The antisemitism of Tucker Carlson or MT Greene, their belief in an all-powerful Zionist (in this case meaning Jewish) conspiracy controlling US foreign policy, is not incidental. It's the only way to tie together "the Iran War is disastrous" with "the US is basically good and innocent."

Show Post

A good way to distinguish good faith, valid criticism of Israel from bad-faith Tucker Carlson right-wing criticism is, "Are they trying to offload all the sins of American Empire onto Israel, to maintain a belief in American innocence?"

Show Post

By 2028, the entire country is going to broadly regard Trump as a failure, which means the nationalist right is going to need to find a villain who betrayed Trumpism. And it is going to be very convenient to blame it on Israel for supposedly forcing Trump into the Iran War.

Show Post

"Israel influences and lobbies U.S. foreign policy" and "Israel tricked Trump into going to war in Iran" are not synonymous statements. And it is going to be increasingly necessary for us to distinguish them, while people on all sides try for different reasons to occlude that difference.

Show Post

The response to this shouldn't be that "Israel tricked Trump into going to war in Iran" is too anti-Israel in ways that flirt with antisemitic tropes, even if true. It's that this framing is insufficiently anti-US. It maintains US innocence, in a way that feeds the Tucker Carlson anti-Israel right.

Show Post