Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Trump Dance Conquers The World
WASHINGTON, D.C. — It's everywhere — Donald Trump's trademark fist-pumping dance has officially gone viral. From Political rallies and social media to NFL stadiums and chasunas [Kallah's are INSISTING that the chosson do the dance in front of them], there's no escaping pop culture's latest trend.
Even in the White House...
Anonymous sources within the White House confirmed reports of rising tension between President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris after Harris allegedly asked Biden to stop doing the Trump dance during cabinet meetings.
According to administration insiders, Biden had been practicing Trump's trademark fist-pumping shuffle at every opportunity for the last two weeks, leading to his vice president's patience wearing thin.
"He's been doing it all the time lately," said one staffer who asked to remain unnamed. "But after he started doing it for the third time during the same meeting, she was visibly upset. She's been pretty on edge since the election loss, and seeing Biden do the Trump dance just pushed her over the edge."
According to the reports, Harris reportedly yelled, "Joe, will you cut it out? I'm tired of it. We're all tired of it. I see that dance in my nightmares every night. I don't need to see it at work every day."
Biden reportedly pushed back against the criticism. "Aw, come on, man," Joe reportedly complained. "I'm still president for the next... however long. I want to do the... the thing."
At publishing time, Kamala had reportedly asked Biden to refrain from wearing his "TRUMP 2024" baseball cap around the White House.
Reflecting On Technology
Over the past 15 years, I've studied technologies of mobile communication and I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people, young and old, about their plugged in lives. And what I've found is that our little devices, those little devices in our pockets, are so psychologically powerful that they don't only change what we do, they change who we are. Some of the things we do now with our devices are things that, only a few years ago, we would have found odd or disturbing, but they've quickly come to seem familiar, just how we do things.
So just to take some quick examples: People text or do email during corporate board meetings. They text and shop and go on Facebook during classes, during presentations, actually during all meetings. People talk to me about the important new skill of making eye contact while you're texting. People explain to me that it's hard, but that it can be done. Parents text and do email at breakfast and at dinner while their children complain about not having their parents' full attention. But then these same children deny each other their full attention. This is a recent shot of my daughter and her friends being together while not being together. And we even text at funerals. I study this. We remove ourselves from our grief or from our revery and we go into our phones.
Why does this matter? It matters to me because I think we're setting ourselves up for trouble -- trouble certainly in how we relate to each other, but also trouble in how we relate to ourselves and our capacity for self-reflection. We're getting used to a new way of being alone together. People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere -- connected to all the different places they want to be. People want to customize their lives. They want to go in and out of all the places they are because the thing that matters most to them is control over where they put their attention. So you want to go to that board meeting, but you only want to pay attention to the bits that interest you. And some people think that's a good thing. But you can end up hiding from each other, even as we're all constantly connected to each other.
A 50-year-old business man lamented to me that he feels he doesn't have colleagues anymore at work. When he goes to work, he doesn't stop by to talk to anybody, he doesn't call. And he says he doesn't want to interrupt his colleagues because, he says, "They're too busy on their email." But then he stops himself and he says, "You know, I'm not telling you the truth. I'm the one who doesn't want to be interrupted. I think I should want to, but actually I'd rather just do things on my Blackberry."
Across the generations, I see that people can't get enough of each other, if and only if they can have each other at a distance, in amounts they can control. I call it the Goldilocks effect: not too close, not too far, just right. But what might feel just right for that middle-aged executive can be a problem for an adolescent who needs to develop face-to-face relationships. An 18-year-old boy who uses texting for almost everything says to me wistfully, "Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I'd like to learn how to have a conversation."
When I ask people "What's wrong with having a conversation?" People say, "I'll tell you what's wrong with having a conversation. It takes place in real time and you can't control what you're going to say." So that's the bottom line. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body -- not too little, not too much, just right.
Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves. And over time, we seem to forget this, or we seem to stop caring.
I was caught off guard when Stephen Colbert asked me a profound question, a profound question. He said, "Don't all those little tweets, don't all those little sips of online communication, add up to one big gulp of real conversation?" My answer was no, they don't add up. Connecting in sips may work for gathering discrete bits of information, they may work for saying, "I'm thinking about you," or even for saying, "I love you," -- I mean, look at how I felt when I got that text from my daughter -- but they don't really work for learning about each other, for really coming to know and understand each other. And we use conversations with each other to learn how to have conversations with ourselves. So a flight from conversation can really matter because it can compromise our capacity for self-reflection. For kids growing up, that skill is the bedrock of development.
