Antisemitism and the American Right

National Review and the Republican Jewish Coalition recently hosted a symposium about antisemitism on the political Right. An important sub-theme at the Washington event was understanding why younger right-wingers have been turning against Israel and toward antisemitism. National Review staff writer Caroline Downey set the scene, observing an increase in “scapegoating of Israel and the Jewish people” by “a malignant cohort that ... thinks they are more MAGA than the man himself.” These Groypers “are mostly young people, but they have some influence among older generations.”  

The size of this cohort remains hazy. Last fall, journalist Rod Dreher estimated “30 to 40 percent” of “Gen Z congressional and administration staffers” are Groypers. Meanwhile, a straw poll from CPAC’s March gathering offered another vantage point. When asked whether Israel is “a key US strategic ally,” 85 percent of attendees agreed, while only 11 percent disagreed.  

Gen Z PragerU political commentator Shabbos Kestenbaum allowed that Groypers correctly—though not uniquely—noticed American young adults struggle to pay rent and for healthcare. Groypers’ message, however, is “dangerous,” because when young people hear “the system is rigged against you by these shadowy, undefined forces,” they may “fall into this pit of despair that ‘I will never get ahead in life.’” 

Daily Wire contributor Gates Garcia, a millennial with a heavily Gen Z audience, likewise addressed that despair, explaining Gen Z believes “the American dream has broken on their generation.” Garcia’s message to his listeners is not only that “it's been hard for every generation,” but also that “hard work is rewarded,” and it’s important to “take agency of yourself.” 

Garcia explained Gen Z’s mindset: “A big issue with Gen Z that they’re caught up in right now is they don’t have an identity. They’ve been raised online, and then COVID amplified this. They were shoved indoors for a number of years and stripped of community. So, they found their communities online. One in four Gen Z men said they have no close friends," underscoring their social isolation. 

“Gen Z is perhaps the most uneducated generation we’ve ever had,”  Garcia observed. “The reason I think some of these kids say, ‘I love Hitler’ or ‘Hitler was cool’ ... [is] they don’t know anything about Hitler.” Schools’ failure to impart substantive knowledge complicates young Americans’ understanding of their hardships in a historical context and their ability to discern truth from lies.  

Conspiracy theories spreading via podcasts and the internet are where those individual difficulties become societal problems. David Azerrad, assistant professor and research fellow at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government, observed that while “transgression used to come from the Left . . . today, the transgression comes from the Right, because the pieties are all on the Left.” There’s “titillation” to “transgression” and “the pleasure of thinking that you’re in the know, and, hey, here’s what ‘they’ don’t want you to know,” Azerrad noted. And the conspiracy theorist rabbit hole always leads the same way: blame Jews. 

Azerrad also contended that “rhetorically, there is something off-putting about the way that many pro-Israel people defend” Israel and the American-Israeli alliance. “In an age of populism and nationalism,” Americans embrace a "hardened, narrower conception of the national interest,” he argued. Azerrad explained that the relationship with Israel can be justified, but those doing so need to update the terms used to do it.  

“From a MAGA point of view, the moral case for supporting Israel, for admiring it as a thriving Western nation . . . is an absolute non-negotiable,” Azerrad said. “If you look at the developed world, there’s only one nation that is radiating the will to live, that has a fertility rate that is way above replacement—even if you look at secular women in Tel Aviv—that is fighting wars with purpose, that wants to live, that has real, hard military service.” For Azerrad, the moral case for Israel is about Western civilization and Israel’s “fighting barbarians,” with “the value of the strategic alliance” being related, yet separate.  

There is an undeniable generational change in priorities and feelings about Israel and Jews more broadly. A Manhattan Institute (MI) poll released last December found 26 percent of Republicans under age 50 “believe that Jews receive too much favorable treatment,” while “only 8 percent of those over 50” say the same. Thirty-eight percent of New Entrant Republicans—those who’ve voted Republican only since 2020—believe American Jews “hav[e] loyalty elsewhere,” compared to 24 percent of longstanding Republicans.  

