The Right’s Immune System Has Kicked In

By Abe Greenwald

In Friday’s newsletter, I wrote, “The vast majority of America’s non-Jews are not anti-Semitic, and they do not deserve to suffer under the leadership of either left-wing Hamasniks or nihilistic podcast influencers.” And I mentioned that the American right, in particular, is broadly enthusiastic about America’s unique historic bond with Israel and the ways that Donald Trump has strengthened the U.S.-Israel alliance.

I then spent a huge chunk of my weekend gauging the right’s response to last week’s attempt to codify right-wing Jew-hatred. And I couldn’t have been any more heartened. 

The right swiftly and overwhelmingly rejected Heritage president Kevin Roberts’s bid to let Nazism inside the tent. Conservative politicians, influencers, and journalists ripped to shreds Roberts’s abhorrent defense of Tucker Carlson’s hosting of groyper king Nick Fuentes. 

The backlash was fast and furious. Roberts’s initial statement, in which he labeled Carlson’s critics a “venomous coalition” that is “sowing division,” dropped on Thursday afternoon. By Friday, he was out with a mealymouthed cleanup clip in which he denounced Fuentes. On the same day, he was interviewed by Dana Loesch, whose straightforward questions about right and wrong had him all but malfunctioning in response. On Friday evening, Roberts announced that his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, would be moving to another position. Today, news broke that Neuhaus is gone from Heritage altogether. Not bad for a few days’ work. Let’s see where this goes next. 

It goes without saying that Jewish Zionists will do all they can to excise the rot of Jew-hatred from the right. But it’s the majority of the non-Jewish right that has me so uncharacteristically hopeful about that effort. Carlson told Fuentes that Christian Zionists suffer from a “brain virus” and that he dislikes them “more than anybody.” Well, this country’s Christian Zionists weren’t about to take that slander of their faith lying down. And they’re fighting back with the most glorious array of weapons: their shining decency, their overpowering goodwill toward the Jews, and their love for both Israel and the United States. 

This weekend, I’ve pored over dozens of social media posts, articles, and speeches from non-Jewish supporters of Israel. In opposing the right’s institutional acceptance of Jew-hatred, they unfailingly articulate the multiple threats posed by Kevin Roberts’s misguided stratagem. They know that right-wing anti-Semitism is a threat not only to the Jewish people and Israel, but to Christians of faith, to a political right worth saving, and to the future of this country. And without a United States guided by its Founding principle of liberty for all, the world would return to a moral dark age.  

And in this moment, in an uncertain political climate, their defense of the good is not without risk. Unlike liberals, who’ve spent years ceding ground to their own Jew-hating mob, pro-Israel conservatives are not only full of goodness but courage, as well.

COMMENTARY receives more “thank you” emails from Christian readers and podcast listeners than you’d ever imagine. Too much for us to respond to adequately. And this won’t be quite adequate either, but there is no better time for me to express my thanks to them. So, to the virtual armies out there who take up the cause of the Jews, Israel, and the United States, thank you! It means the world. It literally means the world. 

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.