Over and over I hear, "I would rather text than talk." And what I'm seeing is that people get so used to being short-changed out of real conversation, so used to getting by with less, that they've become almost willing to dispense with people altogether. So for example, many people share with me this wish, that some day a more advanced version of Siri, the digital assistant on Apple's iPhone, will be more like a best friend, someone who will listen when others won't. I believe this wish reflects a painful truth that I've learned in the past 15 years. That feeling that no one is listening to me is very important in our relationships with technology. That's why it's so appealing to have a Facebook page or a Twitter feed -- so many automatic listeners. And the feeling that no one is listening to me make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.
We're developing robots, they call them sociable robots, that are specifically designed to be companions -- to the elderly, to our children, to us. Have we so lost confidence that we will be there for each other? During my research I worked in nursing homes, and I brought in these sociable robots that were designed to give the elderly the feeling that they were understood. And one day I came in and a woman who had lost a child was talking to a robot in the shape of a baby seal. It seemed to be looking in her eyes. It seemed to be following the conversation. It comforted her. And many people found this amazing.
But that woman was trying to make sense of her life with a machine that had no experience of the arc of a human life. That robot put on a great show. And we're vulnerable. People experience pretend empathy as though it were the real thing. So during that moment when that woman was experiencing that pretend empathy, I was thinking, "That robot can't empathize. It doesn't face death. It doesn't know life."
And as that woman took comfort in her robot companion, I didn't find it amazing; I found it one of the most wrenching, complicated moments in my 15 years of work. But when I stepped back, I felt myself at the cold, hard center of a perfect storm. We expect more from technology and less from each other. And I ask myself, "Why have things come to this?"
And I believe it's because technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable. And we are vulnerable. We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We turn to technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably control. But we're not so comfortable. We are not so much in control.
These days, those phones in our pockets are changing our minds and hearts because they offer us three gratifying fantasies. One, that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; two, that we will always be heard; and three, that we will never have to be alone. And that third idea, that we will never have to be alone, is central to changing our psyches. Because the moment that people are alone, even for a few seconds, they become anxious, they panic, they fidget, they reach for a device. Just think of people at a checkout line or at a red light. Being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved. And so people try to solve it by connecting. But here, connection is more like a symptom than a cure. It expresses, but it doesn't solve, an underlying problem. But more than a symptom, constant connection is changing the way people think of themselves. It's shaping a new way of being.
The best way to describe it is, I share therefore I am. We use technology to define ourselves by sharing our thoughts and feelings even as we're having them. So before it was: I have a feeling, I want to make a call. Now it's: I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text. The problem with this new regime of "I share therefore I am" is that, if we don't have connection, we don't feel like ourselves. We almost don't feel ourselves. So what do we do? We connect more and more. But in the process, we set ourselves up to be isolated.
How do you get from connection to isolation? You end up isolated if you don't cultivate the capacity for solitude, the ability to be separate, to gather yourself. Solitude is where you find yourself so that you can reach out to other people and form real attachments. When we don't have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we're not able to appreciate who they are. It's as though we're using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self. We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less alone. But we're at risk, because actually it's the opposite that's true. If we're not able to be alone, we're going to be more lonely. And if we don't teach our children to be alone, they're only going to know how to be lonely.
I once said, "Those who make the most of their lives on the screen come to it in a spirit of self-reflection." And that's what I'm calling for here, now: reflection and, more than that, a conversation about where our current use of technology may be taking us, what it might be costing us. We're smitten with technology. But it's time to talk. We grew up with digital technology and so we see it as all grown up. But it's not, it's early days. There's plenty of time for us to reconsider how we use it, how we build it. I'm not suggesting that we turn away from our devices, just that we develop a more self-aware relationship with them, with each other and with ourselves.
I see some first steps. Start thinking of solitude as a good thing. Make room for it. Find ways to demonstrate this as a value to your children. Create sacred spaces at home -- the kitchen, the dining room -- and reclaim them for conversation. Do the same thing at work. At work, we're so busy communicating that we often don't have time to think, we don't have time to talk, about the things that really matter. Change that. Most important, we all really need to listen to each other, including to the boring bits. Because it's when we stumble or hesitate or lose our words that we reveal ourselves to each other.
Technology is making a bid to redefine human connection -- how we care for each other, how we care for ourselves -- but it's also giving us the opportunity to affirm our values and our direction. I'm optimistic. We have everything we need to start. We have each other. And we have the greatest chance of success if we recognize our vulnerability. That we listen when technology says it will take something complicated and promises something simpler.
So in my work, I hear that life is hard, relationships are filled with risk. And then there's technology -- simpler, hopeful, optimistic, ever-young. It's like calling in the cavalry. An ad campaign promises that online and with avatars, you can "Finally, love your friends love your body, love your life, online and with avatars." We're drawn to virtual romance, to computer games that seem like worlds, to the idea that robots, robots, will someday be our true companions. We spend an evening on the social network instead of going out with friends.
