Why this was the worst week in antisemitism — until maybe next week
Joe Rogan hosting a Holocaust revisionist, Musk retweeting Holocaust denial, Kanye West selling KKK uniforms — all at once
The week’s worst antisemitic offenders Courtesy of Getty Images
By Mira Fox March 19, 2025
Over the weekend, Ye, f.k.a. Kanye West, tweeted a Ku Klux Klan uniform and asked whether it matched better with Timberland boots or Jordans. Then he put out a casting call for his newest tour looking for dancers who were comfortable wearing swastikas on stage. He also released — and then deleted — a new song that included the lyrics “rockin’ swastikas ‘cause all my n****s Nazis.” Then he offered the KKK outfit in “butter soft blakkk leather.”
Meanwhile, in another corner of the internet, Joe Rogan invited someone he described as a “Nazi apologist” on his show. A few days before that, Elon Musk retweeted a post saying that Hitler “didn’t murder millions of people” — because it was actually government workers who did it — in defense of his government cuts via D.O.G.E.
It’s been a particularly bad time for antisemitism. But I had to add that modifier — “particularly” — because the open Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial in popular culture and politics has gotten so constant that each individual instance hardly feels notable. While some people might disagree, I don’t mean the pro-Palestine college campus demonstrations; whether or not you call the protests antisemitic tends to have a lot to do with your politics on Israel. I mean straight-up, clear as day, “Jews are parasites,” Nazi-endorsing antisemitism.
We no longer have to look out for dog whistles like George Soros — though, to be clear, people still love to hate Soros. But people have also become comfortable openly saying things like “Hitler is somebody who, say whatever you want about him, loved the German people and cared about the German people” and “didn’t have evil in his heart,” as Darryl Cooper did on The Joe Rogan Experience.
It’s exhausting to keep track, even though that is, of course, my job. And it becomes difficult to care about each new incident; they’re beginning to blur together. Why bother reporting, breathlessly, that Elon Musk once again retweeted something antisemitic or related to Holocaust denial? By now, we should understand that this is just something he does, no matter how many times he might go to Auschwitz for a photo op or meet with Netanyahu or a select group of rabbis. (He’s done each once, for the record.)
The same goes for Rogan’s platforming of extremism, whether vaccine misinformation or antisemitism — this wasn’t even the first time this month Rogan had a Holocaust denier on his show. And while Ye’s antics get more extreme and stir up more discourse everytime, it’s certainly not news that he hates Jews.
We should be paying attention to the casual antisemitism, but we can’t let the constant clip of new headlines distract us from the bigger picture: Something has shifted to allow people to go mask-off with their antisemitism.
There have always been extremist cranks, but until the past few years they were limited to dark corners of the internet like 4chan and secretive meet-ups, aside from occasional roars into view with events like the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville. Now, they’re mainstream.
Since Trump took office, social media companies have reduced moderation as a show of deference to the anti-PC, permissive rhetoric of the new era. But it’s not just that our algorithms are showing us more of the antisemitism that has always bubbled in the depths of the internet. It’s that people in major positions of power are willing to spout antisemitic tropes without any repercussions — in fact, they have been finding high-ranking positions in the new administration. And the new titans of culture — the Joe Rogans and Elon Musks — are doing the same.
Rogan, in particular, tends to defend himself from any accusations that he is platforming disinformation by emphasizing his curiosity. He’s a “hey, I’m just asking questions here” kind of guy, which has allowed him to normalize discussion of falsehoods about Jews and plenty of other topics by framing them as open discussion.
Musk, who transitioned in the past few years from “tech guy” to “king of the internet,” has similarly shielded himself through retweeting antisemitic posts with commentary like “interesting” instead of offering full-throated endorsements (for the most part). He’s responded to accusations of antisemitism with jokes instead of apologies. For him, talking about the Jews is an issue of free speech and the right to be a provocateur — or, in internet terms, an “edgelord” — and just isn’t that serious.
