In front of over 30,000 young Christian devotees at the Turning Point USA America Fest held last December in Phoenix, a high-profile firefight<\/span><\/a> broke out among far-right MAGA influencers\u2014including Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson \u2013 that could help shape the future of the Republican Party, the Christian Right and their hold on power in 2026.<\/p>\n In the first gathering of young conservatives who helped power Trump into office in 2024<\/span><\/a> since Saint<\/span><\/a> Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassination in September, battle lines<\/span><\/a> were drawn over how welcoming the movement and the broader GOP should be to overtly<\/em> antisemitic demagogues\u2014as opposed to the routine acceptance of antisemitism and playing \u201cfootsie\u201d with neo-Nazis<\/span><\/a> that has marked the movement and the party over the decades.<\/p>\n This new tension compounds the growing rifts and disenchantment<\/span><\/a> within the MAGA base over everything from the Epstein files<\/span><\/a> and the faltering economy<\/span><\/a> to the fallout over ICE\u2019s execution of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the attack on 2nd Amendment rights, and Trump\u2019s newfound interventionism. The internecine warfare also reflects jockeying over the leadership<\/span><\/a> and future of MAGA and Kirk’s army, with its more than one million TPUSA members now enrolled in 4,000 chapters in high schools and colleges.<\/p>\n The bare-knuckled infighting came amid the ongoing furor over Carlson\u2019s platforming<\/span><\/a> of the Holocaust-denying, Hitler-loving white supremacist Nick Fuentes<\/span><\/a> in late October. Fuentes is now reaching millions and getting even more media attention. <\/span><\/a>This new attention to Fuentes and his \u201cGroypers\u201d<\/span><\/a> furthered a deepening split<\/span><\/a> over Israel, Jews and antisemitism<\/span><\/a> in MAGA.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, almost no one on the right has dared to call out the Trump administration\u2019s own extensive ties to neo-Nazis<\/span><\/a>, such as FBI director Kash Patel\u2019s regular appearances on Holocaust denier Stew Peters\u2019s podcast <\/span><\/a>before he took office, or Trump\u2019s own notable insensitivity to antisemitism.<\/span><\/a> That lengthy litany includes such provocations as welcoming Fuentes and Kanye West<\/span><\/a> for Thanksgiving dinner at his home, and peddling antisemitic tropes<\/span><\/a> about Jewish greed and their \u201cdual loyalty\u201d to Israel. (On January 11th<\/sup><\/span>, 2026 The New York Times<\/em> published an interview with Trump in which he said of antisemites in MAGA<\/span><\/a>: \u201cI don\u2019t think we like them,\u201d while declining to condemn anyone by name and pretending he did not know Fuentes. He added, \u201cI am the least antisemitic person probably there is anywhere in the world.\u201d)<\/p>\n Leaving Trump untouched at AmFest last month, Ben Shapiro, the founder of the influential, Trumpist Daily Wire<\/em>, declared, \u201cThere is a reason that Charlie Kirk despised Nick Fuentes. He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll, and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility \u2013 and that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did.\u201c<\/p>\n Shapiro, who is Jewish, stood almost alone among speakers in denouncing antisemitism on the right at the event. Vice-President J.D Vance, representing what has seemed to be the GOP\u2019s default position, declared<\/span><\/a>, \u201cPresident Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self-defeating purity tests.\u201d During the AmFest conference, Erika Kirk endorsed<\/span><\/a> J.D. Vance for President in 2028, no matter his open-door policy<\/span><\/a> for neo-Nazis. (He later denounced Fuentes in an interview with a British publication, Unherd<\/em>,<\/span><\/a> largely because Fuentes had denounced him as a \u201crace traitor\u201d for marrying his Indian-American wife.)<\/span><\/p>\n While most Republican and MAGA leaders were embracing or accepting right-wing antisemites, in back of the stage there was a huge exhibition hall where the factionalism on the Christian Right was on full display. There, a bearded 28-year-old Dimas Guaico\u2014the executive director of a group called Generation Zion<\/span><\/a> that promotes a pro-Israel alliance of Jewish and Christian college students\u2014stood at a \u201cProve Me Wrong\u201d-style booth modeled after Kirk\u2019s own approach. Guaico had recruited 20 college students from across the country to attend the AmFest conference. In his Instagram announcement before<\/span><\/a> the event, he declared: \u201cFor too long, we have allowed the anti-Israel, Jewish hatred-filled scum of the earth dictate what it is our movements are going to look like, are going to be saying, are going to be talking about.\u201d He trained his young activists in supporting Israel, including its war on Gaza, and challenging antisemitism, and featured as well an IDF soldier taking questions about the war.