But our fantasies of substitution have cost us. Now we all need to focus on the many, many ways technology can lead us back to our real lives, our own bodies, our own communities, our own politics, our own planet. They need us. Let's talk about how we can use digital technology, the technology of our dreams, to make this life the life we can love.
דור המסכים
ביום הראשון של הכנס התקיים פאנל שכותרתו "לגדול בדור המסכים – מה עובר עלינו בעידן הסמרטפון והמחשב?". הייתה לי תחושה שזה פאנל חשוב יותר מכל האחרים. בניגוד לנושאים ביטחוניים וכלכליים כבדי משקל שנידונו שם - לנושא הזה יש נגיעה ישירה, אישית ויומיומית לכולנו. היחס שלנו לסלולרי שלנו הוא שיקבע איזו חברה תצמח כאן בעתיד, ועל כך יש לכל אחד ואחת מאיתנו השפעה יותר מאשר על הגרעין האיראני או תקציב המדינה. אז נשארתי באולם. אלחנן גלט, מנכ"ל מרכז ישיבות ואולפנות בני עקיבא, השמיע בדברי הפתיחה שלו בקשה כנה ונכונה: "תפסיקו לדבר על ילדינו, תדברו עלינו! אל תדברו על ההתמודדות שלהם עם המכשירים האלה, אלא על ההתמודדות שלנו. תדרשו מעצמכם שליטה והגנה בתחום הזה, ורק אז מהם".
אבל אז החל פאנל מוזר: אנשי החינוך שישבו שם היו מלאי אופטימיות, ואנשי המקצוע – מלאי פסימיות. הרב ד"ר אברהם ליפשיץ, שעומד כידוע בראש החינוך הממלכתי-דתי, אמר שהמהפכה הטכנולוגית היא חלק מעידן הגאולה. "הרב קוק כבר הסביר מה זה 'בכל דרכיך דעהו'. בכל הדרכים. הקדוש ברוך הוא מעמיד אותנו באתגרים ובמהפכות כדי לקרב אותנו לגאולה, אין ספק בכך". רעות גיאת, סגנית המנהל החינוכי של מוסדות בני עקיבא, סיפרה כמה מקל עליה לקבל מהבן שלה מסרים בווטסאפ בכל פעם שהוא עלה או ירד מטרמפ.
היא תיארה גם איך הכלי הזה מביא אלפי אנשים בבת אחת לחתונות של זוגות בודדים או לבר מצוות נידחות ונטושות. גם שאול דה מלאך, מזכ"ל תנועת עזרא, דיבר במתינות. הוא אמנם סיפק אבחנה מעניינת ("פעם בטיולים של תנועות הנוער העיקר היה המסלול, החוויה, והיום התמונה שיוצאת להם חשובה יותר מהטיול"), אבל הקפיד לומר שלא צריך להפחיד ולתקוף ולדבר נגד, אלא ללמוד להכיל. המילה "מורכבות" חזרה שם שוב ושוב. הם נשמעו לי מלאי כוונות טובות וערכים כמובן, אבל הרושם שהתקבל הוא כאילו מדובר בשילוב בין תורה לצבא, בין תורה לעבודה, בין תורה למדע, ולא בין תורה לפצצה מתקתקת. כן, ברור שהם דיברו גם על גבולות ועל סינון ועל הצורך לאזן, אבל הם לא נשמעו לחוצים אלא מלאי תקווה.
מי שנשמע לחוץ מאוד היו אנשי המקצוע שישבו שם. בזה אחר זה הם טענו שדור ההורים והמחנכים של היום תמים מדי. שהעין הטובה הזאת – היא רעה מאוד. הרב איתן אקשטיין, ראש מוסד הגמילה הדתי 'רטורנו', סיפר איך לפני עשור הוא טיפל בעיקר במכורים לסמים ולאלכוהול, ואיך היום המכורים לסלולרי ולתכנים הבעייתיים שבו תופסים פתאום מקום משמעותי. אחר כך דיברה ד"ר תמר אלמוג, חוקרת מאוניברסיטת חיפה, שהסבירה – כאדם לא דתי – כמה חשובה השבת, וכמה חשובה ההתנתקות (אולי צריך לומר "העקירה"?). "אני רוצה לדבר בזכות השבת ובזכות השעמום", היא הפתיעה את הקהל.
