Before I voice some really normie, stereotypically overblown concerns on LessWrong, let me state a couple things about myself:
I’m a non-Jewish white man
I’ve never been concerned about race relations before
I don’t think of myself as the kind of person who gets overly politically activated about the “current thing”, whether it be the rise of Donald Trump or illegal immigration or global warming or any of the stuff I feel like normies tend to get excited over.
Nevertheless, for the past year or so I’ve voiced to most of my friends a suspicion I’ve had that, barring a black swan event like AI that makes politics irrelevant, the conservative base is going to become way more actively antisemitic by 2030. At first this was basically theoretical, motivated by concerns like “I don’t think the right has the institutional capability to police populist extremism anymore.”
But the extent to which alt right personalities have become an unignorable fixture in conservative politics, in just the last few years, feels qualitatively different than anything that happened in the 2010s. The most virulently antisemitic talking heads on X are now regularly getting more interactions than virtually every “mainstream” conservative I know of—with the possible exception of Tucker Carlson, who for his part is spending his days publicly accusing the former prime minister of Israel of running a Mossad blackmail ring with Jeffrey Epstein.
And somehow it feels like I am the only person noticing this! I keep checking the New York Times website to see if they’re ever gonna run an article about “the rise of anti-Jewish hate”, but it’s like it’s not even happening. Maybe to liberals increasing antisemitism is such obvious background knowledge that they don’t even bother reporting it, but I think even then they’re probably underestimating how different this tonal shift is from the kinds of basic anti-foreigner shticks they were worried about a decade ago. I am genuinely a little worried about whether my Jewish friends (who for their part don’t seem nearly as concerned as me) will have to end up having to do something drastic like leave the country in the near future in an abundance of caution.
What the hell is going on? Are zoomers really this into antisemitism? Is there just not enough legible information out there on what’s happening? Are people noticing what’s happening and just not saying it because they’re afraid of adding fuel to the fire? Am I just old now and naturally predisposed to crazy conspiracy theories on how the country is going to go to shit in ten years?
Since you mention “race relations,” if you mean antisemitism as a kind of racism, no, not really. The Groypers remain a fringe group of internet trolls without any real influence; they’re useful to both sides, to either trigger the libs or make the Republicans look bad, so they get hyped up far out of proportion to their actual importance.
What is ascendant on the Right is America First populism, a combination of anti-elitism and anti-globalism, both of which might be mistaken for antisemitism if you engage in reckless noticing, but they hate Fauci and Gates as much as any comparable Jew[1].
There’s also a much more recent anti-Israel sentiment due to concerns they might drag the US into war against Iran, but I expect that to be transient, and not worth much discussion here. This might eventually become antisemitism of the kind you’re asking about if the war comes to pass, but at the moment “anti-Zionism” seems almost exclusively a cause of the Left (proximately driven by the Gaza Genocide™ in their case).
With the one exception of George Soros, whom, yes, they have a particular hatred of. But come on, he’s personally working towards to the utter ruination of all they hold dear.
I really disagree, I think they’re already starting to become very hard to ignore. Candace Owens gave Nick Fuentes a two hour interview literally just last week.
In Australia an “antisemitism envoy”, who is a prominent advocate for Israel was appointed by the center-left government. This appointment is controversial because her husband donated money to a staunchly right-wing lobby group—she denies any knowledge of this. However this fits a broader pattern of the opposition party, who are more conservative, calling for more action to combat antisemitism, leveling this indiscriminately against both the incumbent government and against independent Teals[1].
If you’ll accept my unabashed speculation—it appears in Australia the right wing are staunchly against antisemitism—which is giving me a bit of conceptual whiplash. Of course this could be the ol’ “the lady doth protest too much, methinks”
Not relevant to your question but for context: The Teals (they’re not quite “Green” and not quite conservative Blue) are assortment of independent representatives that have done well in traditionally conservative (affluent!) seats with a climate change conscious, anti-misogyny message. This also includes seats with high concentration of Jewish voters.
>it appears in Australia the right wing are staunchly antisemitic—which is giving me a bit of conceptual whiplash.
Did you mean pro-?
Thank you for pointing that out, there’s a negative missing in there. I meant to say they are “staunchly AGAINST antisemitism”. I’m rather embarrassed by my oversight.
The right has always been vaguely anti-semitic. What’s new is the left is now also vaguely anti-semitic, leading it to being overall more normalized.