in the Republican Party, has been plunged into turmoil after the release of a video by the organization’s president, Kevin D. Roberts, defending Mr. Carlson. A board member resigned this past week over Mr. Roberts’s refusal to retract the video.
“I am more unsettled now than I think I have ever been,” said Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the special envoy to combat antisemitism during the Biden administration and has frequently criticized antisemitism on the left.
Dr. Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar, has described the spread of antisemitism as a horseshoe, with the far right and far left closer to each other than to the center.
“This is how it moves, it begins at the periphery,” she said, but having the influential Mr. Carlson elevate Mr. Fuentes “makes it OK, and it begins to move toward the middle.”
Last month, Politico broke the news of a Telegram chat in which young Republican activists glibly invoked Hitler and the Holocaust. A Trump nominee for the Office of Special Counsel was withdrawn before his Senate confirmation after news surfaced of him declaring that he had a “Nazi streak.”
Mr. Carlson, who did not respond to a request for comment for this article, says he abhors antisemitism. He recently told The New York Times that much of the “institutional Republican Party” seems to “hate free speech.” Some of his defenders, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the hard-right Republican who on Friday announced her plans to resign, have dismissed the backlash to the Fuentes interview as cancel culture or virtue signaling.
“There’s definitely a faction of the conservative right, that’s the more neo-con-y fashion, the more pro-Israel faction, that is turning into BLM 2020,” the conservative commentator Megyn Kelly recently said on her show, alluding to the Black Lives Matter movement. “It’s very alienating.”
Others on the right, including outspoken critics of left-wing antisemitism like Representative Elise Stefanik, who is running for governor of New York, have avoided commenting on the clash.
Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance “did not get elected to play podcast police,” said Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to the Trump political operation. “This topic’s exhausted, and I don’t think the American people care about it.”
Generational disagreements over Israel
Beyond his hosting of Mr. Fuentes, Mr. Carlson has sparked controversy within the Republican Party over his pointed criticism of Israel.
While polls show that Republicans are more supportive of Israel than Democrats are, support for Israel drops sharply among younger Republicans. A Times poll this fall found that while 79 percent of Republicans over 65 sympathized with Israelis more than Palestinians, just 40 percent of Republicans under 44 agreed.
This issue has torn apart Democrats in primary races, and similar tensions could play out on the right.
One test comes next year in Kentucky. Representative Thomas Massie, a defender of Mr. Carlson who is one of the sharpest Republican critics of Israel in Congress and has broken with Mr. Trump on key issues, has attracted a Trump-backed primary challenger named Ed Gallrein.
Matt Brooks, who leads the Republican Jewish Coalition, said that defeating Mr. Massie was a “top priority” for the group, and that Mr. Gallrein had addressed a private dinner with R.J.C. leaders and received a warm welcome. A representative for Mr. Massie did not respond to requests for comment.
‘The fight is very much on’
These issues are already beginning to shape the earliest stages of the 2028 presidential race.
Mr. Vance, a likely presidential candidate, has said in the past that he opposes Mr. Fuentes, but he has come under fire for his recent silence on Mr. Carlson. (Mr. Vance has aggressively defended Mr. Carlson’s son, an aide in the vice president’s office, against online attacks, saying he has “zero tolerance for scumbags attacking my staff.”)
At a Turning Point USA event last month, Mr. Vance did not push back when an attendee, who described himself as a “Christian man,” falsely suggested that Judaism “openly supports the prosecution” of Christianity. His office declined to comment.
By contrast, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a former presidential candidate who could run again, has been one of his party’s loudest critics of Mr. Carlson and what he sees as growing strains of antisemitism in the party, sparking backlash in turn.
David Brog, a longtime Republican operative and a founder of Christians United for Israel, called right-wing antisemitism “a serious problem.”
He and other critics said some Republicans were reluctant to challenge Mr. Carlson for fear of alienating the isolationist, populist wing of the party. But, Mr. Brog said, he was heartened that more Republican officials had been speaking out recently.
“The fight is very much on,” he said. “It’s still to be determined which side will really prevail.”
Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.
Katie Glueck is a Times national political reporter.
The post Why Republicans Are Fighting About the Nazis appeared first on New York Times.