"אדם שאין לו שעת שעמום ביום – אני לא מקנאה בו. לאחרונה שמתי לב שגם בבריכות שחייה, אנשים שמגיעים לשחות באים עם אוזניות. אני לא מבינה, יש לכם כבר שעה של שקט עם עצמכם - גם כאן אתם צריכים תקשורת חיצונית? קחו לכם זמן לחשוב. האדם חייב להתנתק קצת. בנהיגה, בבישול, או סתם בכמה רגעי שעמום ולא-כלום. אסור לוותר על הזכות לא לעשות שום דבר".
ד"ר תמר אלמוג ובעלה, פרופ' עוז אלמוג, פרסמו החודש ספר חדש שעוסק כולו בדור הדיגיטלי הנוכחי, המכונה דור ה‑Y. חלק מהמחנכים על הבמה ניסו לתאר את הדור הזה על פי "מאמר הדור" (כלומר: כולו זכאי וכולו חייב, כולו גולש לתהומות של אבדון בפייסבוק, אבל כולו גם מארגן יריד חסד דרך הווטסאפ). ד"ר אלמוג הייתה נוקבת הרבה יותר: "גדל פה דור שכבר לא יודע איפה מכבים את המכשיר.
הם לא כמונו, הם לא חוו שנים שלמות בלעדיו, בילדות. איפה אנחנו? בואו נודה: כולנו די סמרטוטים. לא יודעים לתפוס מנהיגות. חינוך זה לא מספיק, צריך רגולציה בתחום המשפט והטכנולוגיה. צריך חקיקה. על כל קופסת סיגריות כתוב שזה מסוכן לעשן, אבל זה לא מספיק. רק ברגע שבו הגדירו בחוק שבמקום ציבורי לא מעשנים – הורידו את רמת השימוש. כן, זו כפייה, אבל זה מה שנדרש".
3
אם רבנית בכיסוי-ראש הייתה מדברת ככה, ומולה הייתה ניצבת חוקרת חילונית שהייתה מבקשת לראות גם את הברכה שיש בטכנולוגיה – הייתי הרבה פחות מופתע. אבל פה, כאמור, זה היה די להיפך. וכאן השתלב בדיון תמיר ליאון, חוקר מפורסם של "דור המסכים": "הרגזתם אותי", הוא אמר, "די כבר לדבר על מה טוב בכלי הזה. לאחרונה הוגש בג"ץ מוצדק נגד משרד החינוך, נגד הטאבלטים. לא צריך לדחוף לתלמידים עוד מסכים". וכאן גם הוא נדרש להשוואה לתחום העישון: "מתי תבינו שמסכים זה כמו סיגריות? פעם הרי חשבו שלעשן זה בריא. לקח שנים לפוצץ את זה.
רבותיי, המסכים מחרפנים לכם את הילדים! זה פוגע בהם מבחינה הורמונלית, זה גורם לחרדות, להפרעות אישיות, יש עלייה אדירה בכל המדדים הרעים האלה. די כבר לאשליה של הקידמה בחינוך, כאילו לדחוף מסך לילד זה יותר טוב מלדבר איתו. המחקר האחרון של ה‑OECD הראה יחס הפוך: יותר טכנולוגיה מביאה להישגים יותר חלשים. הילדים נהיים עוד יותר עצלנים. אל תגידו לי 'ילד יכול להגיע היום לידע תוך כמה דקות', כי הכי חשוב שילד יהיה כמה דקות עם עצמו. אתם יודעים כמה שעות אני הייתי עם עצמי כילד? הילדים היום לא יודעים להיות עם עצמם, הם תמיד מחפשים משהו חיצוני.
צריך להחליט, צריך להנהיג. אנחנו נחמדים מדי. אם אתם אוהבים אותם – תפסיקו להיות נחמדים. אתם לוקחים לילדים שלכם את יכולת הבחירה. אני מתחנן למנכ"לית משרד החינוך לאסור סמרטפונים בבתי הספר, והיא אומרת לי: זו גזירה שאין הציבור יכול לעמוד בה. רבותיי, תנהיגו. אתם יודעים כמה רמת האמפתיה של ילדים אחר כלפי השני ירדה? ילד שפוגע כבר לא מבין שהוא פוגע, הוא לא מרגיש שפגע, הרגשות שלו קהים".
ופתאום חשבתי לעצמי: למה הוא מתחנן ככה, תמיר ליאון? למה חוקר גלוי ראש עומד מול מאות אורחים דתיים של כנס 'בשבע', ביניהם רבנים וחברי כנסת ואישי ציבור וחינוך, וממש מפציר בהם להתעורר? אולי כי גם כאן, בתחום הזה, המגזר הזה צריך להוביל? אולי ליאון מזהה מולו ציבור עם אידיאלים, שיודע למסור את נפשו על דברים עצומים ונפלאים אבל בסוף נכשל מול איזה מכשיר סלולרי קטן? ואולי גם הוא מבין, שאם הציבור הזה – שכל הזמן מדבר על חיבור נכון בין קודש לחול – יתפוס פיקוד בתחום הכי חשוב, הוא יוכל להדביק את כל החברה הישראלית?