<\/p>\n They certainly had their work cut out for them. \u201cWe were one of the only pro-Israel conservative Zionist organizations with a public presence at AmFest,\u201d he admits. But despite contending that most young people they encountered were either curious or sympathetic, he also notes, \u201cWe had some very tough conversations with people who were proud to say we\u2019re against all Jews.\u201d Case in point: \u201cA kid named Riley, a self-proclaimed Groyper, he actually gave us clipped coins; he clipped his own pennies and nickels and dimes, and handed them out to us. He was like, \u2018This is what you represent\u2019 \u2014which is crazy because those are things we saw in England in the 1400s.\u201d It was actually an ancient English medieval charge <\/span><\/a>that originated even earlier (around 1270), in which Jews were accused of hoarding silver by shaving off the edges of coins. Such accusations led eventually to mass executions<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n Brazen Holocaust denial was also promoted in the exhibition hall. As The Bulwark<\/em> journalist Will Sommer<\/span><\/a> and others<\/span><\/a> noted, the popular \u201cmanosphere\u201d podcaster Myron Gaines [real name Amrou Fudl] with the Fresh and Fit<\/em><\/span><\/a> show was wearing a Holocaust-mocking<\/span><\/a> hoodie showing Sesame Street<\/em>\u2019s Cookie Monster standing behind an oven with a tray of cookies emblazoned with the slogan \u201cLet \u2018Em Cook.\u201d This concept was originally popularized<\/span><\/a> by Nick Fuentes to help debunk the Holocaust. Gaines was also caught on video calling a pregnant Jewish woman standing nearby \u201ca fat fucking Jew<\/span><\/a>!\u201d Nevertheless, Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec, a close friend of Charlie Kirk and a Trump ally with millions of followers<\/span><\/a> who was featured on CNN and CBS mourning Kirk, proudly posed with Gaines<\/span><\/a>. Posobiec, despite his own ties to white supremacists and neo-Nazis<\/span><\/a>, is a host of the Human Events<\/em> flagship daily podcast<\/span><\/a> and spoke from the stage<\/span><\/a> along with other right-wing luminaries at the AMFest event. He even has been identified as \u201cMAGA\u2019s Next Top Influencer\u201d<\/span><\/a> by The Atlantic<\/em>.<\/p>\n For his part, Guaico noticed another provocative garment flaunted by Gaines: a second hoodie featuring ugly caricatures of Orthodox Jews surrounded by the phrase \u201cThe Great Awakening.\u201d As Guaico explains, \u201cIt\u2019s pointing to that we are, quote, \u2018waking up to this,\u2019 to all these Jews ruling our lives and they are the worst of our society.\u201d He adds, \u201cOur students saw that, and they were very shocked by the fact that people were willing to say things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n In contrast, Donald Trump\u2019s response to hate mongers in his press comments<\/span><\/a> last fall when he declined to criticize Carlson or Fuentes, or the recent speeches and interviews<\/span><\/a> by Carlson and Megyn Kelly, was essentially \u201cWelcome Aboard!\u201d Of course, they also will occasionally give lip-service to opposing antisemitism, as Trump did in the Times<\/em> interview earlier this month.<\/p>\n In truth, the raw antisemitism of once-fringe figures such as Nick Fuentes and Myron Gaines has been mainstreamed into the heart of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n Even Nazi-sympathizing nominees<\/span><\/a> rejected by the Senate for higher posts still retain high-paying jobs in the administration. Take Ed Martin: His nomination for a permanent position as the US Attorney for the District of Columbia collapsed<\/span><\/a> in the Senate largely due to his glowing admiration<\/span><\/a> for a Hitler mustache-wearing fanatic and<\/em> January 6th<\/sup><\/span> insurrectionist named Tony Hale-Cusanelli; he praised Hale-Cusanelli as an \u201cextraordinary man\u201d and gave him an award at Trump\u2019s golf club in Bedminster in August 2024. Ed Martin is now the chief pardon attorney for DOJ (and until this week he was also director<\/a> of the department\u2019s \u201cWeaponization Working Group,\u201d an Orwellian initiative that targets purported Biden-era witch hunts).<\/p>\n \u201cAntisemitism permeates so many of the far-right ideas held by this administration,\u201d observes Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center. She cites, for instance, the Trumpist embrace of the \u201cGreat Replacement Theory\u201d<\/span><\/a> \u2013 initially popularized by Tucker Carlson<\/span><\/a> on Fox News over 400 times\u2014that contends \u201cglobalists\u201d (i.e. Jews<\/span><\/a>) have arranged for millions of illegal immigrants to flood the country.<\/p>\n Among the most overtly antisemitic proponents of the racist<\/span><\/a> Great Replacement ideology and other anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in the Trump administration is Kingsley Wilson<\/span>, the Pentagon deputy press secretary.