Until recently, centuries-long, right-wing antisemitism seemed vestigial in America. The Republican Party, and conservative leaders like William F. Buckley Jr., had mostly marginalized antisemites and their fellow travelers. According to recent polls, such as the March 2025 Gallup survey, Republicans as a group still express overwhelmingly positive views of Israel (83 percent)—in sharp contrast to Democrats’ utterly anemic support (33 percent).
Right-wing antisemitic remnants were thought to be confined to a few fringe groups online or paltry, ossified Klan-like cabals. Given the history of European pogroms, the nightmare of the Third Reich, and its unapologetic racial and religious hatred, right-wing antisemitism had always been a more easily identifiable, cruder variant than the insidious and now more frequent left-wing antisemitism.
The latter, especially commonplace on campuses and entrenched within the base of the Democratic Party, has cloaked itself in idealistic social justice causes. It is embedded into diversity, equity, and inclusion identity politics, and “humanitarian” outrage over supposed Israeli “settler-colonialism,” “genocide,” and “apartheid.” After all, who in 2025 could not be against “settler-colonialists” who practice “genocide”? When it was revealed that a recent Democrat Senate candidate in Maine, Graham Platner—an outspoken critic of Israel—had tattooed on his chest the Totenkopf (“Death’s head”) emblem of the Nazi SS Third Panzer Division, there was only mild response from Democrat elected officials. And despite Platner’s inconsistent and contradictory explanations for the Nazi insignia, which he has now covered up, almost no calls for him to exit the race followed.
If the presence of left-wing antisemitism is explained in part by identity politics, what explains the return of its cruder right-wing cousin—or at least its appearance on high-profile conservative podcasts and social media?