גם יריב פאר, מנכ"ל אינטרנט רימון, ניסה לנער את הנוכחים משלוותם: "הבעיה הכי קשה היא לא האינטרנט הפתוח, אלא ההכחשה", אמר מי שהמוצר שלו אמור להיות הסטנדרט הבסיסי בכל בית. "יש פה אי הבנה מוחלטת עד כמה המציאות השתנתה. אתם יודעים איפה בתורה מוזכר אינטרנט רימון?", הוא שואל, ומישהו בקהל צועק: "וסיננתם לבניך"... פאר לא מחייך. הוא מאוד רציני כשהוא ממשיך:
"אינטרנט רימון מופיע לראשונה בבית פוטיפר. יוסף הצדיק עומד בניסיון שם בגלל דמות דיוקנו של אביו שנראית לו בחלון. כלומר, הקול ההורי הוא ההגנה הכי חשובה. ההורים שאומרים מה מותר ומה אסור, שמתווים דרך, הם העיקר, ואז, גם כשהילד יוצא מהבית ומתרחק – יש קול שמלווה אותו. תפסיקו להתכחש למציאות. איך ייתכן שרוב הציבור הדתי לא מסנן מינימלית את המחשבים שלו?".
לקראת סיום, הרב אקשטיין שאל שאלה מהדהדת: איך נדע האם משהו הוא טוב או לא? בואו נבדוק האם היינו רוצים שהוא יגיע לעולמנו מוקדם יותר. הוא ביקש מכל אחד מהנוכחים לחשוב האם הוא היה רוצה שהסמרטפון היה קיים כבר בילדותו. ניסיתי לדמיין את עצמי כילד קטן עם סלולרי, ואז כנער עם אייפון, כשמסביבי גם ההורים שלי דבוקים למכשיר הזה, ודי נבהלתי.
ממש התמלאתי תחושת תודה על כך שגדלתי בשנים פשוטות יותר, שנים שהיו חממה של ממש. על כך שבנעוריי לא התמודדתי עם הפיתוי הזה, ועל כך שהפיתויים היו רחוקים יותר ובלתי מושגים יותר. אין לי ספק שאם היה לי סלולרי מאז שנולדתי, לא הייתי כותב עכשיו את הטור הזה. כלומר, אולי הייתי מנסה לכתוב, אבל לא נראה לי שהייתם מסכימים לקרוא משהו בסגנון "פחחח גמני מתרגש!!!! ענקקקק".
בסוף הפאנל הזה, כשהאורות נדלקו, ניגשתי לכמה חבר'ה צעירים שהיו באולם. נראה לי שהם באו לשם בכלל כדי לצלם את נפתלי בנט להכתרה שלהם. אמרתי לבני הנוער האלה שלא אגלה מאיזו ישיבה תיכונית הם מגיעים, אבל שיגידו לי מי צודק לדעתם – המחנכים או המומחים. אתם יכולים לנחש לבד מה הייתה התשובה. והיא נאמרה בחיוך מריר ובעיניים כבויות.
Costco Introduces Even Larger ‘Mormon Family' Size
SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Costco announced this week that it would be rolling out new "Mormon Family Size" items for even larger families of a particular religious persuasion.
The move came in response to demand in the area of enormous families that needed larger quantities than Costco's traditional portions to feed entire squadrons of children.
"We've noticed our usual product sizes don't meet the needs of families of ten or more kids," Costco spokesperson Natalie Carson told reporters at a press conference in Salt Lake City this week. "We believe this new sizing option will greatly benefit Members of the Church Of J---s C---t Of Latter-day Saints, or MOTCOJCOLDS, as they prefer to be called."
The new size options will include a 9-foot-tall box of Cheez-It crackers, milk that comes in 50-gallon drums instead of gallon jugs, eggs that come in a gross rather than dozen, and bananas sold by the tree instead of by the bunch.
"I love this idea!" Mormon mom Tiffany Thueson said. "Now I only have to buy 10 grosses of eggs instead of 150 dozen every week. It makes shopping so much simpler."
Costco announced the product offerings will appear on shelves just in time for the holiday season, which for Mormons begins on Joseph Smith's birthday on December 23.
At publishing time, Costco had also rolled out "Catholic Size" options for families of 15 kids or more or one childless gay couple, whichever Pope Francis decided to promote this week.
