America's History With the Jewish Question

Historically, American Jews have never had to face the full societal force of the JQ. In 1790, then President George Washington set the tone of the new country, penning a now-famous letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, affirming religious liberty and equal citizenship for Jews in the United States.

(While the constitution, which was adopted two years earlier in 1788, granted full rights to Jews, it would take various states another century to remove restrictions on Jews holding political offices.)

In more recent American history, the JQ remained on the fringes, mostly relegated to white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Steeped in classic Jewish conspiracy theories, these groups have, for decades, pushed the canard of global Jewish domination. Jews, they claim, are particularly responsible for a plethora of society's ills, from pornography to the pandemic.

However, in 2007, the JQ was raised in “polite societies” by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt in their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

The book argued that a coalition of Jewish government insiders, Israeli officials and Jewish special interest groups was responsible for steering America towards pro-Israel foreign policies that couldn’t be strategically or morally justified.

Particularly specious was the claim by the authors that the lobby was responsible for dragging America into the 2003-2011 Iraq war, which consensus today has deemed a political and strategic mistake.

The theory incredulously posed that a small group Jewish journalists, lobbyists and Pentagon underlings were more powerful than the five principle non-Jewish leaders at the time – President and Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell or National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice – all of whom actually made the decision to go to war.

As David Azzerad writes in “The Return of the Jewish Question,”

“When Donald Rumsfeld was once asked about the role of Jewish subordinates in pushing America to war, he gave a memorable response: “I suppose the implication of that is that the President and the Vice-President and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs.”

The 'Gentile Question'

Rumsfeld’s answer also addresses what Azzerad calls the GQ, or Gentile Question:

“Most of all, the JQers do not seem to notice just how dumb gentiles appear to be in their worldview. Gentiles, we are forced to conclude, are driven like cattle by their Jewish overlords. And though this has been going on for generations, the gentiles are no wiser to it. They continue to swallow whatever nonsense is peddled by the latest coterie of radical Jews. The JQ begs the GQ.”

Regarding the validity of the thesis of The Israel Lobby, Azzerad pointedly continues,

“It would take a book to document all the omissions in Mearsheimer and Walt’s The Israel Lobby, and to correct all their mischaracterizations. Each of their chapters more or less follows the same pattern: magnify the role of the Israel Lobby, often by relying on AIPAC fundraising letters as proof of the organization’s clout; largely ignore the lobbying efforts of all other groups and nations to give the impression that AIPAC sets policy in America; never bother to establish that particular lobbying efforts actually influenced the decision-makers; and casually dismiss all the times America acted against the lobby’s wishes.”

Regarding Israel’s part in “pushing” America into the Iraq war – a topic that has resurfaced lately with the antisemitic Right – it is worth noting this theory was proven wrong within days of The Israel Lobby’s 2007 release when information was published that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon actually told Bush he thought the invasion of Iraq was not a good idea.

But the theory stuck, creating a legacy that exists until today.

Both the antisemitic Left and Right have found Israel to be a convenient scapegoat for America’s controversial foreign policy decisions, as well as the country’s debt-laden budgetary woes, for which aid to Israel is also blamed.

Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens

The war in Gaza gave both the antisemitic Left and Right the excuse to raise the JQ.

On the Far Left, the horrific October 7, 2023 terror attack in which Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 Israeli men, women and children and took hostage 251 more, ripped the bandage off of its latent Jew hate. It has been hemorrhaging ever since.

In America and around the globe, a Far Left unconcerned with other world problems, including the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria to the torture of Muslims in China and the 50-plus-year illegal occupation of northern Cyprus by Turkey, issued calls to their minions and allies for full mobilization.

By October 8, 2023, they began a relentless campaign of demonization of the Jewish state. Quickly, all Jews, Israeli or not, became fair game.

Yet to the shock of the mainstream American Right, prominent conservative podcasters Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson began engaging in a similar project.

By the time of the massacre, Carlson had already been on a roll, interviewing quite a number of people who “hate Jews.”

It took just one month after the massacre for Carlson to evoke the antisemitic dual loyalty trope, questioning what he called a disproportionate “emotional response” to the massacre by Americans. At the same time, Carlson failed to mention that over 30 Americans were killed in the attack and other Americans, including a three-year-old girl, were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.

In the same segment, Carlson also managed to link Jews to the anti-white sentiment and “white genocide” in America.

Since then, Carlson has relentlessly spewed various conspiracy theories, including “questioning” why America joined with Great Britain and Churchill against Hitler in World War II and soft-balling an interview with Nick Fuentes, an over-the-top antisemitic, misogynistic and homophobic white nationalist.

He has characterized Israel’s war against Hamas as evil and a genocide, accusing Israel of indiscriminately killing innocent civilians (while ignoring that Israel killed fewer civilians per combatant than in any other urban war in history).

Carlson also deemed Christian Zionists as believing in a "dangerous heresy" and a "brain virus infecting the church" and declared that he "despises Christian Zionists more than anyone on earth."

Most recently, Carlson has become a fan of terror-supporting Qatar, saying they should be America’s best ally in the Middle East and not Israel. He ridiculed the notion that radical Islam is a threat to America, disingenuously claiming that he doesn’t know “anyone in the United States in the last 24 years who’s been killed by radical Islam.”