<\/span><\/a> It\u2019s telling that Wilson even posted a neo-Nazi canard <\/span><\/a>defending the scandalous antisemitic lynching<\/span><\/a> in 1915 of Leo Frank, a Georgia factory manager wrongly convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old girl who worked in the factory, an outrage that led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League.<\/p>\n At this point, the only genuine conservative Christian<\/em> pushback against the increasingly explicit antisemitism marking MAGA comes from Christian Zionists, who see Jewish claims to Israel as having deep Biblical roots. Indeed, many Christian Zionists hold an \u201cinstrumentalized\u201d <\/span><\/a>view of Jews, which derives from the Book of Revelation. They see Jews as essential to Jesus\u2019s return, either because the Jews in Israel convert<\/span><\/a> beforehand or die in the Battle of Armageddon. It\u2019s a belief that Political Research Associates (a leading social justice advocacy group) calls \u201cend times antisemitism<\/span><\/a>,\u201d which is also known in Christian circles as \u201cdispensationalism.\u201d The ultimate, unstated goal of these prophecies, asserts the journalist James Scaminacci, is a \u201cJew-free world.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n As David Haspel\u2014a veteran observer of the Christian Right and a filmmaker who created the fund-raising video for the U.S. Holocaust Museum\u2014points out, these manifestations of Christian Zionism have sinister overtones: \u201cSome might say Christian Zionists love Jews the way that cattle ranchers love their cattle.\u201d<\/p>\n Guaico, the son of a pastor leading a Latino congregation, doesn\u2019t share those views. He says they don\u2019t shape his strong support of Israel, which is reinforced by the frequent student trips to Israel he leads. But he concedes, \u201cI will say a lot of my parents\u2019 or grandparents\u2019 generation of evangelical Christians maybe have some twisted view, but I\u2019m not a dispensational Christian.<\/span><\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Guaico and others hoping to rally young Christians behind Israel and oppose antisemitism face an uphill battle. Support for Israel had been dropping sharply among younger evangelicals, down to just 34 percent<\/span><\/a>. At the same time, antisemitism among all young people<\/span><\/a> is rising. Indeed, a public focus group (not a secret Hitler-loving group chat<\/span><\/a>) with Gen Z Trump voters conducted in December by the influential conservative Manhattan Institute\u2019s City Journal<\/em><\/span><\/a> demonstrated there\u2019s no longer any red lines against Nazism<\/span><\/a>. For instance, Ashley (no last names given), said of Hitler, \u201cI think he was a great leader, to be honest.\u201d When asked about their views of Jewish people, Andrew responded, \u201cI would say a force for evil.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, because mainstream Jewish organizations and the Trump administration have largely conflated all legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism<\/span><\/a>, the door is open for demagogic appeals to young people across the political spectrum to exploit anti-Israel sentiments in order to push antisemitism. This concern is underscored by Ben Lorber of Political Research Associates and his co-author Shane Burley in their new book Safety Through Solidarity<\/em><\/span><\/a>: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. <\/em>They point out that the main threat to Jews still comes from both the GOP\u2019s Nazi-friendly members and<\/em> Christian Nationalists<\/span><\/a>, who express higher levels of antisemitism than other Americans.<\/p>\n Of course, there have also been outbursts of antisemitism on the left in the wake of anti-Israel, Pro-Palestinian protests. This has been ably chronicled by Franklin Foer in a major cover story<\/span><\/a> for The Atlantic<\/em>. His in-depth reporting was supplemented by data from the FBI (admittedly an agency now in lockstep with White House policy) that reported antisemitic hate crimes<\/span><\/a> from across the political spectrum rose to an all-time high in 2024, with Jews the target of nearly 70% of religious hate. Amid the Gaza campus protests, it was widely reported that some Jewish students were left cowering inside their dorms and libraries<\/span><\/a>. Meanwhile, a third of Jewish students<\/span><\/a> reported feeling unsafe or fearful of displaying things that would identify them as Jewish.<\/p>\n Israel is now widely seen as a pariah state<\/span><\/a> in the aftermath of its attacks on Gaza, as the centrist New York Times<\/em> columnist Thomas Friedman has observed. In fact, Israel was denounced last September for committing genocide<\/span><\/a> in Gaza by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the leading academic organization in the field. As a result of all this, Israel has lost much of the support it garnered in the wake of the horrors of the October 7th<\/sup><\/span> Hamas invasion. Indeed, new polling shows 75 percent<\/span><\/a> of Republicans under 45 favor US spending on healthcare rather than military aid to Israel.