Agudath Yisrael Of America lauded the move. "This is a great boon to the typical Haredi family", said Rabbi Moshe Piryonovitch. "I think of a Jewish grandmother buying presents for her countless children and grandchildren. So convenient! Barukh Hashem".
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
הן עם לבדד ישכון ובגוים לא יתחשב
Torah Jews are not "Republican" or "Democrat". We just vote for the party that best represents our values [in today's world - it seems obvious to most which party that is]. But neither party is perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
---------
The New York Times once dubbed the Princeton professor Robert George, who has guided Republican elites for decades, “the reigning brain of the Christian right.” Last year, he issued a stark warning to his ideological allies. “Each time we think the horrific virus of anti-Semitism has been extirpated, it reappears,” he wrote in May 2023. “A plea to my fellow Catholics—especially Catholic young people: Stay a million miles from this evil. Do not let it infect your thinking.” When I spoke with George that summer, he likened his sense of foreboding to that of Heinrich Heine, the 19th-century German poet who prophesied the rise of Nazism in 1834.
Some 15 months later, the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson welcomed a man named Darryl Cooper onto his web-based show and introduced him to millions of followers as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” The two proceeded to discuss how Adolf Hitler might have gotten a bad rap and why British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was “the chief villain of the Second World War.”
Hitler tried “to broadcast a call for peace directly to the British people” and wanted to “work with the other powers to reach an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem,” Cooper elaborated in a social-media post. “He was ignored.” Why the Jews should have been considered a “problem” in the first place—and what a satisfactory “solution” to their inconvenient existence might be—was not addressed.
Some Republican politicians spoke out against Carlson’s conversation with Cooper, and many historians, including conservative ones, debunked its Holocaust revisionism. But Carlson is no fringe figure. His show ranks as one of the top podcasts in the United States; videos of its episodes rack up millions of views. He has the ear of Donald Trump and spoke during prime time at the 2024 Republican National Convention. His anti-Jewish provocations are not a personal idiosyncrasy but the latest expression of an insurgent force on the American right—one that began to swell when Trump first declared his candidacy for president and that has come to challenge the identity of the conservative movement itself.
Anti-Semitism has always existed on the political extremes, but it began to migrate into the mainstream of the Republican coalition during the Trump administration. At first, the prejudice took the guise of protest.
In 2019, hecklers pursued the Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw—a popular former Navy SEAL from Texas—across a tour of college campuses, posing leading questions to him about Jews and Israel, and insinuating that the Jewish state was behind the 9/11 attacks. The activists called themselves “Groypers” and were led by a young white supremacist named Nick Fuentes, an internet personality who had defended racial segregation, denied the Holocaust, and participated in the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where marchers chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”
The slogan referred to a far-right fantasy known as the “Great Replacement,” according to which Jews are plotting to flood the country with Black and brown migrants in order to displace the white race. That belief animated Robert Bowers, who perpetrated the largest massacre of Jews on American soil at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 after sharing rants about the Great Replacement on social media. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the gunman wrote in his final post, “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people … your optics, I’m going in.”
Less than three years later, Carlson sanitized that same conspiracy theory on his top-rated cable-news show. “They’re trying to change the population of the United States,” the Fox host declared, “and they hate it when you say that because it’s true, but that’s exactly what they’re doing.” Like many before him, Carlson maintained plausible deniability by affirming an anti-Semitic accusation without explicitly naming Jews as culprits. He could rely on members of his audience to fill in the blanks.
Carlson and Fuentes weren’t the only ones who recognized the rising appeal of anti-Semitism on the right. On January 6, 2021, an influencer named Elijah Schaffer joined thousands of Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, posting live from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Eighteen months later, Schaffer publicly polled his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers: “Do you believe Jews disproportionately control the world institutions, banks, & are waging war on white, western society?” Social-media polls are not scientific, so the fact that more than 70 percent of respondents said some version of “yes” matters less than the fact that 94,000 people participated in the survey. Schaffer correctly gauged that this subject was something that his audience wanted to discuss, and certainly not something that would hurt his career.
With little fanfare, the tide had turned in favor of those advancing anti-Semitic arguments. In 2019, Fuentes and his faction were disrupting Republican politicians like Crenshaw. By 2022, Fuentes was shaking hands onstage with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. In 2019, the Groyper activists were picketing events held by Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization founded by the activist Charlie Kirk. By 2024, Turning Point was employing—and periodically firing and denouncing—anti-Semitic influencers who appeared at conventions run by Fuentes. “The Zionist Jews controlling our planet are all pedophiles who have no regard for the sanctity of human life and purity,” one of the organization’s ambassadors posted before she was dismissed.