Owens, for her part, has spewed the “genocide” lie since November 3, 2023, less than a month after Israel’s response to the attack. Before and after October 7, she has singularly focused on wild, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about world events, which, more often than not, put the blame on Jews, Israel or the Mossad.

She has claimed "secret Jewish gangs" in Hollywood commit "horrific things" and control lives, called Israelis “demons” for supporting the eradication of Hamas in Gaza, called Israel a "demonic nation" and "cult nation," and accused it of fueling global antisemitism.

Owens has blamed Jews for enslaving Black people during the Atlantic slave trade and accused Israel of blackmailing the United States via Jeffrey Epstein (whom she says worked for Israel) to force policy concessions.

She claimed Israel occupies Washington, D.C. and suggested that Israel was involved in 9/11.

Most prominently, when she is not blaming Charlie Kirk’s assassination on his wife Erika or his organization TPUSA, Owens has repeatedly blamed Israel and the Mossad, calling the murder an "open execution" and "assassination plot" involving Israel.

Antisemitic Gaslighting: Reframing the JQ as Israel First

The upshot of having some of the Right’s most prestigious and popular podcasters broadcasting such specious content or platforming characters especially disdained by Kirk has been a rift in the “big tent” Republican Party strategy – a strategy responsible for getting its candidates elected in the last election.

Desperate for “unity” – a condition many conservatives believe is essential to winning the midterms and the next presidential election – Carlson and Owens might have gotten away with spewing their antisemitic lies if not for conservative podcaster and political pundit Ben Shapiro.

In a speech at the recent Turning Point USA AMFest conference, Shapiro forced the question into the open in a barn-burner speech on December 18, 2025, in a way that the rest of the Right could no longer politely look the other way.

In the tradition of William F. Buckley, Jr. – the standard bearer of the American conservative movement who famously ostracized the John Birch Society and its founder, Robert Welch, from the movement, for claiming that President Dwight Eisenhower was a conscious communist agent – Shapiro argued that conservative commentators have a duty to tell the truth and not engage in spurious conspiracy theories.

Shapiro stated that the Republican Party’s “big tent” strategy does not mean having the door open to bigots and racists. He characterized conspiracists such as Owens and Carlson as grifters and charlatans and warned that their behavior betrays both the conservative movement and the American people.

Speaking to the general public, but pointedly addressing other conservative podcasters, influencers and politicians (many of whom are friends with Carlson and Owens), Shapiro said podcasters had a moral duty to act from principle rather than personal loyalty.

Shapiro specifically called out fellow podcaster Megyn Kelly for her “cowardice” in not publicly denouncing Candace Owens' conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk's death. Despite the fact that Kelly is vehement that Kirk died at the hand of accused assassin Tyler Robinson, she has refused to condemn Owens, defending her as a “young mother” and saying that the controversy has only brought the two of them “closer.”

Shapiro countered that Kelly's position was "both morally and logically absurd."

In response, Kelly shockingly claimed that Shapiro’s remarks were a result of his support for Israel. “Ben is Israel first,” she said. “And I'm sorry, but his behavior has proven that charge to be correct. Why would you divide the American conservative movement—which was gelling, which was becoming much more cohesive for a moment after Charlie died—over Israel!”

It was a tremendous exercise in gaslighting, as Shapiro had neither mentioned Israel but rather correctly characterized Carlson and Owens as peddlers of dangerous, false conspiracy theories – conspiracy theories that had already torn apart the Right.

The Antisemitic Israel-First Trope

It is not a coincidence that the majority of the conspiracy theories trafficked by Owens and Carlson are antisemitic. Yet, Kelly redirected the conversation to Israel (a convenient scapegoat) while simultaneously invoking the dual loyalty trope.

Kelly then resorted to ad hominem attacks on Shapiro, characterizing him as “the girl who was the head of our middle school chorus told me she was going to take all of my friends away from me.”

She then victim-blamed Shapiro, along with CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss (who posted in support of Shapiro’s speech), for fueling the rise of antisemitism.

“They are making antisemites. Tucker is not making antisemites. They are,” she said, tapping into yet another classic antisemitic trope of condemning Jews for the bigotry against them.

Responding to Shapiro, Carlson, like Kelly, engaged in his own gaslighting, countering that Shapiro’s criticism of him was due to Shapiro’s desire to de-platform him.

It’s So Easy: Blame the Jews

As Michael Unterberg notes in The Times of Israel, “In the past, a Jewish State was one of the answers to the [Jewish] Question. Today, that State exists, and is often a trigger for the Question.”

It is easy to see why. It’s much easier to blame the Jews (now in the form of Israel) for America’s many problems, from the consequences of its previously open borders to its failed foreign military campaigns to its current level of government spending and its resulting debt.

Would all these problems go away if not for Israel or the Jews? Clearly not. In terms of America’s budgetary woes, aid to Israel amounts to one-tenth of one percent of the federal budget (most of which must be spent in America). And, contrary to popular thinking, Jews do not control the levers of power in the U.S.

Yet, it is unmistakable that the Jewish Question is back, and in America’s fractured political landscape, it is a particularly dangerous question, judging from history.

“It may be disquieting to acknowledge that the Jewish Question is being asked again,” Unterberg writes. “To quote Ahad Ha’am, ‘The truth is bitter, but with all its bitterness it is better than illusion.’”