<\/p>\n Yet by some measures, about 65 percent of evangelical leaders<\/span><\/a> \u2013 who are among Trump\u2019s most dedicated supporters<\/span><\/a> \u2013 hold to the old-fashioned \u201cpremillennial dispensationalism\u201d theology that animates so many Christian Zionists. But the future end times fate of Jews isn\u2019t generally spoken aloud in mixed company, i.e., when Jews, Israeli officials or reporters are present. As Haspel dryly observes about the transactional relationship between the Israeli government and fervent American evangelicals: \u201cSince the late 1970s, Israeli leadership thinks that the Christian Zionist movement is their useful idiots, and the Christian Zionists think the Israeli leaders who have embraced them are their useful idiots.\u201d<\/p>\n Guaico\u2019s organization is a spinoff of the Philos Project<\/span><\/a>. That\u2019s a Christian Zionist<\/span><\/a> organization \u2013 a theology often allied with theocratic Christian Nationalism<\/span><\/a>\u2014whose founder, Rev. Luke Moon, was a co-chair of the Heritage Foundation\u2019s antisemitism task force that laid the groundwork for Trump\u2019s hypocritical antisemitism crackdown<\/span><\/a> on universities and colleges launched last year.<\/p>\n The strategic roadmap for the Trump administration\u2019s assault on dissent and research under the guise of fighting antisemitism was first detailed in the influential Project Esther, a policy paper<\/span><\/a> issued by Heritage\u2019s antisemitism task force, and released in the fall of 2024.<\/p>\n Now Heritage is in disarray. The mostly Christian members of the antisemitism task force quit the think tank<\/span><\/a> in November 2025 in the wake of Heritage president Kevin Roberts\u2019 public support for the Tucker Carlson interview with Fuentes. Roberts also denounced Carlson\u2019s critics as part of a \u201cglobalist class,\u201d a coded reference to Jews. Since then, dozens of staffers or associates<\/span><\/a> have fled Heritage, though it remains the sole enterprise on the right that has faced any consequence from the internal GOP battles over anti-Jewish rhetoric and action. Indeed, the most prominent antisemites on the right and their MAGA allies have only gained in influence.<\/p>\n Yet before the task force members split from Heritage last November, the only antisemites they could find were left-wing opponents<\/span><\/a> of the war on Gaza. (Borrowing on hoary antisemitic tropes<\/span><\/a>, task force members in its 2024 Project Esther report even labeled George Soros a puppeteer \u201cmastermind\u201d of the opposition.) Heritage\u2019s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism that Moon helped found in 2023 sharpened its focus on the left in the Project Esther report with an array of recommended tactics. These included a proposed effort to stigmatize and dry up funds<\/span><\/a> for the \u201cHamas Support Network,\u201d an alleged left-wing cabal<\/span><\/a> no more genuine than the chimerical \u201cAntifa\u201d organization now being targeted by the Trump administration. Major Jewish organizations spurned the chance to work<\/span><\/a> on the Project Esther<\/span><\/a> report before it was released in October 2024. Nevertheless, that report inspired the Trump administration to halt, endanger or cut billions<\/span><\/a> in funding to over 60 universities<\/span><\/a>, along with the pursuit of its immigration enforcement and deportation initiatives<\/span><\/a> targeting pro-Palestinian activists on campus.<\/p>\n The internal battles over antisemitism inside Heritage and the broader GOP didn\u2019t boil over until Carlson decided to turn his show into a PR agency for Holocaust deniers<\/span><\/a>, with Fuentes as the final straw. In November, shortly after the Carlson-Fuentes uproar, Moon co-sponsored an embattled conference of mostly Christian evangelicals<\/span><\/a> that denounced antisemitism on the right, but relatively few people in the rest of the GOP noticed.<\/p>\n The fallout from the Trump administration clampdown on campuses inspired by Heritage\u2019s Project Esther report continues today. As a Harvard undergrad wrote in a New York Times<\/em> op-ed<\/span><\/a> late last month and explained on a new Bulwark <\/em>podcast<\/span><\/a>, Harvard has shut down academic programs featuring professors critical of Israel and ended all DEI programs. Meanwhile, Northwestern threatened to bar 300 students from entering college<\/span><\/a> until they took sensitivity training comparing, in part, criticism of Israel and Zionism to Klansman David Duke\u2019s neo-Nazism. However, Northwestern\u2019s genuflection to the Trump crusade didn\u2019t prevent it from losing $790 million<\/span><\/a> in funding, leading to the loss of over 400 staff jobs.<\/p>\n The architect of the administration antisemitism<\/span> task force<\/span><\/a> is
\n\n