In 2020, Carlson’s lead writer, Blake Neff, was compelled to resign after he was exposed as a regular contributor to a racist internet forum. Today, he produces Kirk’s podcast and recently reported alongside him at the Republican National Convention. “Why does Turning Point USA keep pushing anti-Semitism?” asked Erick Erickson, the longtime conservative radio host and activist, last October. The answer: Because that’s what a growing portion of the audience wants.
“When I began my career in 2017,” Fuentes wrote in May 2023, “I was considered radioactive in the American Right for my White Identitarian, race realist, ‘Jewish aware,’ counter-Zionist, authoritarian, traditional Catholic views … In 2023, on almost every count, our previously radioactive views are pounding on the door of the political mainstream.” Fuentes is a congenital liar, but a year after this triumphalist pronouncement, his basic point is hard to dispute. Little by little, the extreme has become mainstream—especially since October 7.
Last December, Tucker Carlson joined the popular anti-establishment podcast Breaking Points to discuss the Gaza conflict and accused a prominent Jewish political personality of disloyalty to the nation. “They don’t care about the country at all,” he told the host, “but I do … because I’m from here, my family’s been here hundreds of years, I plan to stay here. Like, I’m shocked by how little they care about the country, including the person you mentioned. And I can’t imagine how someone like that could get an audience of people who claim to care about America, because he doesn’t, obviously.”
The twist: “He” was not some far-left activist who had called America an irredeemably racist regime. Carlson was referring to Ben Shapiro, arguably the most visible Jewish conservative in America, and insinuating that despite his decades of paeans to American exceptionalism, Shapiro was a foreign implant secretly serving Israeli interests. The podcast host did not object to Carlson’s remarks.
The war in Gaza has placed Jews and their role in American politics under a microscope. Much has been written about how the conflict has divided the left and led to a spike in anti-Semitism in progressive spaces, but less attention has been paid to the similar shake-up on the right, where events in the Middle East have forced previously subterranean tensions to the surface. Today, the Republican Party’s establishment says that it stands with Israel and against anti-Semitism, but that stance is under attack by a new wave of insurgents with a very different agenda.
Since October 7, in addition to slurring Shapiro, Carlson has hosted a parade of anti-Jewish guests on his show. One was Candace Owens, the far-right podcaster known for her defenses of another anti-Jewish agitator, Kanye “Ye” West. Owens had already clashed with her employer—the conservative outlet The Daily Wire, co-founded by Shapiro—over her seeming indifference to anti-Semitism. But after the Hamas assault, she began making explicit what had previously been implicit—including liking a social-media post that accused a rabbi of being “drunk on Christian blood,” a reference to the medieval blood libel. The Daily Wire severed ties with her soon after. But this did not remotely curb her appeal.
Today, Owens can be found fulminating on her YouTube channel (2.4 million subscribers) or X feed (5.6 million followers) about how a devil-worshipping Jewish cult controls the world, and how Israel was complicit in the 9/11 attacks and killed President John F. Kennedy. Owens has also jumped aboard the Reich-Rehabilitation Express. “What is it about Hitler? Why is he the most evil?” she asked in July. “The first thing people would say is: ‘Well, an ethnic cleansing almost took place.’ And now I offer back: ‘You mean like we actually did to the Germans.’”
“Many Americans are learning that WW2 history is not as black and white as we were taught and some details were purposefully omitted from our textbooks,” she wrote after Carlson’s Holocaust conversation came under fire. The post received 15,000 likes.
Populists play on discontents that reflect genuine failures of the establishment, but their approach also readily maps onto the ancient anti-Semitic canard that clandestine string-pulling Jews are the source of society’s problems. Once people become convinced that the world is oppressed by an invisible hand, they often conclude that the hand belongs to an invisible Jew.
Another such force is isolationism, or the desire to extricate the United States from foreign entanglements, following decades of debacles in the Middle East. But like the original America First Committee, which sought to keep the country out of World War II, today’s isolationists often conceive of Jews as either rootless cosmopolitans undermining national cohesion or dual loyalists subverting the national interest in service of their own. In this regard, the Tucker Carlsons of 2024 resemble the reactionary activists of the 1930s, such as the aviator Charles Lindbergh, who infamously accused Jewish leaders of acting “for reasons which are not American,” and warned of “their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”
Populism and isolationism have legitimate expressions, but preventing them from descending into anti-Semitism requires leaders willing to restrain their movement’s worst instincts.
As one conservative columnist put it to me in August 2023, “What you’re actually worried about is not Trump being Hitler. What you’re worried about is Trump incentivizing anti-Semites,” to the point where “a generation from now, you’ve got Karl Lueger,” the anti-Jewish mayor of Vienna who inspired Hitler, “and two generations from now, you do have something like that.” The accelerant that is social-media discourse, together with a war that brings Jews to the center of political attention, could shorten that timeline.