And that’s becoming true. Just look at the replies under West’s recent tirades. Mostly, people are posting memes about how crazy he’s being. Occasionally people compliment his boldness in the face of cancel culture. A few people are just bored. Almost no one is truly outraged.
But all of this ability to “just ask questions” and joke or even yawn about antisemitism still serves to normalize it. And now we’re seeing the fallout from years of people claiming that their Nazi viewpoints are just “triggering the libs” with a joke that gets a big reaction online. The result is that many people consider it not just funny to talk about hating Jews or liking Nazis, but actually a pretty fair topic of discussion.
Cooper, the Holocaust revisionist Rogan invited on his show, was on Tucker Carlson’s show last fall talking about how Hitler actually never wanted a war and only killed millions of Jews in camps by accident, it seems; it drew outrage. This week, Rogan called Cooper’s take on World War II and Hitler “nuanced” for arguing that Hitler, through some trick of psychology, actually had to hate Jews in order to rationalize his love for his fellow Germans. Cooper went on to call Hitler a “prophet figure” with a “sacred mission to save the German people” on which he “never compromised.”
In addition to his empathy for Hitler, he made several offhand comments about Jewish-controlled media and banking, as though it were an agreed-upon fact that Jews did, in fact, control the media and banks in Germany at the time.
Rogan said the pseudo-historian’s critics were “paranoid” because, he argued, it’s important to be able to question history and see the humanity of the Nazis. And he’s probably right when he says that responding to someone asking problematic questions by telling them they’re not allowed to think such thoughts is not productive. But on the other hand, wondering whether it was actually pretty reasonable for Hitler to kill the Jews is not a thought a normal person would have unless the idea of hating that particular group was already planted in their head — by, in this case, Rogan.
Rogan’s followers view him as a kind of prophet; his show is the biggest podcast in the U.S., and where millions of Americans get their news. If he’s challenging history or science, no matter how well-established, his audience drinks it up because they view him as a maverick. And so, if he’s interviewing guests who happen to challenge the Holocaust, it continues the cycle of people who have some pretty weird questions they just want to ask.
In many ways, all of this — Musk’s tasteless jokes, the yawns in reaction to West’s antisemitic tirades, Rogan’s problematic guests — is a reaction to the politically-correct culture that has dominated the U.S. for the past decade or more. Frustrated with walking on eggshells around people’s identities and experiences, the cultural milieu seems to have swung so hard the other direction that it’s now cool to say openly offensive things, and aggravating to take offense. (As some of Trump’s voters said after this election, they voted for him because they just wanted to be able to say slurs.)
But no one is “just asking questions” about resistance fighters’ experience, or Jewish Germans’ feelings; it’s limited to empathy for Hitler. Which reveals the issue with the whole shift — it doesn’t apply to everyone, or every kind of question. Some questions and statements are cool and funny and bold; some are “lib” stances that are part of the establishment narrative, which automatically makes them lame and probably false.
When it’s considered groundbreaking to question every piece of history, no matter how well-established — and, in fact, the more proven the history is, the more fun it seems to be to deny its reality — the point becomes vibes, not facts. The point isn’t what’s true, it’s what’s cool or funny or provokes a reaction. And somewhere along the line, ringing the alarm on historical resonances became shrill and uncool. Which means antisemitism is kind of funny, and anti-antisemitism is just lame.
What’s cool, apparently, is making jokes like: “His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did Nazi that coming,” as Elon Musk did recently. The joke is more offensive than it is funny, which is, of course, the point.
Pointing out the antisemitism in these jokes just, if anything, makes them funnier to their intended audience, much like pointing out the antisemitism in Rogan’s guests just makes his supporters defend his right to ask questions.
But Jews have always excelled at both humor and asking questions; just look at the Talmud. Maybe, with the right jokes, we can make fun of the antisemites until they’re uncool again.
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