The Jewish state has become a proxy for the war within MAGA
Tucker Carlson’s visit to Israel lasted only a few hours — not long enough to experience the country, but sufficient to stage a performance.
Carlson — a former cable personality who has morphed into a far-right agitator with a huge podcast following — claimed he had experienced “bizarre” treatment and detention at Ben Gurion Airport, a description that Israeli and US officials dismissed. What actually appears to have happened is that he underwent routine security questioning — which exists for a reason but is also routinely idiotic — enroute to his interview with US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, which he did while never leaving the airport.
Israelis widely received with a mixture of indifference and eye-rolling, as they now mostly consider him an antisemite. But those with their ears to the ground understood that his attempt to stir the pot means they have a problem brewing in American public opinion — and a more immediate problem with public relations.
Because Carlson’s airport drama was not really about Israeli airport procedures. It was about American politics, an arena in which Carlson has built a lucrative post-Fox career selling a particular worldview: one suspicious of alliances, contemptuous toward interventionism, and invested in the conspiratorial belief that shadowy forces distort American sovereignty. It is a fascinating departure from the more recent variants of American conservatism, though actually not far from the America Firsters of the 1930s. Israel, in this universe, functions as a prop in a broader narrative of opposition to elites and national victimhood.
This mutation has riven Trump’s MAGA movement, which probably accounts for a small majority of Republican voters. Carlson and Huckabee, the man he traveled across the world to interview, now personify the two increasingly incompatible strains within this cult. Huckabee represents something recognizable to mainstream conservatives: he’s traditionalist, evangelical, instinctively pro-Israel and broadly aligned with America’s historical posture as a global power.
Carlson, meanwhile, speaks of nationalist retrenchment, hostility to foreign entanglements, and an often startling indifference to liberal democratic norms (partly easy to market because in America the world liberalism has been completely distorted). He has been scathingly critical of US support for Israel and has backed far-right conspiracy theories about whites being “replaced” by people of color (including Jews? Not so clear). When he attacks evangelicals like Huckabee for supporting Israel too much, there is extra value in the antisemitic dog whistle for the white supremacists with whom he is popular.
Carlson recently conducted a very friendly interview with the social media firebrand Nick Fuentes, who praises aspects of Nazi ideology and minimizes the Holocaust. During that encounter, he railed against “Christian Zionists,” naming Sen. Ted Cruz and former President George W. Bush, as having a “brain virus,” adding: “I dislike them more than anybody because like what? Because it’s Christian heresy and I’m offended by that as a Christian.”
Right.
So, observers present at the Huckabee interview told reporters that the interview was “emotional” and that the ambassador “corrected” Carlson on elements of his worldview. Whether Carlson genuinely subscribes to every element of this worldview is almost irrelevant. His extraordinary success after leaving Fox News suggests he understands his audience perfectly. He is not drifting toward obscurity by embracing this kind of stunt; he is responding to market demand.
Yup — there is a market for regarding alliances as burdens, admiring dictators like Vladimir Putin, and hating anyone who cares about democratic values and their promotion around the world. This growing constituency is eager for narratives that cast any expert as a villain and see foreign policy as a monumental scame.
Israel has been retrofitted into this story, accounting for the charade at Ben Gurion Airport. Nothing about the incident requires serious factual dispute to achieve its purpose. Its value lies in symbolism, and Carlson is actually illustrating a story about a Republican Party negotiating an identity crisis.
Trump, widely seen in Israel as a huge friend, is not a reliable ally. If the wing behind Carlson becomes clearly stronger than that behind Huckabee, there’s no telling whether he would hew to their demands. His loyalties are famously contingent, and he has shown little hesitation in entertaining figures once considered radioactive within mainstream Republican politics. In a movement defined by power, primacy will belong not to the most coherent worldview but to the most electorally useful one.
For Israel, the implications are dire. The country has long relied on the assumption that American support is both durable and bipartisan. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu badly upset that applecart by so clearly aligning himself with the Republican Party at large, and Trump specifically.
In growing sections of the progressive left, Israel is framed as a colonial antagonist, and Israel’s support on the Democratic side of the public is in free-fall. On parts of the populist right, it is cast as an entangling liability or worse — some manifestation of the evil elites. The political center sustaining the relationship is shrinking.
Carlson did not invent this shift, but he is certainly capitalizing on it. Netanyahu’s outrageous behavior, including his alignment with the fascist underbelly of Israeli politics and ennabling of the ultra-Orthodox establishment, is causing a rift with mainstream US Jews and giving the likes of Carlson tailwind.
If a media entrepreneur of Carlson’s sophistication believes there is a vast audience for rhetoric that treats Israel as suspect, burdensome, or undeserving of American backing, Israelis would be unwise to dismiss the signal. Because while the circus at the airport was entertaining in its way, they will find nothing funny about the hurricane that seems headed their way from America.
For Israel, the implications are dire. The country has long relied on the assumption that American support is both durable and bipartisan. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu badly upset that applecart by so clearly aligning himself with the Republican Party at large, and Trump specifically.
In growing sections of the progressive left, Israel is framed as a colonial antagonist, and Israel’s support on the Democratic side of the public is in free-fall. On parts of the populist right, it is cast as an entangling liability or worse — some manifestation of the evil elites. The political center sustaining the relationship is shrinking.
Carlson did not invent this shift, but he is certainly capitalizing on it. Netanyahu’s outrageous behavior, including his alignment with the fascist underbelly of Israeli politics and ennabling of the ultra-Orthodox establishment, is causing a rift with mainstream US Jews and giving the likes of Carlson tailwind.
If a media entrepreneur of Carlson’s sophistication believes there is a vast audience for rhetoric that treats Israel as suspect, burdensome, or undeserving of American backing, Israelis would be unwise to dismiss the signal. Because while the circus at the airport was entertaining in its way, they will find nothing funny about the hurricane that seems headed their way from America.