For now, the biggest obstacle to anti-Semitism’s ascent on the right is the Republican rank and file’s general commitment to Israel, which causes them to recoil when people like Owens rant about how the Jewish state is run by a cabal of satanic pedophiles. Even conservatives like Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, a neo-isolationist who opposes foreign aid to Ukraine, are careful to affirm their continued support for Israel.
More than populism and isolationism, the force that unites the right’s anti-Semites and explains why they have been slowly winning the war for the future of conservatism is conspiracism. To see its power in practice, one need only examine the social-media posts of Elon Musk, which serve as a window into the mindset of the insurgent right and its receptivity to anti-Semitism.
Over the past year, the world’s richest man has repeatedly shared anti-Jewish propaganda on X, only to walk it back following criticism from more traditional conservative quarters. In November, Musk affirmed the Great Replacement theory, replying to a white nationalist who expressed it with these words: “You have said the actual truth.” After a furious backlash, the magnate recanted, saying, “It might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done.” Musk subsequently met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and accompanied Ben Shapiro on a trip to Auschwitz, but the lesson didn’t quite take. Earlier this month, he shared Carlson’s discussion of Holocaust revisionism with the approbation: “Very interesting. Worth watching.” Once again under fire, he deleted the tweet and apologized, saying he’d listened to only part of the interview.
But this lesson is also unlikely to stick, because like many on the new right, Musk is in thrall to a worldview that makes him particularly susceptible to anti-Jewish ideas. Last September, not long before Musk declared the “actual truth” of the Great Replacement, he participated in a public exchange with a group of rabbis, activists, and Jewish conservatives. The discussion was intended as an intervention to inoculate Musk against anti-Semitism, but early on, he said something that showed why the cause was likely lost before the conversation even began. “I think,” Musk cracked, “we’re running out of conspiracy theories that didn’t turn out to be true.”
The popularity of such sentiments among contemporary conservatives explains why the likes of Carlson and Owens have been gaining ground and old-guard conservatives such as Shapiro and Erickson have been losing it. Simply put, as Trump and his allies have coopted the conservative movement, it has become defined by a fundamental distrust of authority and institutions, and a concurrent embrace of conspiracy theories about elite cabals. And the more conspiratorial thinking becomes commonplace on the right, the more inevitable that its partisans will land on one of the oldest conspiracies of them all.
Conspiratorial thinking is neither new to American politics nor confined to one end of the ideological spectrum. But Trump has made foundational what was once marginal. Beginning with birtherism and culminating in election denialism, he turned anti-establishment conspiracism into a litmus test for attaining political power, compelling Republicans to either sign on to his claims of 2020 fraud or be exiled to irrelevance.
The fundamental fault line in the conservative coalition became whether someone was willing to buy into ever more elaborate fantasies. The result was to elevate those with flexible approaches to facts, such as Carlson and Owens, who were predisposed to say and do anything—no matter how hypocritical or absurd—to obtain influence. Once opened, this conspiratorial box could not be closed. After all, a movement that legitimizes crackpot schemes about rigged voting machines and microchipped vaccines cannot simply turn around and draw the line at the Jews.
For mercenary opportunists like Carlson, this moment holds incredible promise. But for Republicans with principles—those who know who won the 2020 election, or who was the bad guy in World War II, and can’t bring themselves to say otherwise—it’s a time of profound peril. And for Jews, the targets of one of the world’s deadliest conspiracy theories, such developments are even more forboding.
“It is now incumbent on all decent people, and especially those on the right, to demand that Carlson no longer be treated as a mainstream figure,” Jonathan Tobin, the pro-Trump conservative editor of the Jewish News Syndicate, wrote after Carlson’s World War II episode. “He must be put in his place, and condemned by Trump and Vance.”
Anti-Semitism’s ultimate victory in GOP politics is not assured. Musk did delete his tweets, Owens was fired, and some Republicans did condemn Carlson’s Holocaust segment. But beseeching Trump and his camp to intervene here mistakes the cause for the cure.
Three days after Carlson posted his Hitler apologetics, Vance shrugged off the controversy and recorded an interview with him, and this past Saturday, the two men yukked it up onstage at a political event in Pennsylvania before an audience of thousands. Such coziness should not surprise, given that Carlson was reportedly instrumental in securing the VP slot for the Ohio senator. Asked earlier if he took issue with Carlson’s decision to air the Holocaust revisionism, Vance retorted, “The fundamental idea here is Republicans believe not in censorship; we believe in free speech and debate.” He conveniently declined to use his own speech to debate Carlson’s.
