Why Republicans are fighting about the Nazis
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
By KATIE GLUECK and JENNIFER MEDINA
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 Donald 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 GOP 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 Trump this past week defending Tucker Carlson for conducting a friendly interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and Josef 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 Rep. 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 Sen. 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 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 Kustoff, Trump’s strong military support for Israel has cemented their backing, regardless of how he approaches people like Fuentes or Carlson. Trump has also pushed far-reaching campus crackdowns in the name of combating antisemitism, an approach some conservative Jews have welcomed.
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.
Trump was widely criticized in 2017 after saying there were “very fine people on both sides” of a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Fuentes was there.) The president again drew backlash in 2022 for having dinner with Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate.
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 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 Roberts, defending Carlson. A board member resigned this past week over Roberts’ 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.
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 Carlson elevate 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.”
Carlson, who did not respond to a request for comment for this article, said 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 Rep. 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.
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 Fuentes, 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% of Republicans older than 65 sympathized with Israelis more than Palestinians, just 40% of Republicans younger than 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. Rep. Thomas Massie, a defender of Carlson who is one of the sharpest Republican critics of Israel in Congress and has broken with 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 Massie was a “top priority” for the group and that Gallrein had addressed a private dinner with RJC leaders and received a warm welcome.
A representative for 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.
Vance, a likely presidential candidate, has said in the past that he opposes Fuentes, but he has come under fire for his recent silence on Carlson. (Vance has aggressively defended 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, 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, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a former presidential candidate who could run again, has been one of his party’s loudest critics of 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 Carlson for fear of alienating the isolationist, populist wing of the party. But, 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.”
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