It is exactly when a political party or movement wins power that dormant—and definitional—fights begin to break out.
It’s easy to find common cause when you have a common enemy, but once in power, the question becomes not what a party is against, but what it is for. That question is now beginning to tear the MAGA movement apart.
The answer, according to a troubling and increasingly ascendant voice on the right, is “noticing,” “exposing,” and fighting the Jews.
I’ve spent countless hours consuming and producing media on both the right and the left—everything from live TV, to podcasts and print. The ascendance of the voices on the right who are now taking not just a bigger share, but the biggest share of the marketplace is not an unhappy accident, but the product of an accurate read of both how the country is feeling and how younger Americans consume information.
Savvy voices within new media understand where the puck is going, and they’re skating to it. Figures like Candace Owens, Andrew Tate, and Ian Carroll make it a point to “notice” and “explore” the possibility that Jews and Israel may be responsible for society’s problems, ushering in a trove of conspiracy thinking among young conservatives.
Each figure has a particular niche inside the “very brave truth teller” firmament.
Take Candace Owens, who has perfected the art of exploiting disillusionment. Owens now hosts the third-most listened to podcast in America, The Wall Street Journal revealed this week—influencing the views of roughly 40 million people per month.
She blends criticisms of cultural rot and elite hypocrisy with intentionally outrageous balderdash, such as her fixation on “Frankism,” (a tiny 18th-century cult that is, in Owens’ bizarre imagining, really behind globalist agendas), her flirtation with Holocaust denial, and her fascination with trying to prove that history’s villains and power brokers, like Josef Stalin or Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, were actually Jewish. Owens assumes, correctly, that most of her listeners don’t know or remember that Stalin was actually a failed Eastern Orthodox priest, and Ataturk a militant secularist with Muslim parents.
Owens is one of the biggest political voices on the Internet – she has 5.6 million followers on Instagram, 6.6 million on X, 5.8 million on Facebook, and 4.2 million on TikTok. She unfortunately knows how to package some of the oldest calumnies against Jews in a way that feels fresh and edgy to her audience. She is funny, charismatic, and, for many, seems to have all the right enemies.
For her loyalists, any rebuttals leveled against her are suspect: after all, the powerful people she’s criticizing would want you to believe she is crazy. This is the vicious cycle that lures people into conspiratorial thinking, and provides a kind of protective shell against actually inspecting any outlandish claims.
Andrew Tate is a prodigal espouser of the “everything you thought was good is actually bad” approach—one that has proven wildly effective among those who aren’t getting satisfactory answers from mainstream institutions.
Tate is a controversial internet personality, former kickboxer, and self-styled entrepreneur who gained fame for his outspoken views on masculinity, success, and relationships. He promotes a hyper-masculine, individualistic philosophy that emphasizes financial independence, self-discipline, and dominance in personal and professional life. He often speaks about the “Matrix,” a metaphor for societal control and what he sees as a system designed to keep men weak and dependent. His rhetoric frequently challenges feminism, modern relationships, and what he views as the decline of traditional masculinity. (He is also an alleged sex trafficker and rapist, which he denies.)
But along with his broader “trust nothing ‘they’ tell you” attitude, Tate sounds like Owens. “America believes it has free speech; it doesn’t,” he insists, because you cannot “speak out against the Jews.” Want to be a real man? Whine about the Jews, says Tate. Want to really prove that you are free to do as you please? Raise a sieg heil, it’s just a Roman salute.
This part of the right marches in lockstep: on March 6 alone, Owens appeared on Theo Von, Ian Carroll (a pure, unabashed “Israel did 9/11” conspiracist) appeared on Joe Rogan, and Tate appeared on the Fullsend podcast.
All three discussed some version of the nefarious influence of the Jews and Israel, and all three noticeably toned down the heat of their rhetoric compared with past podcast appearances.
Owens’ husband (the son of a British lord) is personally close with Tate, who she then hosts on her show and defends. She also often sources her antisemitic claims from Carroll, compounding their reach. This is not by chance. This is a coordinated attempt to cross-amplify conspiracy thinking and cater to the most paranoid and conspiratorially-minded denominator.
Then there is Tucker Carlson—the godfather of the new right. Carlson is the thought leader of what James Lindsay, a public intellectual whose polemics focus on ideological movements, has taken to pejoratively (and accurately) calling the “woke right”—a group of thinkers with the same structural critique of society as the “intersectional” left.
The intersectional left believes that society is unfairly structured to benefit certain groups (like white people, men, or the rich) while oppressing others (like racial minorities, women, or LGBTQ+ people). They thus infer that seemingly neutral values like “free speech” or “colorblindness” are nothing more than a ruse for the benefit of entrenched powers. Therefore, radical changes are needed to fix this.
The so-called “woke right” also believes society is unfairly structured—but they think the unfairness goes in the opposite direction. They claim that elites, progressives, “globalists,” and, increasingly, Jews, have rigged the system against “regular” people, like conservatives, Christians, or the working class. They also want radical changes to fix this.
Carlson—formerly a bowtie-wearing Republican “establishment” stiff at CNN and The Weekly Standard—at some point suffered a profound disillusionment with America, and now presents the governing powers as one big lie; a hideous mask for “what is really going on,” which is really the opposite of what mainstream people think is good. This is why he will promote Darryl Cooper, a Holocaust denier as the “best and most honest historian” in America, or run overwrought, cringe-inducing propaganda on his channel about the majesty of Moscow’s bountiful supermarkets. It’s all a lie anyway, so why not join Putin in fighting the powers that be?
Many young conservatives are up this creek without a paddle. They grew up in a very different environment from their parents. The world they know is one of institutional decay, political polarization, and growing distrust for science, government, and the press.
For young men, in particular, there was also an ambient sense that progressivism—of the kind that Americans soundly rejected in November—demonized them and their masculinity in entertainment, in school, and in employment. The disenfranchised and disenchanted always look for someone to blame. Many white men now believe the world is out to get them, and the sadly most common outgrowth of that feeling, across all histories and all time, has been antisemitism.
Currently, young conservatives feel distrust for most mainstream news figures. And they are often unaware how often online content is bought and paid for by hidden actors who either wish to push a specific agenda or simply turbocharge existing divisions within American society.
With traditional media institutions hemorrhaging money, viewership, and staff, it’s imperative to understand that new media voices are the new mainstream media, exploiting the constantly shifting sands that today exemplify the media landscape.
No longer are conservatives the “opposition.” There’s been a shift in power, culturally, and politically. With it comes responsibility. The MAGA movement must celebrate its victories, and realize what they mean. They’ve won. They are the culture. No longer the scrappy start-up or the outsider.
They must get their house in order and expel the most radical among their ranks, starting with the antisemites.
Daniella Greenbaum Davis is an Emmy-award winning producer and writer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Greenbaum produced the first-ever Holocaust education series for TikTok and consults on strategic communications and social media strategy for non-profits.