MI concluded 17 percent of respondents qualified as “anti-Jewish,” because they “(1) self-identify as both racist and antisemitic and express Holocaust denial or describe Israel as a colonial state, or (2) do not self-identify that way but nevertheless hold both of those extreme positions.” This cohort is “typically younger, disproportionately male, more likely to be college educated, and significantly more likely to be New Entrant Republicans. They are also more racially diverse. . . . infrequent church attendance is, all else equal, one of the strongest predictors of falling into this segment.”  

For generational context, Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study found only 46 percent of adults aged 18-24 “identif[ied] as Christian,” and only 25 percent of that age cohort “attend[ed] religious services at least monthly.” Forty-three percent were “religiously unaffiliated.”  

These findings complement the picture Pew Research’s Israel-related surveys have painted: “Today, 57 percent of Republicans ages 18 to 49 have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 50 percent last year.” White evangelicals remain the most pro-Israel, non-Jewish religious demographic, with 65 percent expressing a positive view of Israel, but that’s down from 72 percent last year. Both of these numbers represent drops from historical levels of support.  

The Washington symposium crowd has seen these changes and is concerned. As Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told attendees, this is “an existential crisis. . . . Because antisemitism is a gateway to anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism. It doesn’t end there. It is a bigotry, and it is wrong, but it leads to an entire worldview that is profoundly pernicious.”  

The questions then are: why do anti-Jewish and anti-Israel messaging resonate with younger right-wingers? And how might we reverse these related trends? 

Beyond eschewing traditional religion, Gen Z also grew up with historically high levels of family instability. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, “At the start of Generation Z in 1997, nearly one-third (32 percent) of births were to unmarried women. That figure jumped to 41percent by 2012, the last year that Gen Zers were born.” Many of those children grew up experiencing fragile families or absent fathers, not knowing the natural support other Americans regularly receive from extended family networks. That alone could make the world look more threatening. 

On the flip side is helicopter parenting. A lifetime of parents managing their children’s daily tasks has yielded young adults who struggle with “adulting.” 

The American education system also hasn’t helped. Gen Z’s despair and lack of agency look like malignant outgrowths of woke education’s oppressors and oppressed framework, wherein “hyper-white” Jews and Israel are villainized. If students believe immutable characteristics preordain their success, why bother trying? Further, if “oppressors” cause others’ failure, blame seems justifiable. This worldview is so imprinted on Gen Z that a December 2023 Harvard/Harris poll found 67 percent of 18–24-year-old respondents affirmed that “Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors.” 

TikTok, the social media site popular with Gen Z, reinforces such messaging. A 2023 survey found that “spending at least 30 minutes a day on TikTok increases the chances a respondent holds antisemitic or anti-Israel views by 17 percent (compared with six percent for Instagram and two percent for X).” In 2024, a Maryland high school student told me, “Most kids are on TikTok 1-4 hours a day.” 

Social and economic upheaval, as is underway, has historically fueled Jew-hatred. Scapegoating Jews offers one simple explanation to countless complex problems. But it’s neither an accurate nor effective remedy to what ails Americans, and we should combat it for the country’s sake. 

Senator Cruz urged pastors to preach “on what the Bible says about Israel” and take “on replacement theology,” explaining “why it’s a lie.” Many pastors are “not aware this battle is being waged. We need to fight and engage it, and take on the core premises, because if we lose the next generation, we lose the country,” Cruz warned. 

Azerrad advised “kids are changing” and “think differently. . . . I think many of them can be won over, but I think we need to change the rhetoric, change the arguments, and to use their lingo.” 

Garcia offered three additional suggestions. First, understand that members of Gen Z turn to one another, not their elders, for advice. So, “we have to go to them . . . When they say their life sucks . . . we have to say, ‘Yeah, some things in your life are hard.’ We have to meet them on their terms, because we've got to get them to replace resentment with responsibility. . . . We’ve got to give them agency back.” Second, recognize “we’re fighting an algorithm,” and only by convincing “enough people to care” can we shift that algorithm and related financial incentives in a healthier direction. Third, “when you see evil, you fight evil. Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘Man in the Arena.’ Every single one of us has to be in the arena.”  

There is no silver bullet. Diffuse factors have driven the young Right in this new direction, and reversing it requires an urgent, multi-pronged approach. Nothing less than the future of the American experiment is at stake. 

Melissa Langsam Braunstein is a columnist for London’s Jewish Chronicle. @Slowhoneybee